"stefp_uk" closed his(?) message thus:
..<br><br>&gt;I'm currently reading 'Alien Dawn'. <br><br>Thanks
"stefp", you give me an opportunity to talk about the
"Alien Dawn". <br><br>Compared to ordinary (!) mysteries
the UFO-related ones seem to defy all reason. In "The
Occult", "Afterlife" and about Uri Geller, Wilson sounded
quite sure about the (objective) reality behind the
various phenomena, but in AD he is isn't nor is he about
the subjective one and tries an allegedly third
approach, but before turning to John (howardlester)Morgan's
review one more observation. <br><br>It shines through
that Wilson has great sympathy for UFO research and
that he is convinced that the various witnesses are
honest and in this I recognize the eternal Wilson quest
for the extraordinary that will tear us away from the
worm's eye view on existence. He says something to the
effect that if there is a grain of truth in the UFO
reports there is something wrong with the present world
view. But then what is the present world view? John M
writes:<br><br>&gt;Since Descartes, it has been posited that the &gt;world
and the mind are completely separate, and &gt;that we
can only know reality through the &gt;deductive laws
of science .....etc.<br><br>(I can't reproduce it
all because the robot constantly find me too
wordy)<br><br>I agree with this. The the mind/world (aka
mind/matter) division may have roots much earlier than
Descartes, but it came to a head with him. Now, ever since
Descartes all effort seems to have been concentrated on
disproving Descartes, the arguments have been either the
"idealist" that everything is (in the) mind) or the
"materialist" (that mind a byproduct of matter when it gets
complex enough), and Western philosophy has seesawed
between those two alternatives ever since. Yet, despise
strong arguments for either case the mind/matter (or
more correctly: subject/object) dualism lives on
undisturbed of claims of unification and to me Wilson's
"third" looks merely like another turn of the subjective
screw. <br><br>Looks, that is, but Wilson obviously puts
something more into the "consciousness" term than the usual
(Cartesian) ...subjective perception of an objective reality.
John M says that the (third) approach is that both
these realities (ie. nuances of our psyche and
objective reality) are different levels on the ladder of
consciousness, and continues:<br><br>&gt;In an original use of
Jung, Wilson believes that &gt;these entities originate
from the collective &gt;unconscious – but, rather than
coming from &gt;within oneself, Wilson contends that
this space &gt;is actually a separate reality of some
sort ..<br>....<br>&gt;On this point, Wilson remains
somewhat vague – &gt;although, to be fair, he has little
choice, &gt;since he ends up grappling with the same
&gt;problems that physicists such as David Bohm have
&gt;addressed but left unsolved<br><br>Somewhat vague yes,
because "within oneself" sounds subjective and thus
different from "a separate reality" which sounds objective,
but highly interesting nevertheless. Mark (cobblepot)
Brown reminded me of my once telling him to study
Robert M. Pirsig. It must have been because IMO CW's
ladder of selves is within an hair's breadth of Pirsig's
Quality Metaphysics. However, even if CW often speaks of
"deeper levels" he fails to start deep enough, RMP does,
but fails to catch the imagination like Wilson. But
more about this later on. <br>Sincerely<br>Bo

I would agree that you don't meet Wilson readers
every day. I still experience a childlike thrill
whenever I do encounter one. As for the uninitiated, I
have introduced a fair few to Wilson's work over the
years.<br>I seem to remember Wilson commenting on a society
of his readers formed in the sixties, he assumed
that being 'outsider' types they had soon
fragmented!<br>However, it's good to see a site for fellow enthusiasts -
my reading is wide ranging but I never seem to go
too long before returning to Wilson. I'm currently
reading 'Alien Dawn'.

