Colin Wilson

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For other uses, see Colin Wilson (disambiguation).
Colin Wilson

Colin Henry Wilson
Born June 26, 1931 (1931-06-26) (age 77)
Leicester
Occupation Author
Nationality English
Writing period 1956 to Present
Genres Non-fiction and fiction
Literary movement Angry Young Men
Notable work(s) The Outsider
The Occult
Official website

Colin Henry Wilson (born June 26, 1931 in Leicester) is a prolific British writer. He first came to prominence as a philosopher and novelist. Wilson has since written widely on true crime, mysticism, and other topics.

Contents

[edit] Biography

Wilson was born and raised in Leicester, England, U.K.[1] He left school at 16, worked in factories and other jobs, and read in his spare time.[2] At the age of 24, he published The Outsider in 1956. The Outsider examines the role of the social "outsider" in seminal works of various key literary and cultural figures: Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Ernest Hemingway, Hermann Hesse, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, William James, T. E. Lawrence, Vaslav Nijinsky and Vincent Van Gogh), and alienation in their work.[3] The book was successful and helped popularize existentialism in Britain.[4] Critical praise was short-lived and Wilson was soon widely criticized. [5]

Wilson was labeled an Angry Young Man. He contributed to Declaration, an anthology of manifestos by writers associated with the movement, and a chapter of The Outsider was excerpted in a popular paperback sampler, Protest: The Beat Generation and the Angry Young Men.[6][7] Wilson, and his friends Bill Hopkins and Stuart Holroyd, were viewed as a sub-group of the "Angries" that was more concerned with "religious values", than liberal or socialist politics. Critics on the left swiftly labeled them as fascistic; commentator Kenneth Allsop called them "the law givers".[8][9]

[edit] "Scrambled egghead" and life and works post-The Outsider

After the initial success of his first work, Religion and the Rebel, was universally panned by critics. Time magazine issued an infamous review entitled "Scrambled Egghead", that pilloried the book.[10]

Wilson's works after The Outsider focused on positive aspects of human psychology, such as peak experiences, and the narrowness of consciousness. He admired humanistic psychologist, Abraham Maslow, and corresponded with him. Wilson wrote The War Against Sleep: The Philosophy of Gurdjieff, on the life, work and philosophy of G. I. Gurdjieff, and an accessible introduction to the Greek-Armenian mystic in 1980. He argues throughout his work that the existentialist focus on defeat or nausea is only a partial representation of reality, and that there is no particular reason for accepting it.[citation needed] Wilson views normal, everyday consciousness buffeted by the moment, as 'blinkered', and argues that it should not be accepted as showing us the truth about reality.[citation needed] This blinkering has some evolutionary advantages in that it stops us from being completely immersed in wonder, or in the huge stream of events, and hence unable to act. However, to live properly we need to access more than this everyday consciousness.[citation needed] Wilson believes that our peak experiences of joy and meaningfulness are as real as our experiences of angst, and since we are more fully alive at these moments, they are more real. These experiences can be cultivated through concentration, paying attention, relaxation, and certain types of work. Wilson argues that compulsive criminality is a manifestation of a pathological attempt to gain peak experiences through violence. This leads the criminal to greater extremes of violence, or to a desire to be caught.[citation needed]

[edit] Other Non-fiction Writing

Wilson has written non-fiction books on metaphysical and occult themes. In 1971, he published The Occult: A History featuring exegesis on Aleister Crowley, G. I. Gurdjieff, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Kabbalah, primitive magic, Franz Anton Mesmer, Gregor Rasputin, Daniel Dunglas Home, and Paracelsus among others. He also wrote a markedly unsympathetic biography of Crowley, Aleister Crowley: The Nature of the Beast, and has written biographies on many other spiritual and psychological visionaries including Gurdjieff, C.G. Jung, Wilhelm Reich, Rudolf Steiner, and P.D. Ouspensky.

Originally, Wilson focused on the cultivation of what he called "Faculty X", which leads to an increased sense of meaning, and abilities such as telepathy or the awareness of other energies. In his later work he suggests the possibility of life after death and the existence of spirits.

He has also written non-fiction books on crime, ranging from encyclopedias to studies of serial killing. He has an ongoing interest in the life and times of Jack the Ripper and sex-crime in general.

[edit] Fiction

Wilson explored his ideas on human potential and consciousness in fiction, mostly detective fiction or science fiction, including several Cthulhu Mythos pieces.

Much of Wilson's fictional output, as in his non-fiction work, from Ritual in the Dark (1960) on, has (as in his nonfiction work) been concerned with the psychology of murder especially that of serial killing. However, he has also written science fiction of a philosophical bent, including the acclaimed Spider-World series.

