I finally finshed this book the other day after taking my sweet-ass time to get to grips with its genius. There is a lot of referencing to books I haven't read which made parts of it somewhat tedious. However, the many sections about Nietzsche, Nijinsky, Van Gogh and Lawrence were thoroughly rewarding. Wilson takes us through a fair and balanced exploration of the outsider and all that it entails. Wilson also manages to summarise perfectly what I've been trying to articulate for many years about the effect film can have on an individual and how it is at best temporary:
...anyone can notice the same phenomenon when he comes out of a theatre or concert or cinema, having been completely 'taken out of himself'. No one would expect to pass through an intense emotional experience and not feel 'a different person' afterwards. But in a cinema you only pass out of your own life into other people's; you learn nothing about yourself; hence the change, the mental reflection, wrought by it can only be expected to last for more than a few hours
Wilson goes on from here but his point is extremely valid. The book can be considered somewhat gloomy but it's a very important book dealing with a very harsh reality of man's paralysis.
If salvation means self-knowledge, then it looks as if most men are pre-destinately dammed
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The last sentence says it all.
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