Guest Post - Outsider Literature, Part 2, by R B Russell

Part One of this post suggested that Outsider Literature might follow rules set down by Art Brut and Outsider Art, which would mean that an Outsider Writer should be self-taught, compelled to write without thought of publication, and should not have been recognised by the literary establishment. Additionally, Outsider Writing should be at pains to keep itself free from writers who have simply failed to make the grade.

However, very few candidates for Outsider Writer status fulfil all of these requirements. Take, for example, the American Joseph Gould (1889-1957) who claimed to have written the longest book ever, An Oral History of the Contemporary World (only fragments of which have been found and published.) Gould was eccentric and often homeless, but he worked for the New York Evening Mail, and had his work commented on by both Edward J. O’Brien (editor of Best American Short Stories) and Ezra Pound.

These connections make him much less of an Outsider than, say, the Australian Sandor Berger, a character well-known in Sydney for walking around wearing placards and handing out leaflets with the message ‘Psychiatry is Evil’. (He arrived in Sydney in 1952 and died, aged eighty-one, in 2006.) During his time in Sydney, Sandor was driven to self-publish countless books and booklets, including poetry and his letters to newspaper editors. He doesn’t appear to have had any connections, or success, but nobody has seriously suggested that his work ‘makes the grade’.

The appreciation of any art is subjective, but in defining Outsider Literature a certain quality threshold is required, unless the writing is to simply be laughed at. This would suggest that Outsider Literature should exclude an author like the Irishwoman Amanda McKittrick Ros (1860-1939), who published at her own expense and who is described by the Oxford Companion to Irish Literature as ‘Uniquely dreadful’. She might be seen as the literary equivalent of the French philosopher Jean-Pierre Brisset (1837-1919) whose major self-published work presented the theory that man is descended from frogs.

A better candidate might be the British writer Anna Kavan (1901-1968), but, despite a troubled life, she was published several times by the very reputable publishing house of Cape, which, surely, makes her a literary establishment insider. Kavan is a good example of the problem facing Outsider Artists generally — they are often associated with unconventional life-styles, left-field ideas, elaborate fantasy lives and sometimes serious mental health problems. This gives rise to the suspicion that the writers/artists and their problems are more important than their work, and that there is a ‘freak show’ element to any interest in them.

The Pepsi-Cola Addict by June Allison Gibbons, for example, is a self published novel that sells (if you can find a copy) for a very high price, but interest in the book stems mainly from the fact that its author was one of the ‘silent twins’ who were sentenced to indefinite detention in Broadmoor Hospital (for a few petty crimes) purely because of the girls’ refusal to communicate with others. By any standards, The Pepsi-Cola Addict is not very good, and surely the writing needs to be more important than the story of the writer (no matter how related these are.)

The authors above fulfil certain requirements of Outsider Writing, although not all of them. It is tempting to allow some leeway, not least in terms of the desire for publication. A compromise might be to allow within the classification books that are self- or vanity-published.

All of the above authors have had the term Outsider applied to them retrospectively by third parties, but what should we make of contemporary authors who claim, themselves, to be Outsiders? I am inclined to believe that an ambition to be an Outsider Writer is one of the qualities that should preclude inclusion within the classification.

I have come to few definite conclusions about the validity of the terms Outsider Writer or Outsider Writing, not least because there are some potential candidates who appear to break all the rules. A case in point may be Colin Wilson himself, whose book The Outsider is in some ways a progenitor of the nascent Outsider Writing movement. Famously, The Outsider was written in the British Museum Reading Room at a time when Wilson was sleeping rough on Hampstead Heath, but publication by Gollancz, critical acclaim and best-seller status brought him firmly within the precincts of the literary establishment. (For a short time he was considered one of the ‘angry young men’, alongside John Osborne and Kingsley Amis.)