Hi Colin Wilson discussers, Irena Noel
particularly.<br> <br>Perhaps I managed to make my "Alien Dawn"
piece sound like a major work regarding UFOs, but is
merely a tribute to Wilson for his will to (try to) gome
to grips with this baffling phenomenon .... however
I will not enter that field yet, rather take up
something that many has commented on, namely Wilson's view
on sex and gender. For instance Irena Noel who
wrote:<br><br>(quote)I don't think that you can generalize any longer
that women don't read Colin Wilson. His
worunfortunately) just isn't well known to people in general. He's
my favorite author, & has definitely influenced my
way of thinking more than anyone else, but I
absolutely never meet anyone who has heard of
him.(unquote)<br><br>Thanks for an interesting message Irena. I generally
agree with you, will just elaborate on some points (I
was asked by the "robot" to shorten my message so I
will not reproduce the rest of your message, but you
will know what you wrote). <br><br>I don't think there
are authors that everyone (globally) have heard about
- not even in the golden pre-TV age, I have a tape
in which Wilson tells about a Japanese fan who said
to him that he must be as popular as Dickens.
Something Wilson denies, but then were Dickens known , even
all over the British Isles in his days? I doubt it.
<br><br>I am 65 and thus of the same era as Wilson, but to
tell the truth, the sex of his writings wasn't the
least arousing even then (I know that this is not your
point but let me ramble on) and I never read them for
THAT purpose, if anything all his talk about mystical
insights during orgasms were completely off-putting for
this person - and yet I just digged Wilson because I
understood it was to demonstrate his ideas which I found
valid. <br><br>Yes we were pretty oldfashioned in the
fifties, the physics of sex has obviously a major cultural
factor (hardly a great discovery): what
shocks/arouses/revolts is changing along with cultural changes, but it
is irrelevant for Wilson's point which is mind's
power over matter, and for him -then - the closest
"item" was sex: f.ex. that a sexually satiated person
can be aroused by the sight of his special fetish. I
think his argument was that an animal would be
incapable of such a "feat" and I agreed with him then, but
now (in 2001) I don't think sight has any special
mindish quality. Smell would certainly arouse a dog and
hormones directly injected into our veins would do the
same trick. <br><br>No Wilson doesn't use male) sex as
a demonstration (as much) any longer, but he
continually pursues the mind-over-matter idea in other
guises. <br><br>I wrote about my re-reading of "The Glass
Cage", but I do know the said titles and I can't say I
ever found a Wilson book not worth reading. Think I
will have another go at "The World of Violence" after
the "Cage". Strangely no-one has spoken about "The
Outsider" a book I had an intense relationship to in its
time and equally great expectations for the next one
which proved to be a novel - the "Ritual...". I had to
make some adjustments getting used to the novelist
Wilson, but it was no disappointment..not at all.<br>Bo

The surname is Brown, Bo, but you were close.  I'd love to see your piece on
"Alien Dawn."  It struck me that Wilson was moving somewhere near Terence
McKenna's work in that one.<br><br>Mark

I think "The Philosopher's Stone" is a good
start. I haven't yet read all of Wilson's novels, but
thus far that one's my favorite. I think it's also
useful as a record of the thought processes that led
Wilson from his earlier, philosophical concerns into his
later mystical standpoint. It should help to show the
connection between the two, a frequent topic of concern for
long-time Wilson readers! The intellectual journey Howard
Lester makes in that novel, I believe, reflects the
transition that Wilson himself underwent during the 1960s.

Thanks for the welcome Mark (is it Brooks, Butler
or?) pleased to meet an acquaintance from the "Lila
Squad" here. I left the Pirsig forum a while ago (from
sheer exhaustion), to recuperate I started to read the
old Wilson novels which give me such good vibrations
....but couldn't resist dropping a message! As told I
wrote a long piece about the "Alien Dawn", but dropped
it as an opener. However, Wison's will to come to
grips with the UFO phenomenon impressed me greatly.
Hope we will be able to delve into it by and by.<br>Bo

Obviously this was the perfect place to ask for
recommendations re: Wilson's novels. I appreciate <br>all the
suggestions/descriptions that have been appearing. The Philospher's Stone
seems to be on everybody's list. Hopefully I can find a
copy.<br><br>Irena

Mr. Skutvik<br><br>I remember your posts from the
other group, and a brief discussion we had about them
in e-mail. You sent me scurrying to reread Zen and
the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, and to read
Pirsig's follow-up, Lila, for the first time and to
reassess them in relation to Wilson's
work.<br><br>Welcome.<br><br>Mark

