Declaration (1957 book)
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| - | Wilson was labelled as an [[Angry Young Men|Angry Young Man]]: he did contribute to ''[[Declaration (1957 book)|Declaration]]'', an anthology of manifestos by writers associated with the movement, and a chapter of ''[[The Outsider]]'' was excerpted in a popular paperback sampler, ''[[Protest: The Beat Generation and the Angry Young Men]]''. Wilson, along with his friends [[Bill Hopkins (novelist)|Bill Hopkins]] and [[Stuart Holroyd (philosopher)|Stuart Holroyd]] , was viewed as forming a sub-group among the "Angries", a group more concerned with "religious values" than liberal or socialist politics. Critics on the left were swift to label them as fascistic; commentator Kenneth Allsop called them "the law givers".. | + | ''[[Declaration (1957 book)|Declaration]]'' (1957) is an anthology of manifestos by writers associated with the [[Angry Young Men]] movement, edited by [[Tom Maschler]]. |
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| - | Wilson's works include a substantial focus on positive aspects of human [[psychology]] such as [[peak experiences]] and the narrowness of consciousness. Wilson admired, and was in contact with, for example, humanistic psychologist, [[Abraham Maslow]]. Wilson also published in [[1980 in literature|1980]] ''The War Against Sleep: The Philosophy of Gurdjieff'', a text concerned with the life, work and philosophy of [[G. I. Gurdjieff]], which forms an accessible introduction to the Greek-Armenian [[mysticism|mystic]]. Wilson essentially argues throughout his whole work that the existentialist focus on defeat or nausea is only a partial representation of reality and that there is no particular reason for accepting it. In his view normal everyday consciousness buffetted by the moment is blinkered, and should not be accepted as necessarily showing us the truth about reality. This blinkering has some evolutionary advantages in that it stops us being completely immersed in wonder or in the huge stream of events, and hence unable to act. However, to live properly we need to access more than this everyday consciousness. To Wilson our peak experiences of joy and meaningfulness can be seen to be as real as our experiences of angst, and indeed as we seem more fully alive at these moments, they can be said to be more real. Furthermore these experiences can be cultivated, as a side effect, through concentration, paying attention, relaxation and certain types of work. Wilson tends to argue that compulsive criminality is a manifestation of a pathological attempt to gain peak experiences through violence. This effort is bound to fail in the long run, leading the criminal to greater extremes of violence or to a desire to be caught. | + | |
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| - | Wilson has also explored his ideas through [[fiction]], including many [[novel]]s, mostly [[detective fiction]] or [[horror fiction]], the latter including several [[Cthulhu Mythos]] pieces. On a dare from [[August Derleth]], Colin Wilson wrote ''The Mind Parasites'', as another tool to take a look at his own ideas (which suffuse all of his works), putting them in the guise of [[fiction]]. One of his novels, ''[[The Space Vampires]]'', was made into the movie, ''[[Lifeforce (film)|Lifeforce]]'', directed by [[Tobe Hooper]]. | + | |
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Declaration (1957) is an anthology of manifestos by writers associated with the Angry Young Men movement, edited by Tom Maschler.
Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Declaration (1957 book)" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.
