The outsider
The Outsider is a non-fiction book by Colin Wilson first published in 1956. Through the works and lives of various artists - including H. G. Wells (Mind at the End of its Tether), Franz Kafka, Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, T. S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, Harley Granville-Barker (The Secret Life), Herman Hesse, T. E. Lawrence, Vincent Van Gogh, Vaslav Nijinsky, George Bernard Shaw, William Blake, Friedrich Nietzsche, Fyodor Dostoevsky and G. I. Gurdjieff - Wilson explores the psyche of the Outsider, his effect on society, and society's effect on him.
Stats for nerds
9recommend
16mentions
10people
2010–2025years
88% recommend6% neutral6% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- The Outsider by Colin Wilson validated a lot of the doubts I’ve had my entire life and showed me a courageous way forward embracing my nature.
This is a recommendation that applies to very few people but the misfits, the philosophers, the hermits, the compulsive thinkers. Those that feel they are meant to peer behind the veil of the world rather than dance to its tune.
- Books that I read (and re-read) in 2022 that I'd recommend to folks on HN. Ordered from most enjoyable / insightful to least.
- Edward O. Wilson - Biophilia
- Will Durant - The Lessons Of History
- Freeman J. Dyson - A Many-Colored Glass
- Venkatesh Rao - The Gervais Principle
- Ray Bradbury - The Martian Chronicles
- Colin Wilson - The Outsider
- Stanislaw Lem - Cyberiad
- Antonio Martinez - Chaos Monkeys
- Ben Horowitz - What You Do Is Who You Are
- Alice Flaherty - The Midnight Disease
- Oliver Sacks - Musicophilia
- Ken Binmore - Rational Decisions
- Josh Kaufman - The Personal MBA
Edit: All these books made the cut, there were others that I never completed / disliked / wouldn't recommend, or were just plain mediocre / bad.
- The Outsider by Colin Wilson.
It turned me on to all sorts of interesting authors that I may otherwise have never read, or read much later than I did after being exposed to Wilson's compelling writing on them.
Anyone interested in philosophy and why some highly gifted people don't seem to fit in to this world would do well to give this book a read.
- Some that come to mind:
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas https://www.amazon.com/Fear-Loathing-Las-Vegas-American/dp/0...
Under the Volcano https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jan/05/100-best-novel...
All the kinds horses https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/all-kings-horses
The Sorrows of Young Werther https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sorrows_of_Young_Werther
The Catcher in the Rye https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Catcher_in_the_Rye
The Outsider https://www.amazon.com/Outsider-Colin-Wilson/dp/0874772060
Meetings With Remarkable Men https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3064956-meetings-with-re...
On the road https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Road
Fight Club https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fight_Club
Naked Lunch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naked_Lunch
Ham on Rye https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ham_on_Rye
Jonathan Livingston Seagull https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Livingston_Seagull
Another Roadside Attraction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Another_Roadside_Attraction
- Anyone interested in outsiders would do well to read Colin Wilson's "The Outsider".[1] It's a fascinating study of outsiders in literature, philosophy, and history, and an exploration of what makes them who they are.
More recently, Gary Lachman has picked up the torch, and has written on many Wilsonian subjects, including a biography of Colin Wilson, about which he speaks here: [2][3]
Howard Dossor's retrospective on Colin Wilson is also interesting.[4]
[1] - https://www.amazon.com/Outsider-Colin-Wilson/dp/0874772060
[2] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPm0Bi5nt_o
- >Can anyone recommend other similar works of literature? I haven't read many books like this but I found Siddhartha, Narcissus and Goldmund and Steppenwolfe by Herman Hesse to be on the same lines (deal with existentialism).
If you enjoyed both Dostoyevsky, existentialism, and Hesse's work, you will like Colin Wilson's "The Outsider": https://www.amazon.com/Outsider-Exploration-Rebellion-Creati...
which deals with both (and more) and expands on these concepts.
Wilson ended up doing more fringe work, but this was his critically acclaimed initial foray into writing.