<<In which book does Wilson write about
Charlotte Bach? It was amusing to realise that when he
first wrote about her, he didn't know that she was a
cross-dresser - but from the beginning, he liked her and
thought she was brilliant&gt;&gt;<br><br>I may be
mistaken, but I think Wilson discusses Charlotte Bach most
completely in The Misfits.<br><br>Mark

My own favorites would be, in no particular
order, Necessary Doubt (which is the one I've been most
successful at recommending), The Mind Parasites, Black Room,
and The Philosopher's Stone.<br><br>Mark

I'm sure The Power of the Pendulum is still
obtainable in Britain. Have a look at the Internet Bookshop
site - Pendulum is listed under the Arkana imprint, I
believe, and the only Lethbridge still in print.

Apropos Wilson's novels, Adrift in Soho is a
highly amusing portrait of London and its late 50s Boho
subculture; The Philosopher's Stone is a classic, typically
Wilsonian fable of heightened consciousness; and The God of
the Labyrinth, full of Crowleyan sex magick and (not
necessarily unintentionally) comic perversion, and featuring
some of the most interesting female characters in
Wilson, is a perennial favourite of mine.

<<I'm more than qualified to answer that
question, Mark: after all, I'm slogging my way through
Atlas Shrugged at the moment - a book which I picked up
under the influence of Wilson.&gt;&gt;<br><br>Thanks,
Rupert. I was glad to hear from you, although Howard
Dossor beat you by about an hour.<br><br>Still, you gave
me more in depth information than he did, and I
appreciate that. Strangely, enough, the version of the story
told by the Barbara Branden isn't very flattering to
Rand, either. And Robert Anton Wilson tells a similar
anecdote about meeting Rand in one of his
books.<br><br>I've been rereading a bit of Rand lately, and thinking
about both the differences and similarities between her
philosophy and Wilson's. Although Rand would've sneered at
Wilson's non-rational or mystical aspects, she is one of
the few writers I can think of who is as dedicated to
the individual's stature as he is.<br><br>Oddly
enough, I walked into my new bosses office today, and she
had "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead" displayed
on her desk. Turns out she's a huge Rand
fan.<br><br>Mark

Greetings all and thank you for your interesting
comments on women and Wilson. I have been imbibing
Wilson's work and ideas for more than twenty years. How I
discovered him might make an interesting anecdote: at the
time, I had a boyfriend who had been named Colin
because his mother was a Wilson reader of long standing,
although she died around the time I met her son. Her copy
of The Outsider was the first Wilson piece I ever
read. The book was subsequently given to me and I still
have it. So I owe my acquaintance with Wilson to
another female reader, a woman who read him in the 50s
and 60s.<br><br>The novels seem to elicit a somewhat
mixed reaction from women, which makes me smile quietly
to myself, because I think the last thing Wilson had
on his mind when he wrote them in the 50s and 60s
was proto-Feminist sexual politics. I don't believe
Feminism has any bearing whatsoever on what goes on
between people behind closed doors, in the bedroom. But
then why fix what might not necessarily be broke? The
inequities existed around board room tables, not between
sheets. Since Wilson writes about what goes on in
bedrooms, not what goes on around board room tables, only
the woman who thinks sex is a Feminist issue could
possibly find a foothold for political objection to his
work.<br><br>Wilson presents a subtle and largely illusory dichotomy
between the socio-sexual motivations of his male and
female characters. His women, even when they appear
markedly un-neurotic about sex, still want domestic
security and his men, whether we're talking about Damon
Reade, who seems just a tad puritanical, or the
delightfully gloating Kit Butler, want something similar - but
domestic security is the end of the line for the women,
whereas to the men, it is something to be achieved then
transcended, a step on the way up the Maslovian ladder.
<br><br>Now we all know things aren't really like this. In
reality, there exist both men and women who would fit
either type, and who might fit both types at different
times in their lives. <br><br>Wilson wrote male
characters, because he himself is male and he wrote about
sex, so he needed female characters, but he did not
project his ideas into their heads as completely as he
did with his male characters. And there seems to be a
tongue-in-cheek factor involved, too. Take for example Sonia
Neilsen, from The Black Room. She's a scientist who reads
Greek, and who remains sexually vague in relation to the
male characters. We discover later that she is a
lesbian spy! Yet there are other rather down-to-earth
female characters in that book, and there have been
others who exhibit a hint of Masochism, and yet others
who seem entirely overpowering...<br><br>It seems to
me that Wilson has covered the field quite
satisfactorily in terms of his female characters, and it does
not surprise me in the slightest that he creates male
vehicles for his ideas, since he (and his mind) are male.
Never at any point did I find his novels sexist. I
think they are an amusing, wholly delightful way to
absorb his ideas. <br><br>However, he has never created
a female character type that I could wholly
identify with and he probably never will, but then how
many male readers see themselves in Damon reade or
Howard Lester? These novels are fun and they carry
Wilson's ideas, but he is not into penetrating and
portraying the vagaries of the human psyche like Joyce, but
then neither is he into ignoring it, like Ian
Fleming.<br><br>In which book does Wilson write about Charlotte
Bach? It was amusing to realise that when he first
wrote about her, he didn't know that she was a
cross-dresser - but from the beginning, he liked her and
thought she was brilliant.

