Colin Wilson by TEMPLAR brighton

Colin Wilson was born into a working class family in Leicester in 1931. He left school at sixteen, and it was his dream to become a scientist. For a while this appeared a possibility, but because of family commitments, he felt obliged to take a series of mundane jobs and as a consequence, the scientific dream dwindled. However, the breadth and depth of his interests kept him occupied, and he spent much of his time reading, often little known authors, such as Herman Hesse and Franz Kafka.

In 1950, after a short spell in the RAF, Colin left home. He spent some time in France and then eventually settled in London. In the following years, he was married, became a father and separated from his first wife.

On Christmas Day in 1954, Colin found himself alone in his London flat anticipating the ‘delight’ of a tin of tomatoes and some bacon for his dinner. His novel 'Ritual in the Dark' was almost complete, but finances, accommodation and employment were a constant problem for him. He didn’t have enough money to return home, and his girlfriend Joy was away with her family.

Colin was struck by the thought, that many of his literary heroes in fiction had found themselves in similar positions to that of his own dilemma, alone and struggling to stay afloat at the edge of society, it was a sink or swim situation. This observation, prompted him to embark upon a new writing project - ‘The Outsider in Literature’. He intended to focus on similar characters, people who saw 'too much and too deep', and by the end of that eventful Christmas Day, the book had been planned and the first four pages completed.

Over the next few months, Colin worked in a fit of compulsion, pulling in influences from all areas of literature, his sources included; T.E. Lawrence, Herman Hesse, Henri Barbusse, Nijinsky, Van Gogh, Ramakrishna and Bernhard Shaw. The end result was a book that read as thought the author had ‘had’ to write it, as though written in the grip of some elemental force. It hit the ground running and then… kept on running.

The start of the opening chapter reads:
At first sight, the Outsider is a social problem. He is the hole-in-corner man.

In the air, on top of a tram, a girl is sitting. Her dress lifted a little, blows out. But a block in the traffic separates us. The tramcar glides away, fading like a nightmare.

Moving in both directions, the street is full of dresses that sway, offering themselves airily, the skirts lifting; dresses that lift and yet do not lift.
In the tall and narrow shop mirror I see myself approaching, rather pale and heavy-eyed. It is not a woman I want it is all women, and I seek for them in those around me, one by one…

This passage, from Henri Barbusse’s novel L’Enfer, pinpoints crucial aspects of ‘the outsider’. As Barbusse’s hero walks down a Paris street, the desires that stir within him separate him sharply from people around him. This memorising pace is maintained for yet another 300 pages.

‘The Outsider’ has a quality that is similar in a way to many great debut albums. it says, ‘listen’. This is here! This is now! It conveys an urgency, which perhaps reflects that it was written in London, by a man who took to sleeping on Hampstead Heath, thus enabling him to be close to the British Museum reading room, where he was able to conduct his studies and research.
‘The Outsider’ was published in 1956, and Colin Wilson became famous overnight and was promoted by the media as a symbol of the post-war future for the young working-class. Along with other emerging, literary figures, he got inappropriately branded as an 'Angry Young Man'.

For at the time, those who ran the media were essentially the fickle chattering classes, not dissimilar to those who are now living in Hampstead and fraternising with the Blairs. Initially, they were all in agreement, that here was a true talent, a ‘darling’ who could be invited along to dinner parties to impress their friends. But Colin reacted against this sort of patronage, by not playing ‘the game’. When they said, 'we think you are a genius', instead of replying humbly, 'why thank you', he replied by saying, 'I know, and I don't need you to tell me that!'

The establishment that had initially welcomed him as a breath of fresh-air soon decided that he was getting to big for his working class boots. They turned on Colin with a viciousness that is normally reserved for criminals. The moronic tabloid praise, soon began to change to moronic tabloid criticism, but many of the critics who led this damnation, openly admitted that they had never even read ‘The Outsider’.

Following an incident reported in the national press, which involving Colin, his girlfriend Joy (now his wife), Joy's father and a riding whip, the couple decided to flee to Cornwall. On his departure from London, Colin’s publisher unceremoniously informed him, that he was now finished as a serious author in England.

These words of damnation had no bearing on Colin’s future literary career, for even today, Colin continues to work at a prodigious rate and now has over 100 books published to his name. He has built up a huge body of work, covering a wide variety of subjects, including further studies on ‘the outsider cycle’, criminology, occult matters, ancient civilisations, and sexual theories. Amongst his catalogue of work you will also find biographies on such figures as, Abraham Maslow, Carl Jung, Alistair Crowley, George Gurdjieff, George Bernhard Shaw and Wilhelm Reich. His fictional work includes many novels, which incorporate and exemplify his theories on the human condition. Colin is also a respected international speaker who has lectured all around the world and can often be seen contributing to programmes on both television and radio. He also contributes articles to newspapers and magazines and has a regular column in the Daily Mail. On a lighter note, he even found time in 19??, to write a drinking man’s guide called a 'Book of Booze'!

Colin and Joy continue to live in Cornwall with their menagerie of pets, and have now been together for over 50 years.



Colin Wilson’s Psychology

Throughout Colin's writing, there is a theme, and this pertains to how we live our lives and how we view the world. It can be summarised briefly as follows:

We start off as infants being amazed by the world around us and as we grow and develop, we adapt and learn how to perform tasks that initially seemed impossible to us. These actions include; walking, reading, writing or even driving a car. We learn these skills to such a level that they are usually performed unconsciously, this Colin refers to as ‘the robot'. But we pay a heavy price for this faculty.

