Dreaming To Some Purpose
May 2011 · Random House
3.5star
2 reviewsreport
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416
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About this eBook
Colin Wilson is the bete-noir of the Oxbridge literary establishment. He never went to university, let alone Oxbridge, yet wrote The Outsider, a brilliant account of the pain of being alive today, when he was just twenty-four. It sold millions of copies around the world, and he was acclaimed as one of the leading intellectuals of the age, finding a huge audience with the anti-establishment, alternative and underground thinkers. Because of his radically new attitudes he was - with John Osborne - dubbed an 'angry young man' in the article that originally coined that phrase. In this way a young man from a working class background suddenly found himself moving in the most colourful literary and artistic circles of the day. In his autobiography he tells stories about, among others, Aldous Huxley, Angus Wilson, John Osborne, Kingsley Amis, Kenneth Tynan, Francis Bacon and Norman Mailer - all observed with a true outsider's eye for absurdity. He is regarded by many as a true literary hero - Julian Cope stopped a recent concert to pay tribute to Wilson who as sitting in the audience and Donovan Leitch dedicates his new autobiography to him - but he also has huge mass market appeal. His insightful, brilliant books on the Occult, the Mysteries and Atlantis and the Sphinx were all huge bestsellers netting millions of copies. In this return to the themes of The Outsider, looked at from the point of his own life story, he again proves himself one of the great intellectuals of our age, never ceasing to wrestle with the great questions of life and death, and writing with an erudition and an easy way with ideas that is rare in English literary life.
Ratings and reviews
3.5
2 reviews
Liz K
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4 February 2018
The inspiring life of Colin Wilson, author and sole (English, optimistic!) existentialist philosopher, in his own words! Very well told story of the life and times of an interesting, intelligent intellectual of working-class origins. Pity we disagree (and did on the one occasion I met him as a 6th-former) about socialism and Russia. He lived in Cornwall where I live but was rarely seen as I think he was a recluse outside his own circles. If you like self-help, "human consciousness" books you'll like this
About the author
Colin Wilson was born in Leicester in 1931. His book The Outsider was published in 1956 and was almost unanimously hailed by reviewers as a masterpiece. He has gone on to write hundreds of books, and now lives in Cornwall with his wife, Joy.
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