There is much in what he says ...

... and yet Harry Ritchie doesn't quite get the point: Look back in wonder. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.) I was 15 when Colin Wilson's The Outsider was first published. It was a perfect fit for those of us who had heard about the existentialists and were soon to hear about the Beats. The book is no more silly - and no less - than the philosophical discussions my friends and I were having at the time. And yes, some of my friends and I did have philosophical discussions. It was a book, not so much for its time, as for a time of life. And Wilson's notion that we make far less use of our capacities than we might has much to recommend it. At least he made it fashionable, for a while at least, to think about something other than celebrities and politicians.