His philosophy is basically existentialism with non-rational excrescences and characterised by bizarre nomenclature - Faculty X, Upside Downness, Peak Experiences, Right Men, The Dominant Five Per Cent, King Rats. It seems to constitute an attempt to classify human feelings and behaviour as written by a Martian who has never met an Earthling. This is, of course, Wilson's weakness and also, in a way, his charm - he has no understanding of other people whatever. When I ask if he would say he is low in emotional intelligence, he readily agrees: 'That is fair, yes.'
He is exceptionally tolerant of nutters and happy to engage in long correspondence with people who have theories about, say, alien abduction - or with Ian Brady, the Moors murderer, with whom he corresponded for 10 years till Brady dumped him. But ordinary social contact - apart from with his family - seems completely missing from his life. Missing, but not missed. He says that about 10 years ago Joy insisted on going out for a drink on New Year's Eve. 'We finished off drinking champagne at midnight in our local pub and it took me a year to shake off all the people that I'd met!'
He had a story about the Lloigor, something about Wales being the lost continent of Mu and the Lloigor's deadly orgone emanations causing spikes of perverted crime or something. I suspect that Shea and (R.A.) Wilson referenced him in the Illuminatus! books.
Btw, do you mean to say that he's serious about the Lloigor stuff?
I always assumed that 'Colin Wilson' was a committee or an author's circle or something....just shows how wrong one can be.
I think it's a PKD deal - he started off writing fiction and ended up thinking it was real, or at least a good metaphor for what's real. And I've read the Wales story too - he really doesn't like rural south Wales, does he?
Got a couple of books of his; not "The Outsider" but the more pataphysical stuff - there's a wonderful one called "The Dark Gods" in which he claims that the Lloigor - Lovecraft's Great Old Ones - are real. Pretty much David Icke territory.