Hi all Colin Wilson readers.<br>Pleased to see
the CW discussion in a new and automated form. I had
a few entries on the old one (more than two years
ago I believe) where I told about my relationship
with Wilson’s work which started after I had found his
“Outsider”. Being not much younger than the author himself
this was around 1960 and after that I avidly waited
for and read everything he wrote up through the years
until the late seventies when I for some reason left
him. In the nineties, however, I took him up again and
catched up on the things I had missed. Of late I have
read the “Atlantis” series and “Alien Dawn”, and I
thought about commenting the last one - and John Morgan's
splendid review of it. However, it grew into a major essay
so I’ll let that wait and rather follow up on what
Rupert wrote. He said: <br><br>&gt; “I'm biased here: I
think all of Wilson's novels are good except
for<br>&gt; The Schoolgirl Murder Case, which was a hack job
(originally a script<br>&gt; written for the pilot of a
twelve-part TV series). The novels I would<br>&gt; recommend
to any newcomer would be those of the Gerard Sorme
trilogy:<br>&gt; Ritual in the Dark (1960), Man without a shadow
(1963) and The God of<br>&gt; the Labyrinth
(1970)(called The Hedonists in the American edition)”.
<br><br>Biased! Me too. I have a nostalgic relationship to his
early novels, they remind me about the time when I
first read them, so whenever I open “Ritual in the
Dark”, “Adrift in Soho”or “The Glass Cage” etc I am
transported back to the time they were new. For some reason
it is those “London” novels that moves me the most.
I also like “Ritual..”, but but will ramble on a
little about “The Glass Cage” which I am reading right
now ...for the nth time. <br><br>Already the opening
scene with the Blake scholar Damon Reade walking home
from Keswick to his cottage in the Lake District
touches a Wilson theme. He has at many occasions spoken
about his childhood longing for withdrawal - living in
a cage or in an attic - and this is obviously his
dream lived out through the said character. But Reade
is no true recluse and the solitude also unnerves
him so after the policeman has told about the London
murders he has a bout of depression and returns to
Keswick and his antiquarian friend and niece, and the
usual Wilson romance starts to unfold. A small dose of
the occult also occurs when Reade tries to get the
clairvoyant hermit to “see” who the Blake-scribbling murderer
is. He then travels to London and meets Kit Butler -
also one of the standard figures of the early novels.
Like James of “Adrift..” he is the contrast to the
bookish hero; a man of great wit and charm - even
knowledge of books and authors, but without true
intellectual qualities, Butler not as accentuated as James of
“Adrift..” and Monty of “Violence”, the type must have been
one that Wilson admired and despised at the same time
...at that time. He then finds lodgings in a place that
reminds me of the artist community in the last part of
“Adrift..”, a kind of habitation that Colin Wilson also must
have had a love/hate relationship with in those days.
This is as far as I have come in my reading, I do of
course know the general outcome, but still like to
re-read it. Speaking of “Adrift..” it disappointed me a
little to learn (through an interview with Paul Newman
of “Abraxas”) that it was not his original
manuscript, but one he got from another. I had always thought
it so arch-wilsonian and I (almost) still refuse to
believe it, at least it must be heavily adapted by
Wilson: The navvy job, the Air Force expulsion, the
London experience..etc. Has anyone of you readers
comments to this information? <br><br>OK, this is too long
already. All the entries this far has been interesting.
Keep reading and writing. <br><br>Bo Skutvik <br>Bodö,
Norway

