''The Outsider'' is a 1956 book by English writer
Colin Wilson.
Through the works and lives of various artists – including
H. G. Wells (''
Mind at the End of Its Tether''),
Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a German-speaking Bohemian novelist and short-story writer, widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature. His work fuses elements of realism and the fantastic. It typ ...
,
Albert Camus
Albert Camus ( , ; ; 7 November 1913 – 4 January 1960) was a French philosopher, author, dramatist, and journalist. He was awarded the 1957 Nobel Prize in Literature at the age of 44, the second-youngest recipient in history. His work ...
,
Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre (, ; ; 21 June 1905 – 15 April 1980) was one of the key figures in the philosophy of existentialism (and phenomenology), a French playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and lite ...
,
T. S. Eliot,
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American novelist, short-story writer, and journalist. His economical and understated style—which he termed the iceberg theory—had a strong influence on 20th-century f ...
,
Harley Granville-Barker
Harley Granville-Barker (25 November 1877 – 31 August 1946) was an English actor, director, playwright, manager, critic, and theorist. After early success as an actor in the plays of George Bernard Shaw, he increasingly turned to directi ...
(''The Secret Life''),
Hermann Hesse
Hermann Karl Hesse (; 2 July 1877 – 9 August 1962) was a German-Swiss poet, novelist, and painter. His best-known works include '' Demian'', '' Steppenwolf'', '' Siddhartha'', and '' The Glass Bead Game'', each of which explores an individual ...
,
T. E. Lawrence,
Vincent van Gogh
Vincent Willem van Gogh (; 30 March 185329 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who posthumously became one of the most famous and influential figures in Western art history. In a decade, he created about 2,100 artworks, inc ...
,
Vaslav Nijinsky,
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950), known at his insistence simply as Bernard Shaw, was an Irish playwright, critic, polemicist and political activist. His influence on Western theatre, culture and politics extended from ...
,
William Blake
William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his life, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of the Romantic poetry, poetry and visual art of t ...
,
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (; or ; 15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philosopher, prose poet, cultural critic, philologist, and composer whose work has exerted a profound influence on contemporary philosophy. He began his ...
,
Fyodor Dostoyevsky and
George Gurdjieff – Wilson explores the psyche of the Outsider, his effect on society, and society's effect on him.
On Christmas Day, 1954, alone in his room, Wilson sat down on his bed and began to write in his journal. He described his feelings as follows:
''The Outsider'' has been translated into over thirty languages (including Russian and Chinese) and never been out of print since publication day of 28 May 1956. Wilson wrote much of it in the Reading Room of the
British Museum
The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...
, and during this period was, for a time, living in a sleeping bag on
Hampstead Heath
Hampstead Heath (locally known simply as the Heath) is an ancient heath in London, spanning . This grassy public space sits astride a sandy ridge, one of the highest points in London, running from Hampstead to Highgate, which rests on a band ...
. He continued to work on it at a furious pace and:
Gollancz was the head of publishers
Victor Gollancz Ltd
Victor Gollancz Ltd () was a major British book publishing house of the twentieth century and continues to publish science fiction and fantasy titles as an imprint of Orion Publishing Group.
Gollancz was founded in 1927 by Victor Gollancz, an ...
. Wilson was inspired to send the book to him after he found a copy of the publisher's own book ''
A Year of Grace
''A Year of Grace'' is a 1950 anthology compiled by Victor Gollancz, consisting of passages (and some pieces of music) concerning religious and spiritual life, taken from a variety of different sources.
The sources include the writings of a numb ...
'' in a second-hand bookshop, which led him to believe that he had found a sympathetic publisher.
Contents
The book is structured in order to mirror the Outsider's experience: a sense of dislocation, or of being at odds with society. These are figures like Dostoyevsky's "Underground-Man" who seem to be lost to despair and non-transcendence with no way out.
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
Nausea is a diffuse sensation of unease and discomfort, sometimes perceived as an urge to vomit. While not painful, it can be a debilitating symptom if prolonged and has been described as placing discomfort on the chest, abdomen, or back of th ...
'' 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 try 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.
Reception
The book has never been out of print since publication day in May 1956 and has been translated into at least 30 languages. Wilson helped to keep the work fresh by adding to it over the years: the 1967 paperback edition included a fifteen-page postscript; a ten-page essay 'The Outsider, twenty years on' was added to the 1978 edition; and in 2001 an index appeared for the first time alongside fifteen pages of postscripts originally written for a Chinese translation. It is still published with enthusiastic comments from the likes of
Edith Sitwell
Dame Edith Louisa Sitwell (7 September 1887 – 9 December 1964) was a British poet and critic and the eldest of the three literary Sitwells. She reacted badly to her eccentric, unloving parents and lived much of her life with her governess ...
and
Cyril Connolly
Cyril Vernon Connolly CBE (10 September 1903 – 26 November 1974) was an English literary critic and writer. He was the editor of the influential literary magazine '' Horizon'' (1940–49) and wrote ''Enemies of Promise'' (1938), which comb ...
adorning its cover. This reception – of his first book at the age of 24 – was a high critical watermark for Wilson which he did not achieve again until the publication of ''The Occult'' in 1971 after which he enjoyed a long and fruitful career as a writer, philosopher, novelist, lecturer and broadcaster until his death in 2013.
Sequels
Wilson followed ''The Outsider'' with six philosophical titles, which have become known as ''The Outsider Cycle'': ''Religion and the Rebel'' (1957), ''The Age of Defeat'' (''The Stature of Man'' in the U.S., 1959), ''The Strength to Dream'' (1962), ''Origins of the Sexual Impulse'' (1963), ''Beyond the Outsider'' (1965) and the summary volume ''Introduction to the New Existentialism'' (1966). These were accompanied by a string of novels aimed at putting his philosophical ideas into action.
External links
''Life'' magazine article Oct. 1, 1956List of works discussed in ''The Outsider'', with links to online versions, where available
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Outsider, The
1956 non-fiction books
Books by Colin Wilson
English-language books
Sociology books
Victor Gollancz Ltd books
Works about existentialism