As well as allowing these essential tasks to be performed by ‘the robot’, we also permit it to govern our daily perceptions, and as a consequence, we lose the amazement we initially experienced as novices. As long as we feel comfortable, we let experience drift past and then we complain that we are 'bored', but we don't know why. It's only when we are challenged, that we begin to realise the fallacy of our ordinary lives. When we are confronted with a fight for survival, we realise that our ordinary life is not ‘boring’ after all - it is of course full of endless possibilities.

We experience this is a minor way when we are nervous or in a situation such as attending a job interview. In times of crisis, ‘the robot’ will no longer come to our aid, and functions such as trying to talk, think, and pour a drink all become very difficult and we begin to feel self-conscious. But this experience also tends to make us feel 'more alive', and if we return to work, or drive home afterward we find it difficult to settle down and to let ‘the robot’ regain control.

Another example can be experienced at Stonehenge. Tourists get bussed in and often complain that it is so small, and can't understand why it is perceived as being so important. Yet another visitor may walk for a day along an ancient track-way and arrive at the same site with a totally different perception of the monument. Having prepared themselves by gaining knowledge of the area and studying and observing the prehistoric landscape, when they arrive they will experience the place as being vast and they will feel they will never have enough time to observe all of the detail before them.

Colin would say that the second visitor's experience is unique, because they have 'made the effort'. This also applies to all experience, we feel 'bored' because we sink into a negative state of mind and then convince ourselves we are philosophically right to feel that way. But if we make the effort we can transcend and over-ride this pessimism.

What Colin is suggesting, is that it doesn't need a huge effort to change our experience completely, we just need to be aware of the process, and then respond accordingly.

This is the theme that runs through all of Colin's books, whether it is a science-fiction work such as 'The Mind Parasites', or a non-fiction study such as ‘Mysteries’. We are grateful that Colin has covered such a wide subject area over considerable span of time, because it presents us with such a coherent and well-developed analysis of the human condition.

Although Colin has continued to receive a mixed reception in England, he has found that readers abroad have a far less prejudiced attitude to his work. He has been acknowledged as an important writer in many countries, attracting fans as far removed as Groucho Marx and Colonel Gaddaffi.


Colin and 'the sons of t.c-lethbridge'

In the autumn of 1995, Tekh and myself found ourselves sitting in the 'Green Inn' in the village of Week St Mary, Cornwall. Since embarking upon visits to prehistoric sites in the late 1980's, we had always been fascinated by ways of perceiving and somehow, ‘capturing’ the monuments that we visited. Our discussions that day at ‘The Green Inn’ led us to formulate the conundrum; how do we merge a physical landscape into a mental one, enabling us to create ‘an understanding’? [This as we all know was one of Lethbridge preoccupations].

Prior to our discussions in Cornwall, we had stumbled upon a book by the author and philosopher Colin Wilson, who had tackled this dilemma in a fascinating way. In his novel ‘The Philosopher’s Stone’, the hero undergoes a brain operation that enables him to develop the capacity to not only to 'see' into the past, but also to be able to perceive and understand in an instant, the meanings and riddles of existence. By using this book as a starting point, we decided to work our way through as many of Colin’s books as we could find.

I knew that Tekh’s friend Julian Cope, also cited Colin Wilson’s as a major influence on his work, and so I decided that I would write to Colin, with the intention of arranging a meeting.

I wrote the letter and within a matter of days, I received a telephone message from Colin, inviting us down to his home in Gorran Haven. Within a matter of weeks Tekh and myself took a drive down to Cornwall and arriving in Gorran Haven, we pitched our tent on the cliff-top, campsite and walked down to Colin’s house. Colin and his wife Joy, made us feel very welcome and after a wonderful evening, we found ourselves back at our campsite, fuelled with ideas, good food and fine wine!

Since that inaugural meeting, we have continued to visit Colin and Joy on a regular basis and throughout, the conversations have always remained stimulating, thought provoking and have frequently focussed upon the work and ideas of TC Lethbridge.

Joy, Colin's wife, is a historical expert in her own right, and was responsible for drawing Colin’s attention towards Lethbridge’s unique body of work. When Colin discovered that Tom Lethbridge lived in Branscombe in Devon, not too far away from Gorran Haven, he decided to make contact with him, and sent him a copy of his recently published work ‘The Occult’ (Hodder and Stoughton. 1971). Colin received a reply, from Branscome, but sadly it was not the response that he had expected. He received a letter from Tom’s wife Mina, informing him that her husband had recently died. Colin regretted not having ‘discovered’ Lethbridge much earlier, for he believed that he was a key figure in the world of the paranormal, and his contribution to psychical research was enormous and therefore needed acknowledging.

Colin established a correspondence with Tom's widow Mina, and as a consequence of this relationship, the work and ideas of T.C. Lethbridge featured heavily in Colin's next major work - 'Mysteries' (Hodder and Stoughton. 1978). This was the book that not only introduced, welbourn TEKH, Julian Cope, and myself to the works of T C Lethbridge, but many others.

When we eventually asked Colin, to contribute spoken word and essay to a proposed T.C. Lethbridge project, Colin was enthusiastic, and as always, was generous with his time, ideas and hospitality.

For those who would like to know more about Colin Wilson, John Morgan’s ‘Colin Wilson’ page is a good starting point.
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jbmorgan/cwilson.html

Also, Paul Newman’s Abraxas website is dedicated to all things ‘Wilsonian’, and more besides…
http://www.stormloader.com/users/abrax7/abraxas.htm

http://www.colinwilsonworld.co.uk

TEMPLAR brighton – Hanwell – December 2003