I'm more than qualified to answer that question,
Mark: after all, I'm slogging my way through Atlas
Shrugged at the moment - a book which I picked up under
the influence of Wilson. <br><br>Yes, the only time
Wilson does mention Rand is in Eagle and Earwig. He
devotes an entire chapter to her, going into that
anecdote you mentioned in depth (Rand and her minders come
off badly in the story, which is very funny) and
analysing her fiction, including Atlas Shrugged and We the
Living. <br><br>Eagle- is a hard book to get: it went out
of print long ago. I managed to find a copy through
my university. I would say to anyone, do what you
can to find it and read it, it's well worth it. Scour
the public libraries, the university libraries... The
book contains essays on David Lindsay, Henry
Williamson, John Cowper Powys and Ernest Hemingway, plus some
essays on existential criticism. You won't find much
here (except for the piece on Rand), that you won't
find in his other books of criticism but the book is
still worth reading. <br><br>I was fascinated by
Wilson's profile of Rand. What's this? An author who has
devoted her work to writing intense blockbusters on the
battle between individualism and socialism? That's the
great political conflict of our times, surely? Even
now, when reading Atlas-, I'm amazed that someone has
written a novel, and such an intense and intelligent one
too, on that subject. <br><br>At the time of writing
that essay Wilson was an avowed socialist, and a
Labour Party voter. He threw up a few typical socialist
arguments against Rand (plus some non-political ones).
After Eagle-, he said he was deconverted from socialism
after writing his biography on Bernard Shaw. He swerved
sharply to the right, dropping Labour by the late
seventies (during the infamous 'Winter of Discontent'
period of British politics) and voting for Thatcher. He
explains his shift in views in the anthology Marx Refuted,
an anti-communist classic. <br><br>I wrote to him
about his support for Thatcher: he told me he became
disillusioned with her around the time of the Poll Tax fiasco,
and wrote a scathing essay in a book called Dear
Prime Minister (an anti-Thatcher compilation) which I
haven't read. <br><br>The funny thing was, he started off
by disagreeing with Rand on politics (among other
things) but moved closer to Rand's views late in life.
<br><br>Rupert.

In Barbara Branden's bio of Ayn Rand, there is a
section where she is discussing Rand's lack of
willingness to talk to people who disagree with her.
Apparently Nathaniel Branden (who Wilson has spoken highly
of) was given the job of turning away letters from
these people. Wilson wrote Rand, seeing some similarity
between some of their ideas, but outlining differences
between them as well. Branden turned him away, but Wilson
apparently persisted for some time before giving
up.<br><br>Now, my question is: Is anyone aware of any place in
Wilson's writing where he discusses Rand and her
philosophy? I've read nearly all of Wilson's books, but I
haven't run across anything yet. I would suspect that
something might be in Eagle and Earwig, which I don't have,
but that's just a guess.<br><br>Thanks,<br>Mark

Colin Wilson's new book is due out this week in
the U.S. (having already been released in the U.K.
last October) - "The Atlantis Blueprint," which he
co-wrote with Rand Flem-Ath, author of "When the Sky
Fell." This is a continuation of both Rand's work, which
supplemented Charles Hapgood's earlier theory that Antarctica
was Atlantis, and Wilson's own 1996 book "From
Atlantis to the Sphinx," in which Colin presented evidence
for a much longer view of the time-line of human
civilization, and a rethink of our view of the development of
consciousness. The new book goes much further in detailing
Wilson's belief that there is a code gradually being
discovered in the ancient myths and even in the structure of
the world's sacred sites, providing further evidence
for a system of knowledge originating from a highly
advanced seafaring culture which flourished long before
the commonly accepted date of the origins of
civilization. I consider Colin's Atlantis work to be the most
exciting new material he has worked with in quite some
time. There's more information at my Web site (see the
links), and I'll be posting my review of "Atlantis
Blueprint" there shortly.