Having attacked H.P. Lovecraft in The Strength to Dream (1961) as one who was 'sick', had 'rejected reality' and who was 'a bad writer', (but grudgingly praised Lovecraft's story "The Shadow Out of Time" as capable science fiction), Wilson then (on a dare from August Derleth), who was incensed by Wilson's treatment of Lovecraft in The Strength to Dream, wrote The Mind Parasites, to expound his philosophical ideas in the guise of fiction.[citation needed]. Wilson also discusses Lovecraft in Order of Assassins (1972) and in the prefatory Note to The Philosopher's Stone (1969). His short novel The Return of the Lloigor (1969/1974) is also rooted in the Cthulhu Mythos - its central character works on the real book the Voynich Manuscript but discovers it to be a mediaevel Arabic version of the Necronomicon - as is his more recent novel The Tomb of the Old Ones (2002).

Wilson's novel, The Space Vampires, was filmed as Lifeforce, directed by Tobe Hooper,[11] which Wilson has disavowed as untrue to the spirit of his novel.

[edit] Bibliography

Note: this bibliography, while extensive, is incomplete. For a complete bibliography see Colin Stanley's Colin Wilson, the first fifty years: an existential bibliography, 1956-2005. Nottingham, UK: Paupers' Press, 2006 (ISBN 0-946650-89-6)

