Sunday, February 26, 2006

Book I Read

26/02/06
To-Day I would like to discuss upon a book that I am reading at present. It is an intersesting and also a disturbing book. I have so far read four chapters. I read books irrespective of its author or its title. Sometimes I chose by its author name or by its celebreity status(i.e. being stood as best seller). I chanced upon 'The Outsider' accidently while browsing the internet. I read an article about the book "The Outsider". In that article the author said about how he was greatly disturbed by the book.After reading the book he left his family in Austeralia and went on soul searching wandering the world. He has finally returned to his family after spending some years and continued his life from where he left. He has said that he has read that book several times since then. It gave him new directions and peace of mind whenever he sought from it. But I would not do it at my age( I mean I would not run away from life). Anyway I was once an outsider which caused me my acadamic aspirations. I always felt I have underachieved inspite of my intelegience and background. In the book Colin Wilson discusses about problems of outsider in Literature.

In the first chapter C.W. discusses about Henri Barbuse's novel L' E lfer whose hero lives the life of man who sees other lives through the peep hole of his room. C.W. states about outsider: All men and women have their dangerous, unnamable, impulses, yet they keep pretence, to themselves, to others; their respectability, their philosphy, their religion, are all attempts to gloss over, to make look civilized and rational something that is savage, un0rganized, irrational. He is an outsider because he stands for the Truth.

C.W. says Shakespeare, Dante, Keats were all apparently norml and socially well adjusted. But D.H.Lawerance, James Joyce Sarte and Alfred Comus are all outsiders. He observes that Good Health and strong nerve can make an outsider unlikely because the men in Good health is thinking about other things and does not look in the directions where uncertainity lies. And once man has seen it the world can never be the same straight forward place.
I will discuss about other chapters shortly.

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