>(Although women don't usually go in for books
on &gt;murder). <br><br>First off, I'd like to say
I'm glad to have found this forum, having spent a
good deal of the last 30 years looking for people to
discuss Wilson with. John, you've done a great job with
your site, and I'm pleased to see that you're finally
updating it.<br><br>As far as the above quote goes, I work
for one of the large bookstore chains, and I will say
that in my experience, many more books on murder are
purchased by women (mostly housewives) than are purchased
by men, perhaps by a ratio as high as 75% to
25%.<br><br>Mark

Obviously I can't speak of Wilson's appeal to
female readers, but I can vouch for the fact that, since
I first set up my Wilson site in 1996, I've heard
from several highly enthusiastic female readers of his
books, and of all ages. In fact, one such woman has told
me of her desire to write a feminist version of "The
Outsider." As others have pointed out, Wilson tends to be
rather conservative in his attitude toward women in his
writing, although considering that he was born and raised
during a much more conservative era than our own, we
shouldn't be too hard on him. Wilson himself has more
recently recognized this deficiency in his work. Wilson
composed an outline for a book, "Outline of the Female
Outsider," which he never completed, but which is available
as a pamphlet from Paupers' Press (see the links).
In it, Wilson acknowledges the fact that women are
shortchanged in his works, and explains it as a result of the
times in which he was writing, and proceeds to describe
how such a book might be written. I highly recommend
this pamphlet to all who are interested in the
relationship of Wilson's ideas to gender.

The Gerard Sorme trilogy is certainly among
Wilson's best work, as somebody else already mentioned.
But for me, Wilson's best novel would probably be
"The Philosopher's Stone." Wilson wrote it while he
was right on the cusp between his earlier
philosophical books and his later books on mysticism, and the
book is a wonderful blend of the two. I don't know
that you will necessarily find any new ideas here, if
you've already read a lot of his non-fiction, but that
is not what Wilson is trying to do. As he says in
"Craft of the Novel" and elsewhere, he considers
"existential" fiction to be a demonstration of the writer's
ideas as played out in the "real" world. So in his
novels Wilson isn't necessarily trying to say anything
new, but rather he is attempting to show his ideas at
play in the lives of his characters.

