Review of Howard F. Dossor (ed.), Colin Wilson: The Bicameral Critic. Selected Shorter Writings By Carole Cusack

https://www.academia.edu/146211866/Review_of_Howard_F_Dossor_ed_Colin_Wilson_The_Bicameral_Critic_Selected_Shorter_Writings?email_work_card=title As editor Howard F. Dossor notes, Colin Wilson is a multi-faceted cultural figure. Different people identify him as a “science fiction writer,” or “a writer on the psychology of murder,” and others as “the authority on the occult” (p. 1). There are other Wilsons; he has written on music, published assessments of twentieth-century psychologists including Abraham Maslow (1908-1970), Wilhelm Reich (1897-1957) and Carl G. Jung (1875-1961), and was a pundit on sexuality, film, and youth culture. His first book, The Outsider (1956), set him up as a member of the group known as the “angry young men,” working class writers who challenged the class system of the United Kingdom (others included belle lettrist Stuart Holroyd and playwright John Osborne). Wilson and his peers were equally lauded for their insights and rejected as autodidacts; when he and Holroyd began publishing on the occult and the paranormal their lack of formal university qualifications and attraction to fringe subject matter relegated them to the “cranks” category (though Wilson continued to trumpet his genius in the more than one hundred books he produced). ...