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The Outsider, by Colin Wilson
- Abstract
There was a time when to convict a thinker of absurdity was to place him under an inteltellectual obligation to rise to the argument or change his position. At the very least, it put him in the shadow of impropriety. Today he can escape the obligation and get out from under the shadow by calmly making a philosophy of his predicament. Existentialism as a philosophy of the absurd is the 20th century’s gift to literary men and critics who are terribly excited by ideas but resent the discipline ncessary to analyze them. Mr. Colin Wilson is caught up in this excitement about existentialist profundity. One can plead for him the extenuations of youth and a desultory philosophical education. What is truly astonishing is that he has infected with his enthusiasm for the dramatic and the murky some English critics from whom one had expected more intellectual sophistication.
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