>I would like to know which novels the members
here consider worth reading. The two that I read were
The Space Vampires and The Mind Parasites.
Irena<br><br>I'm biased here: I think all of Wilson's novels are
good except for The Schoolgirl Murder Case, which was
a hack job (originally a script written for the
pilot of a twelve-part TV series). <br><br>The novels I
would recommend to any newcomer would be those of the
Gerard Sorme trilogy: Ritual in the Dark (1960), Man
without a shadow (1963) and The God of the Labyrinth
(1970)(called The Hedonists in the American edition).
<br><br>Ritual- is Wilson's first novel and the one which delves
into his early obsession with Jack the Ripper. The
hero, Gerard Sorme, a young aspiring writer, is Wilson,
down to the glasses, the turtle-necked jumper, the
duffle-coat, the bicycle, etc. The novel attempts to be a
"thriller", but it doesn't thrill that much - certainly it
doesn't hide who the murderer is. The hero, Sorme is an
'intellectual' outsider; the two other main characters, Oliver
Glasp (a painter) and Austin Nunne (a ballet critic),
are 'emotional' and 'physical' outsiders
respectively, based on Van Gogh and Nijinsky. Glasp has a
paedophilic attraction to an 11-year-old girl who models for
him; Nunne is a homosexual sadist who likes walloping
his boyfriends. Next to them, Sorme is a refreshingly
normal Wilsonian heterosexual satyr. <br><br>I can't say
why I like it so much. I can only tell you that it's
a weird and wonderful book, which, incidentally,
doesn't have any quotation marks. The book is set in
London in the fifties, a gloomy place. <br><br>Man
without a Shadow (also known as The Sex Diary of Gerard
Sorme, which tells you where it's coming from) is a
journal kept by Sorme. The first half of the book is
mainly intellectual; the second describes Sorme's
meeting with Caradoc Cunningham, who is modelled, with no
attempt to hide it, on Aleister Crowley. Cunningham is
one of Wilson's more memorable creations, mainly
because he's so funny. The debauched, coke-snorting,
heroin-injecting, black magic-practising, swindling Cunningham is
so over the top and is such a hoot you can't help
liking him; like many a Wilson "villain", he's also a
philosopher of sorts, and in many ways he's more interesting
a thinker than Sorme is. <br><br>The last book in
the series, The God-, was written around the time of
The Occult (1971), which saw Wilson's conversion to
belief in the paranormal. It's written in the intriguing
genre of the 'literary detective novel'. Sorme, now a
famous writer, is coerced by an obnoxious American
publisher into agreeing to write a book on an 18th century
Irish casanova called Esmond Donnelly. Sorme must track
down the missing journals of Donnelly (which are
scattered around America and Europe) for research, or,
under the terms of the agreement, forge them himself.
Sorme starts off despising Donnelly, who he sees as a
debauched rake (like Frank Harris or Casanova) but, after
finding a few of the journals, discovers that Donnelly
was a Blakeian mystic who shared Sorme's own
obsessions. From there, it ventures into weird territory as
Sorme becomes possessed by the spirit of Donnelly (in
the most benign way). Set in the late sixties, the
book is full of non-stop sex and is part pornographic
novel. I suppose it's the most explicit of all his
books. Wilson wanted to write it as a straightforward
pornographic novel, but found the genre boring, and so opted
to graft the literary detective genre on top of the
pornographic. <br><br>All in all, the best Wilson books were
written before the seventies. These books include The
Mind Parasites, unfortunately in your case, but they
are still the best of Wilson's ouevre.
<br><br>Rupert.

I don't think there are many female readers of
Colin Wilson. I don't think any of his work is that
accessible to the public in general, let alone most females.
I'm interested in the paranormal and I was originally
introduced to his work by a male friend. But I like his
style of writing and although he doesn't adopt a very
orthodox or scientific approach to his (paranormal)
studies, I admire his gusto in approaching some of these
subjects. He seems to be a bit of an eccentric, which I
like and I also think that he is/was a very attractive
man, both physically and as an individual. I saw him
on TV a few weeks ago discussing 'cannibalism' and
he still looked cool - like a cheeky old professor.
I think his earlier writings reflect a generational
attitude which has been totally lost and it's nice to find
it...

I was thinking of setting up a Colin Wilson Yahoo
Club and I just chanced upon this one. Brilliant!
<br><br>Colin Wilson is one of my favourite non-fiction writers
and although many of his books are quite old now,
they never cease to be a valuable reference for
different elements of the paranormal/occult. I have several
of his books; The Occult, Mysteries and The
Afterlife and I love his combination of stories and
anecdotes. <br><br>I read through his books practically
every evening as there are always different bits that I
refer back to with interest. I liked his concise
summing up of Aleister Crowley and the Russian magickians
in his chapters on 'The Beaast' and the 'Russian
Mages' in The Occult. <br><br>I am desperate to get hold
of a copy of 'The Power of the Pendulum' by TC
Lethbridge who Wilson talks about in length in 'Mysteries'.
If anyone knows where I can get a copy (it is out of
print). I have tried Watkins and some other esoteric and
antiquarian bookshops to no avail. <br><br>I'm really chuffed
to have found this site though!

