Buy
this book at Amazon.com or try
Amazon.co.uk in England,
Amazon.ca in Canada,
Amazon.de in Germany,
Amazon.fr in France. ASIN=0874772060, Category: Philosopy, Language: E, cover: ???, pages: 1856(In England please order the
UK-edition of The Outsider.)
This was the author's first book, which he published in 1956 at age 24
and it was translated in more than 20 languages. He wrote more than
100 other books since todate; many of them fictions.
a quote from colin wilson "outsider" 1954, page 4/5:
"... the inability to grasp the essence of sexuality becomes the symbol of our
inability to grasp the essence of anything important - of Autumn, of water ...
This, it seemed to me, is the basic difference between
human beings. Some are perfectly satisfied with what they have;
they eat, drink, imgregnate their wives, and take life as it comes.
Others can never forget that they are being cheated; that life tempts
them to struggle by offering them the essence of sex, of beauty,
of success; and that she always seems to pay with counterfeit money."
What Colin thinks was the Blakeian view (p240):
"Harmony is an ultimate aim, but not the primary aim, of life;
the primary aim is to live more abundantly at any cost.
Harmony can come later. heaven-after-death is irrelevant.
the way lies forward, into more life. Ever further into guilt,
ever deeper into human life, exile, purgation.
Life itself is an exile. The way home is not the way back."
"Heaven-after-death is irrelevant", but that said epicur
already 2000 years before Blake.
"We waste too much time with getting and spending"
"Most people are not living. they are only drifting."
There is a recent interview with Colin Wilson
www-personal.umich.edu/~jbmorgan/wilsonat70.htm
and a postscript to the Asean edition of "the Outsider" available at
www-personal.umich.edu/~jbmorgan/postscripts.htm
Colin Wilson bibliography with short description of each book:
www-personal.umich.edu/~jbmorgan/cwbib.html
The Colin Wilson page by Geoff Ward
www-personal.umich.edu/~jbmorgan/cwilson.html
contains more links.