On the “outsider” in American literature

The Outsider 1 - this was the title of the first book by the twenty-five-year-old general worker and former member of the Anarchist Union Colin Wilson, which was published in London in 1956. Wilson was not alone. With his work he was speaking on behalf of a group of radical young English authors who allowed themselves to violate the golden rule of every artist: to let their work speak for itself, and who attempted to clarify theoretically what their objections were to the conciliatory nature of the bourgeois literary tradition. However, this so shocked the defenders of good taste, or as they later called them, the "square heads", that they gave them the obligatory nickname of "angry young people". Once appointed, the "angry" did everything possible to justify their nickname. Declarations, militant tracts, literary scandals followed. Passions flared up. The "angry" published a joint anthology with the American opponents of conformity - the representatives of the so-called "beaten generation." The "square heads" were not left behind. The personal tragedy of Norman Mailer, who killed his wife, was attached like a ponytail to the flag of the movement. ΤΟ But last summer one of the "angry" - Kingsley Amis, appeared in the pages of "Encounter", turning to the past decade to admit to us that... ...one morning the whole commotion simply died down and disappeared silently and we all stood up, limited within our natural frameworks, to be judged again only on our creative qualities". And he launched into a sharp criticism of the philistine verbosity that had overblown and distorted things. 2 At the end of the decade, Colin Wilson himself condemned his fascination with empty grand phrases and the theoretical simplification of the conflicts that he sought in society. 3