The Outsider
Colin Wilson
 The book is still published with enthusiastic comments from the likes of Edith Sitwell and Cyril Connolly adorning its cover (Connolly later admitted he hadn't read it). This reception – of his first book at the age of 24 – was a high critical watermark for Wilson, a reputation that sank as fast as it had rocketed. It is still, however, an insightful work of literary and philosophical criticism – a timeless preoccupation which perhaps garners more mainstream attention than his subsequent writings on the occult and crime. The book is structured in such a way as to mirror the outsider's experience: a sense of dislocation, or of being at odds with society. These are figures like Dostoevsky's "Underground-Man" who seem to be lost to despair and non-transcendence with no way out. More successful – or at least hopeful – characters are then brought to the fore (including the title character from Hermann Hesse’s novel Steppenwolf). These are presented as examples of those who have insightful moments of lucidity in which they feel as though things are worthwhile/meaningful amidst their shared, usual, experience of nihilism and gloom. Sartre's Nausea is herein the key text – and the moment when the hero listens to a song in a cafe which momentarily lifts his spirits is the outlook on life to be normalized. Wilson then engages in some detailed case studies of artists who failed in this task and tries to understand their weakness – which is either intellectual, of the body or of the emotions. The final chapter is Wilson's attempt at a "great synthesis" in which he justifies his belief that western philosophy is afflicted with a needless "pessimistic fallacy" – a narrative he continues throughout his oeuvre under various names (St. Neot Margin for example) and illustrated in several metaphors ("every day is Christmas day"). Blurb from the inside cover of a late 1990s edition of The Outsider: "The Outsider is the seminal work on alienation, creativity and the modern mind-set. First published over thirty years ago, it made its youthful author England's most controversial intellectual. Many of Wilson's critics were angry that a 24-year-old non-academic had put out a piece of work that describes "human alienation" in populist society so well, even offering up creating one's own religion or reinventing one's spirituality as a solution to one's own malaise. The book is still published in hardback and paperback, is still a staple in many bookstores' sociology section. The book is sometimes shelved in the psychology sections, religion sections as well. "It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society" – Jiddu Krishnamurti.