  • The Outsider (1956)
  • Religion and the Rebel (1957)
  • "The Frenchman" (short story, Evening Standard August 22, 1957)
  • The Age of Defeat (US title The Stature of Man) (1959)
  • Ritual in the Dark (1960)
  • Encyclopedia of Murder (with Patricia Pitman, 1961)
  • Adrift in Soho (1961)
  • "Watching the Bird" (short story, Evening News September 12, 1961)
  • "Uncle Tom and the Police Constable" (short story, Evening News October 23, 1961)
  • "He Could not Fail" (short story, Evening News December 29, 1961)
  • The Strength to Dream: Literature and the Imagination (1962)
  • "Uncle and the Lion" (short story, Evening News September 28, 1962)
  • "Hidden Bruise" (short story, Evening News December 3, 1962)
  • Origins of the Sexual Impulse (1963)
  • The World of Violence (US title The Violent World of Hugh Greene) (1963)
  • Man Without a Shadow (US title The Sex Diary of Gerard Sorme) (1963)
  • "The Wooden Cubes" (short story, Evening News June 27, 1963)
  • Rasputin and the Fall of the Romanovs (1964)
  • Brandy of the Damned (1964; later expanded and reprinted as Chords and Discords/Colin Wilson On Music)
  • Necessary Doubt (1964)
  • Beyond the Outsider (1965)
  • Eagle and Earwig (1965)
  • Sex and the Intelligent Teenager (1966)
  • Introduction to the New Existentialism (1966)
  • The Glass Cage (1966)
  • The Mind Parasites (1967)
  • Voyage to a Beginning (1969)
  • A Casebook of Murder (1969)
  • Bernard Shaw: A Reassessment (1969)
  • The Philosopher's Stone (1969) ISBN 9780213177904
  • The Return of the Lloigor (first published 1969 in the anthology Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos; revised separate edition, Village Press, London, 1974).
  • Poetry and Mysticism (1969; subsequently significantly expanded in 1970)
  • "The Return of the Lloigor" (short story in Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, edited by August Derleth, 1969; later revised and published as a separate book)
  • L'amour: The Ways of Love (1970)
  • The Strange Genius of David Lindsay (with E. H. Visiak and J.B. Pick, 1970)
  • Strindberg (1970)
  • The God of the Labyrinth (US title The Hedonists) (1970)
  • The Killer (US title Lingard) (1970)
  • The Occult: A History (1971)
  • The Black Room (1971)
  • Order of Assassins: The Psychology of Murder (1972)
  • New Pathways in Psychology: Maslow and the Post-Freudian Revolution (1972)
  • Strange Powers (1973)
  • "Tree" by Tolkien (1973)
  • Hermann Hesse (1974)
  • Wilhelm Reich (1974)
  • Jorge Luis Borges (1974)
  • Hesse-Reich-Borges: Three Essays (1974)
  • Ken Russell: A Director in Search of a Hero (1974)
  • A Book of Booze (1974)
  • The Schoolgirl Murder Case (1974)
  • The Unexplained (1975)
  • Mysterious Powers (US title They Had Strange Powers) (1975)
  • The Craft of the Novel (1975)
  • Enigmas and Mysteries (1975)
  • The Geller Phenomenon (1975)
  • The Space Vampires (1976)
  • Colin Wilson's Men of Mystery (US title Dark Dimensions) (with various authors, 1977)
  • Mysteries (1978)
  • Mysteries of the Mind (with Stuart Holroyd, 1978)
  • The Haunted Man: The Strange Genius of David Lindsay (1979)
  • "Timeslip" (short story in Aries I, edited by John Grant, 1979)
  • Science Fiction as Existentialism (1980)
  • Starseekers (1980)
  • Frankenstein's Castle: the Right Brain-Door to Wisdom (1980)
  • The Book of Time, edited by John Grant and Colin Wilson (1980)
  • The War Against Sleep: The Philosophy of Gurdjieff (1980)
  • The Directory of Possibilities, edited by Colin Wilson and John Grant (1981)
  • Poltergeist!: A Study in Destructive Haunting (1981)
  • Anti-Sartre, with an Essay on Camus (1981)
  • The Quest for Wilhelm Reich (1982)
  • The Goblin Universe (with Ted Holiday, 1982)
  • Access to Inner Worlds: The Story of Brad Absetz (1983)
  • Encyclopedia of Modern Murder, 1962-82 (1983)
  • "A Novelization of Events in the Life and Death of Grigori Efimovich Rasputin," in Tales of the Uncanny (Reader's Digest Association, 1983; an abbreviated version of the later The Magician from Siberia)
  • The Psychic Detectives: The Story of Psychometry and Paranormal Crime Detection (1984)
  • A Criminal History of Mankind (1984), revised and updated (2005)
  • Lord of the Underworld: Jung and the Twentieth Century (1984)
  • The Janus Murder Case (1984)
  • The Bicameral Critic (1985)
  • The Essential Colin Wilson (1985)
  • Rudolf Steiner: The Man and His Vision (1985)
  • Afterlife: An Investigation of the Evidence of Life After Death (1985)
  • The Personality Surgeon (1985)
  • An Encyclopedia of Scandal. Edited by Colin Wilson and Donald Seaman (1986)
  • The Book of Great Mysteries. Edited by Colin Wilson and Dr. Christopher Evans (1986)
  • An Essay on the 'New' Existentialism (1988)
  • The Laurel and Hardy Theory of Consciousness (1986)
  • Spider World: The Tower (1987)
  • Spider World: The Delta (1987)
  • Marx Refuted - The Verdict of History, edited by Colin Wilson (with contributions also) and Ronald Duncan, Bath, (UK), (1987), ISBN 0-906798-71-X
  • Aleister Crowley: The Nature of the Beast (1987)
  • The Musician as 'Outsider'. (1987)
  • The Encyclopedia of Unsolved Mysteries (with Damon Wilson, 1987)
  • Jack the Ripper: Summing Up and Verdict (with Robin Odell, 1987)
  • Autobiographical Reflections (1988)
  • The Misfits: A Study of Sexual Outsiders (1988)
  • Beyond the Occult (1988)
  • The Mammoth Book of True Crime (1988)
  • The Magician from Siberia (1988)
  • The Decline and Fall of Leftism (1989)
  • Written in Blood: A History of Forensic Detection (1989)
  • Existentially Speaking: Essays on the Philosophy of Literature (1989)
  • Serial Killers: A Study in the Psychology of Violence (1990)
  • Spider World: The Magician (1992)
  • Mozart's Journey to Prague (1992)
  • The Strange Life of P.D. Ouspensky (1993)
  • Unsolved Mysteries (with Damon Wilson, 1993)
  • Outline of the Female Outsider (1994)
  • A Plague of Murder (1995)
  • From Atlantis to the Sphinx (1996)
  • An Extraordinary Man in the Age of Pigmies: Colin Wilson on Henry Miller (1996)
  • The Atlas of Sacred Places (1997)
  • Below the Iceberg: Anti-Sartre and Other Essays (reissue with essays on postmodernism, 1998)
  • The Corpse Garden (1998)
  • The Books in My Life (1998)
  • Alien Dawn (1999)
  • The Devil's Party (US title Rogue Messiahs) (2000)
  • The Atlantis Blueprint (with Rand Flem-Ath, 2000)
  • Illustrated True Crime: A Photographic History (2002)
  • The Tomb of the Old Ones (with John Grant, 2002)
  • Spider World: Shadowlands (2002)
  • Dreaming To Some Purpose (2004)
  • Atlantis and the Kingdom of the Neanderthals (2006)
  • Crimes of Passion: The Thin Line Between Love and Hate (2006)
  • The Angry Years: The Rise and Fall of the Angry Young Men (2007)
  • Manhunters:Criminal Profilers & Their Search for the World's Most Wanted Serial Killers (2007)

Unpublished works:

  • The Anatomy of Human Greatness (non-fiction, written 1964; to be published electronically by Maurice Bassett)
  • Metamorphosis of the Vampire (fiction, written 1992-94)

