Download The Outsider fb2, epub

by COLIN WILSON

ISBN: 0330230018
Author: COLIN WILSON
Language: English
Publisher: Pan Books; New Impression edition (1970)
Pages: 336
Category: Psychology & Counseling
Subcategory: Health
Rating: 4.1
Votes: 167
Size Fb2: 1744 kb
Size ePub: 1564 kb
Size Djvu: 1381 kb
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COLIN WILSON Psychology and Counseling English

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The Outsider is a 1956 book by English writer Colin Wilson

The OUTSIDER, first published in 1956 when Colin Wilson was only twenty-four, is a prophetic book as well as a literary tour de force.

The OUTSIDER, first published in 1956 when Colin Wilson was only twenty-four, is a prophetic book as well as a literary tour de force. By tracing, analyzing and giving a context to the disaffection and struggle of creative thinkers from William Blake to Ernest Hemingway, Wilson anticipated many developments of the 1960s and 1970s. The trajectory of Outsider consciousness led naturally to the rising interest in Eastern philosophy, the human potential movement, and the proliferation of techniques designed to help individuals transcend a sense of alienation from self and society.

FREE shipping on qualifying offers. The seminal work on alienation, creativity, and the modern mind-set. a real contribution to our understanding of our deepest predicament.

About Colin Wilson: Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database. Wilson's works after The Outsider focused on positive aspects of human psychology, such as peak experiences and the narrowness of consciousness.

The first book in the Outsider cycle by Wilson, intended to outline his concept of the New Existentialism (the idea which underlies all of his work), and probably still his most famous work. Probably also the best starting place. It has been translated into Spanish, French, German, Italian, Finnish, Japanese, Korean, Arabic, Dutch, Norwegian, Polish, Chinese and Swedish. 2. Religion and the Rebel. The second book in the Outsider cycle. Translated into Arabic and Japanese. 3. The Age of Defeat (US: The Stature of Man).

And so we might speak of a ‘pain threshold’, a Year threshold’, a ‘misery threshold’, and find it quickly overpassed by the consciousness of some individuals, but lying too high in others to be often reached by their consciousness.

The Outsider hardly seemed to be the stuff of even modest success

The Outsider hardly seemed to be the stuff of even modest success. It was a bizarre concoction of philosophy and literary criticism, purporting to be about existentialism, and packed full of quotes and references to Sartre, Heidegger, Kierkegaard, Gurdjieff. As for Wilson himself, his eviction to the literary wilderness in 1957 proved to be irrevocable.

work, and Colin Wilson’s landmark book encapsulated a character found time and time again: the outsider. A fascinating study blending philosophy, psychology, and literature, Wilson’s seminal work is a must-have for those who are fascinated by the character of the outsider.

Authors like Sartre, Kafka, Hemingway, and Dostoyevsky, as well as artists like Van Gogh and Nijinsky, delved for a deeper understanding of the human condition in their work, and Colin Wilson’s landmark book encapsulated a character found time and time again: the outsider. Luminously intelligent.

He wrote of Mr. Colin Wilson’s remarkable book in the Sunday Times: Bubble of the year: The Outsider (Gollancz), in which an earnest young . Otherwise Mr. Wilson’s book had a very great success, and well deserved it. Colin Wilson’s remarkable book in the Sunday Times: Bubble of the year: The Outsider (Gollancz), in which an earnest young man imparts his discovery to the world that genius is prone to Weltschmerz

Comments:

Bloodfire

Wilson's first book, written as a young man in 1956, was a survey of the New Existentialism. Written just ahead of the revolutionary period of the 1960s, it perfectly sums up how sensitive and intelligent people often feel trying to cope with the modern world. Some quotes:

"This is the sense of unreality, that can strike out a perfectly clear day. Good health and strong nerves can make it unlikely; but that may be only because the man in good health is thinking about other things and doesn't look in the direction where the uncertainty lies. And once a man has seen it, the world can never afterwards be quite the same straightforward place. Barbusse has shown us that the Outsider is a man who cannot live in the comfortable, insulated world of the bourgeois, accepting what he sees and touches as reality. `He sees too deep and too much,' and what he sees is essentially chaos."

"His case, in fact, is that he is the one man who knows he is sick in a civilization that doesn't know it is sick. Certain Outsiders we shall consider later would go even further and declare that it is human nature that is sick, and the Outsider is the man who faces that unpleasant fact."

Malanim

for anyone who has an interest in philosophy, religion, poetry, art, books or in general, the "meaning " of life. As someone who's struggled for decades to find a " path" in life that wasn't just based on some mundane, menial job or work schedule I found a lot of kindred spirits in this book. I wish I had read it years ago. I doubt I'm destined for anything great in the world but for some reason this book has sparked a sense of hope for me…

Dyni

It’s very rare that I can’t finish a book. But I only made it through about 100 pages on this one. The subject matter is just too arcane.

This book might be of great interest to somebody majoring in comparative literature or with an academic interest in western literature. But the theme of trying to define a so-called "outsider" by using a large number of varied literary characters seems to be a stretch to me. Colin Wilson is basically taking all these literary figures and weaving them together to define something that he calls “an outsider.“ I’m not sure if the authors that created these characters had the intention of creating an "outsider" at all. I guess each has a disaffection of some sort, but that is the only common denominatior I see. And, in my mind anything that takes that many pages to define is an abstract notion at best. The more Wilson attempts to define "outsider," the less I seem understand it.

It’s been a very tedious project making it as far as I did, but my hat is off to those of you academic smarty-pants that made it all the way through and appreciate this. I’m astonished that this had critical acclaim at one point, because to me it’s been a brutal slog through a rarified, or maybe even alien, inhospitable environment. I am, however, very interested in several other books written by Colin Wilson and I look forward to reading them.

Hra

The Outsider remains-- after more than a half-century-- an illuminating and a riveting perception of a new reality. I remember reading it after a spellbinding lecture by the young Colin Wilson at my university in New Mexico in the mid 1960's. For myself as a young person, The Outsider was visionary and life-changing....Now, I have offered a copy to my own grandson, who found its ideas equally mind-opening and thrilling..Colin Wilson was one of the 20th Century's most important thinkers.

TheJonnyTest

This is a classic by the recently deceased Wilson. He was an avid researcher, insightful writer and all-around great guy (he even answered a couple emails I sent him several years ago). If I were a college lit dept head, this would be on every freshman's required reading list.

Dominator

One of the best books to analyze the archetype (in Jungian terms) of the "Outsider" and written about in literature. If you feel you are the creative type, love literature, or are "an outsider" you would likely enjoy this insightful literary analysis.

Tetaian

I can be pompous and tiresome in some parts but has some interest. He finds people to be outsiders without much explanation such as Henry James. He spends much time on Hemmingway as an outsider but I disagree. There is food for thought in this book but remember it was written a long time ago by a young man..james e vigiletti

The number of stars one might give this book probably correlates with how likely one IS one - (an Outsider). I'm not sure that the exposition is helpful to one who so suffers, but it helps one understand the position in context of its various expressions. It also could make a nice prelude to a study of Dabrowski's Theory of Positive Disintegration - which offers succor to the situation. Neither seems to address the merely quantitative (statistical rarity) factor in the isolation of the odd; both take the qualitative tack - which is, after all, the part that matters.