I don't think that you can generalize any longer
that women don't read Colin Wilson. His work
(unfortunately) just isn't well known to people in general. He's
my favorite author, & has definitely influenced my
way of thinking more than anyone else, but I
absolutely never meet anyone who has heard of
him.<br><br>That said, it is certainly true that Wilson's earlier
work wasn't written with a female audience in mind. I
remember throwing Religion & The Rebel across the room in
disgust when I first read it. It had nothing at all to do
with the sexual fantasies that Wilson sometimes uses
to illustrate particular ideas. Women who have grown
up with slasher films & websites on necrophilia
aren't going to be shocked by an anecdote about catching
a glimpse of someone's panties & getting aroused! I
just got irritated that this person who was describing
exactly how I felt about things had obviously not been
writing for "me" -- he was picturing a male audience. But
that's not surprising considering the time period when
his first books came out (late fifties), & it
certainly didn't stop me from reading as many of his books
as I could find, including those about murder. His
more recent work doesn't have such an obviously male
slant to it.<br><br>I don't consider the main ideas in
Wilson's writing, stuff like Faculty X, peak experiences,
waking up the robot, etc., to be "phallic". Using your
mind & your will aren't gender-specific activities.
When Wilson refers to a sexual incident, he naturally
does so from a male perspective -- no surprise there.
However, I've mostly read only Wilson's non-fiction. I
tried a couple of his novels & didn't like them. They
just repeated his basic ideas in a different form, & I
didn't think they were very well written. So maybe I
would view Wilson as horribly sexist if I had read only
the novels. I would like to know which novels the
members here consider worth reading. The two that I read
were The Space Vampires and The Mind
Parasites.<br><br>Irena

I have no idea of how many of Wilson's readers
are female. If you consider the content of his work
today - where the serious work is outnumbered by the
paranormal and murder potboilers - I'd say that that the
male and female ratio is 50-50. These books are aimed
at a general audience and so attract a general
audience composed of men and women equally, in my
estimate. (Although women don't usually go in for books on
murder). <br><br>As for the serious work: does that
attract women? I wouldn't say so. Abraham Maslow, the
founder of humanistic psychology and a great friend of
Wilson's, wrote in his journals after a meeting with Wilson
that Wilson was 'very phallic, very sexy [ie,
sex-obsessed in a male way]'. Wilson's novels are full of
typical male fantasies (in the same way the books of a
Barbara Cartland are full of typical female fantasies):
some fellow is always getting stranded at a castle or
a lonely outpost and researching states of altered
consciousness - the assistants are always beautiful and flirty
young women with names like Gudrun. See The Space
Vampire, the Black Room, the God of the Labyrinth.
<br><br>This isn't to say that Wilson isn't good at portraying
women realistically: you can find women of all ages,
all types of women in his books; the nastier or more
irritating women characters ring more true than his likeable
ones. <br><br>Usually the ideal Wilson woman is the
hausfrau: Gertrude Quincey (based on his first wife, I
think), one of the romantic interests in The Ritual in
the Dark, auditioned for the role and failed. Diana,
later to become Gerard Sorme's wife by the time of The
God of the Labyrinth, succeeded. Many other Dianas
followed... The hausfrau is the most typical female archetype
in Wilson's fiction. (Which reflects his own
successful second marriage and his own hankering, I think,
for domestic security). <br><br>But overall, yes,
Wilson's ideas are 'very phallic, very sexy': they're
about getting high and using any means to achieve that
aim - drugs, for instance. For some reason, women
(except for the young ones who are experimenting with
drugs like ecstasy or whatever) don't go in for that.
But, you know, the women in Wilson's novels usually
want stability while the men (that is, the men who
aren't serial kilers) want to explore the stratosphere.
<br><br>Rupert.

Female readers of Colin Wilson's work are purportedly rare.  Is this true?  If
so, precisely how rare and would anyone care to impart their ideas about the
reason(s) for this curious situation?

I've been searching through The Outsider to find
the bit where CW talks about the "definitive act of
will" and can't seem to find it. To save me from having
to read the whole thing all over again (would love
to have the time!) does anyone have a page
reference, or even just the chapter it appears in?
<br><br>Thanks<br>Angelo

Welcome one and all to the Colin Wilson
discussion forum! I know that many of you have been waiting
quite some time for this...and here it is! Hopefully
this will give Wilson readers from around the world a
chance to discuss the man's ideas. Although please feel
free to discuss other related topics as well. I plan
to check in regularly myself. Enjoy!<br><br>I
created this forum, which is linked back to my Wilson Web
site (see the link to it in the "Links" folder to the
left of your screen), as the first step in the
overhaul of my site. Over the coming weeks I'm going to be
making other revisions as well.<br><br>John

Welcome to the Yahoo! Message Board for Colin Wilson Discussion Forum