Steven
Glorified cat flunky
- Joined
- Nov 5, 2023
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Years ago, a female journalist from a mainstream newspaper went to interview Colin Wilson. At the time of reading, I thought this feature a hatchet-job, one that obliquely depicted Wilson as a rather seedy, sex-obsessed character with an obvious 'eye for the ladies'; and also a rather standard modern piece, in that it just seemed to me to be another example of a younger generation hitting out at the faults of the older as well as the customary, inevitable mocking of any subject outside of the tediously rational.
In time, though, I've found myself agreeing with the journalist in part: not that I believe Wilson was anything other than basically respectable but nevertheless I think his writing on sex and crime can be problematical. Recently, reading the fascinating but flawed - Wilson could at times be a sloppy or assumptive historian, in my view - A Criminal History of Mankind, it disappointed me that Wilson had again fallen for the old spiel so favoured by nonentities like the murderer Ian Brady: that obscene criminality may mark one out as a rebel, as alienated rather than merely childish in thought and deed, that such acts constitute Nietzschean transgressions rather than the 'magical thinking' of the criminal that, ironically, Wilson is usually swift to spot.
Colin Wilson gave so many of us so much (often, he was practically our introduction to the Fortean). At his best - which is to say, frequently - his writing and his chosen topics fascinate; he almost always managed to capture the reader from the very start of a chapter. And though his repeated themes and motifs could became a little predictable - Maslow, the Right Man, Wells, Proust's madeleine etc etc - we, and certainly I, surely learned a great deal from him, things that have widened our minds and enriched our lives. Even one of his lesser-known studies, The Strength to Dream, thrilled me with its discussion of literature. And this is why I find it so disheartening to find this clever, curious man evidently subtly agreeing with the likes of Brady - who so clearly would have made no mark on society with any talent of his - and falling for that spluttered boast of the inadequate: "I've done it all!"...as if violating and killing children made one some kind of hero instead of the acts being futile protestations against the taboos and rules imposed by authorities (religious and secular) which one knows are flawed and hypocritical. What use is a rebellion against an authority one has no regard for anyway? It's surely a mere excuse to act as you please, the mark of a selfish individual and not one who strikes a blow on behalf of us all.
It's clear that Wilson was seduced by this notion: that criminals can be heroic; it's clear that he envied Brady's beyond-the-norm experiences; and it's surely clear that Wilson let himself down - no amount of patrician musing over the appalling acts of a desperately attention-grabbing nobody like Brady can elevate those acts into something eternal, let alone glorious. And no amount of sophistry can render the likes of Brady, Lacenaire et al as visionaries who have gone beyond good and evil, let alone intellectuals with special, unique and valuable insights into the human lot; they were failures, and Wilson failed too. When clever thinkers such as Wilson, Vidal, Foucault slum it by associating themselves - and by taking seriously - the criminals they lionised, it's arrogant and snobbish. It contemptuously positions the rest of us as merely docile servants of unworthy authority; a deliberate, superior and selective view from the supposed above, a cold eye cast by the short-sighted and self-indulgent. Wilson should have known better - that the path to the Superman has no need for guides like Ian Brady or Jack the Ripper.
In time, though, I've found myself agreeing with the journalist in part: not that I believe Wilson was anything other than basically respectable but nevertheless I think his writing on sex and crime can be problematical. Recently, reading the fascinating but flawed - Wilson could at times be a sloppy or assumptive historian, in my view - A Criminal History of Mankind, it disappointed me that Wilson had again fallen for the old spiel so favoured by nonentities like the murderer Ian Brady: that obscene criminality may mark one out as a rebel, as alienated rather than merely childish in thought and deed, that such acts constitute Nietzschean transgressions rather than the 'magical thinking' of the criminal that, ironically, Wilson is usually swift to spot.
Colin Wilson gave so many of us so much (often, he was practically our introduction to the Fortean). At his best - which is to say, frequently - his writing and his chosen topics fascinate; he almost always managed to capture the reader from the very start of a chapter. And though his repeated themes and motifs could became a little predictable - Maslow, the Right Man, Wells, Proust's madeleine etc etc - we, and certainly I, surely learned a great deal from him, things that have widened our minds and enriched our lives. Even one of his lesser-known studies, The Strength to Dream, thrilled me with its discussion of literature. And this is why I find it so disheartening to find this clever, curious man evidently subtly agreeing with the likes of Brady - who so clearly would have made no mark on society with any talent of his - and falling for that spluttered boast of the inadequate: "I've done it all!"...as if violating and killing children made one some kind of hero instead of the acts being futile protestations against the taboos and rules imposed by authorities (religious and secular) which one knows are flawed and hypocritical. What use is a rebellion against an authority one has no regard for anyway? It's surely a mere excuse to act as you please, the mark of a selfish individual and not one who strikes a blow on behalf of us all.
It's clear that Wilson was seduced by this notion: that criminals can be heroic; it's clear that he envied Brady's beyond-the-norm experiences; and it's surely clear that Wilson let himself down - no amount of patrician musing over the appalling acts of a desperately attention-grabbing nobody like Brady can elevate those acts into something eternal, let alone glorious. And no amount of sophistry can render the likes of Brady, Lacenaire et al as visionaries who have gone beyond good and evil, let alone intellectuals with special, unique and valuable insights into the human lot; they were failures, and Wilson failed too. When clever thinkers such as Wilson, Vidal, Foucault slum it by associating themselves - and by taking seriously - the criminals they lionised, it's arrogant and snobbish. It contemptuously positions the rest of us as merely docile servants of unworthy authority; a deliberate, superior and selective view from the supposed above, a cold eye cast by the short-sighted and self-indulgent. Wilson should have known better - that the path to the Superman has no need for guides like Ian Brady or Jack the Ripper.
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