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Colin Wilson

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Author

The Resume

    (June 26, 1931-December 5, 2013)
    Born in Leicester, England, United Kingdom
    Wrote ‘The Outsider’ (1956), ‘Religion and the Rebel’ (1957), ‘The Age of Defeat’ (1959), ‘Ritual in the Dark’ (1960), ‘Adrift in Soho’ (1961), ‘Man Without a Shadow’ (1963), ‘The Glass Cage’ (1966), ‘The Mind Parasites’ (1957), ‘The God of the Labyrinth’ (1970), ‘The Killer’ (1970), ‘The Space Vampires’ (1976), ‘The Janus Murder Case’ (1984) and the ‘Spider World’ trilogy (1987-92)
    Prolific author of non-fiction, particularly in the areas of true crime and the paranormal

Why he might be annoying:

    He said he was a fetishist growing up who would wear his mother’s undies and steal panties from clothes lines.
    While a visiting lecturer at an American university, he used a glass-bottomed mug to look up his students’ skirts.
    He is a name-dropper.
    He buys into almost every pseudo-scientific notion while claiming, ‘I began with a strong bias towards skepticism.’
    One critic said his chief virtue is that his ideas are ‘just far too daft to be taken seriously.’
    His literary reputation peaked with his first book, crashed with his second, and never really recovered.
    He called himself the most important writer of the 20th century, adding ‘I’d be a fool if I didn’t know it and a coward if I didn’t say it.’

Why he might not be annoying:

    He wrote ‘The Outsider’ in the Reading Room of the British Museum while living in a sleeping bag on the Hampstead Heath.
    He was hailed as England’s answer to Albert Camus.
    His writing was described as having a ‘clear, simple, fluid style.’
    He was arguably a victim of the critics, who overhyped ‘The Outsider’ then turned on him.
    Kinglsey Amis allegedly threatened to push him off a roof.
    He claimed, ‘One of my main problems as far as the public is concerned is that I've always been interested in too many things and if they can't typecast you as a writer on this or that, then I'm afraid you tend not to be understood at all.’

Credit: C. Fishel


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    For 2024, as of last weekly ranking, Out of 1 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2023, Out of 4 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 1 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 5 Votes: 60.0% Annoying
    In 2020, Out of 5 Votes: 60.0% Annoying
    In 2019, Out of 4 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2018, Out of 4 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2017, Out of 1 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2016, Out of 3 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2015, Out of 7 Votes: 57.14% Annoying
    In 2014, Out of 13 Votes: 53.85% Annoying
    In 2013, Out of 16 Votes: 56.25% Annoying
    In 2012, Out of 13 Votes: 69.23% Annoying