[edit] Further reading

  • Bendau, Clifford C. Colin Wilson: The Outsider and Beyond (1979), San Bernardino: Borgo Press ISBN 0893702293
  • Dalgleish, Tim The Guerilla Philosopher: Colin Wilson and Existentialism (1993), Nottingham: Paupers' Press ISBN 0946650470
  • Dossor, Howard F. Colin Wilson: the man and his mind (1990) Shaftesbury, Dorset: Element Books ISBN 1852301767
  • Dossor, Howard F. The Philosophy of Colin Wilson: three perspectives (1996), Nottingham: Paupers' Press ISBN 0946650586
  • Greenwell, Tom Chepstow Road: a literary comedy in two acts (2002) Nottingham: Paupers' Press ISBN 0946650780
  • Lachman, Gary Two essays on Colin Wilson (1994), Nottingham: Paupers' Press ISBN 0946650527
  • Moorhouse, John & Newman, Paul Colin Wilson, two essays (1988), Nottingham: Paupers' Press ISBN 094665011X
  • Newman, Paul Murder as an Antidote for Boredom: the novels of Laura Del Rivo, Colin Wilson and Bill Hopkins (1996), Nottingham: Paupers' Press ISBN 0946650578
  • Robertson, Vaughan Wilson as Mystic(2001), Nottingham: Paupers' Press ISBN 0946650748
  • Salwak, Dale (ed) Interviews with Britain's Angry Young Men (1984) San Bernardino: Borgo Press ISBN 0893702595
  • Shand, John & Lachman, Gary Colin Wilson as Philosopher (1996), Nottingham: Paupers' Press ISBN 0946650594
  • Smalldon, Jeffrey Human Nature Stained: Colin Wilson and the existential study of modern murder (1991) Nottingham: Paupers'Press ISBN 0946650284
  • Spurgeon, Brad Colin Wilson: philosopher of optimism, (2006), Manchester: Michael Butterworth ISBN 095526720X
  • Stanley, Colin (ed) Colin Wilson, a celebration: essays and recollections (1988), London: Cecil Woolf ISBN 0900821914
  • Stanley, Colin Colin Wilson, the first fifty years: an existential bibliography 1956-2005 (2006) Nottingham: Paupers' Press ISBN 0946650896
  • Stanley, Colin Colin Wilson's 'Outsider Cycle': a guide for students (2009). Nottingham: Paupers' Press ISBN 0946650969
  • Stanley, Colin 'The Nature of Freedom' and other essays (1990), Nottingham: Paupers' Press ISBN 0946650179
  • Tredell, Nicolas The Novels of Colin Wilson (1982) London: Vision Press ISBN 0854780351
  • Trowell, Michael Colin Wilson, the positive approach (1990), Nottingham: Paupers' Press ISBN 094665025X
  • Weigel, John A Colin Wilson (1975) Boston: Twayne Publishers ISBN 0805715754

[edit] References

  1. ^ Colin Wilson, Dreaming to Some Purpose (Arrow, 2005)
  2. ^ Colin Wilson, Dreaming to Some Purpose (Arrow, 2005)
  3. ^ Colin Wilson, The Outsider (Victor Gollancz, 1956)
  4. ^ Kenneth Allsop, The Angry Decade; A Survey of the Cultural Revolt of the Nineteen Fifties'. London: Peter Owen Ltd.
  5. ^ Barber, Lynn. "Now they will realise that I am a genius", The Guardian, May 30, 2004. Accessed September 26, 2007.
  6. ^ Maschler, Tom (editor) (1957). 'Declaration'. London: MacGibbon and Kee. 
  7. ^ Feldman, Gene and Gartneberg, Max (editors) (1958). 'Protest: The Beat Generation and the Angry Young Men'. New York: Citadel Press. 
  8. ^ Allsop, Kenneth (1958). 'The Angry Decade; A Survey of the Cultural Revolt of the Nineteen Fifties'. London: Peter Owen Ltd. 
  9. ^ Holroyd, Stuart (1975). 'Contraries: A Personal Progression'. London: The Bodley Head Ltd. 
  10. ^ Colin Wilson, The Angry Years Robson Books, 2007
  11. ^ Mitchell, Charles P. (2001). A guide to apocalyptic cinema. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 112. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=bmmrKvOwa_IC&pg=PA112&dq=%22space+vampires%22+lifeforce. 


[edit] External links

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Persondata
NAME Wilson, Colin
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wilson, Colin Henry
SHORT DESCRIPTION British author
DATE OF BIRTH June 26, 1931
PLACE OF BIRTH Leicester, UK
DATE OF DEATH
PLACE OF DEATH
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_Wilson"
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