However, Wilson’s career thereafter saw him move slowly into Outsider territory. He was driven to write and was widely-published, but fiction and non-fiction on subjects such as true crime, mysticism and the paranormal damaged his reputation as literary critic and philosopher. Books such as The Occult, A Historyy (1971) sold very well, but the critics generally disliked his work — Philip Toynbee described Wilson as ‘much battered by reviewers’. Critics have even gone back to find fault with The Outsider. Colin Wilson was slowly pushed to the margins, published by more and more specialist and esoteric publishers, and by the end of his life in 2013 he had become a cult figure, as far from the establishment as can be imagined.

To be taken seriously, Outsider Writing must establish what its requirements are. But, perhaps, its own rules will have to be broken, especially by genuine Outsiders.

R B Russell

Guest Post - Outsider Literature, Part 1, by R B Russell

A few years ago any use of the term Outsider with reference to literature would probably have been an allusion to Albert Camus and his 1942 novel L’Étranger, often translated as The Outsider, or to Colin Wilson’s 1956 study of existentialist literature of the same title which explored the idea of outsiders and their place in society. Of course, definitions vary widely, and outsiders have featured in all forms of writing down the ages, but Outsider Literature has recently become a term that some have applied not to characters or themes in books, but to certain authors.

One blog online has a post about Outsider fiction that describes it as: ‘. . . a cool new genre that we’re hoping will take the world by storm' (www.patricialynne.com, 12th August 2014). Lyndall Gordon’s book Outsiders: Five Women Writers Who Changed the World (2017), was widely reviewed and has led to some discussion of what really constitutes Outsiders. (After all, three of the writers—Mary Shelley, George Eliot and Virginia Woolf—were well-published in their time.)

Of more interest to readers and collectors of genre or non-mainstream writing is the use of the term Outsider with reference to curious books from the past that have gone unappreciated, especially when their authors have often lived non-conventional lives. Wormwood contributor Adam Daly has recently published two volumes of The Outsider-writer with The Paupers' Press, containing essays about authors whose obvious similarity is simply that they are not well-known in the mainstream. The term Outsider Writer is applied on Wikipedia to Jean-Pierre Brisset, although it does not yet hyper-link to a dedicated entry on the subject. However, an Outsider Literature/Writer page is inevitably on its way . . .

These different applications of the terms Outsider Literature or Outsider Writer appears to have been inspired, in part, by the Outsider Art movement, which has become a successful marketing tool promoted by specialist galleries, art fairs and magazines, and while it is still contentious, it has become widely accepted. It would appear to be a good model for assessing what constitutes an Outsider in literature, and it is worth offering a little background.

Outsider Art was a term first used by the critic Roger Cardinal (Outsider Art, Praeger Publishers, 1972) when searching for a synonym for Art Brut (itself coined by French artist Jean Dubuffet (‘Place à l’incivisme’, Art and Text, No. 27, December 1987–February 1988, p. 36), referring to art undertaken outside the purview of the art establishment. Dubuffet provided a definition of ‘art brut’ that is instructive, recognising only:

‘Those works created from solitude and from pure and authentic creative impulses—where the worries of competition, acclaim and social promotion do not interfere.’

Dubuffet argued that true art brut was ‘more precious than the productions of professionals,’ and the idea was taken up by the Outsider Art movement. However, appreciation of all art is to some degree subjective and the movement claims to be at pains to keep itself free of artists who have simply failed to make the grade. In the tradition of the established art world, certain respected galleries and critics have become gatekeepers, but that is itself problematic: it can be argued that the very term Outsider Art when conferred by this new establishment offers recognition to favoured artists and must therefore mean they have been gathered ‘inside’.

Outsider Literature does not yet have its gatekeepers, although there are some commentators, collectors, and book dealers who are beginning to recognise the classification. There is, as yet, no manifesto or definition, but, perhaps Outsider Literature can take its cues from Outsider Art (while recognising that they are not completely analogous—for example, the long tradition of Art Schools is not replicated in contemporary creative writing classes.)

One celebrated Outsider Artist who should be able to help us define the Outsider Writer is Henry Darger (1892-1973), because his drawings and watercolour paintings illustrate his posthumously discovered fantasy manuscript The Story of the Vivian Girls . . . —if he was an Outsider Artist, then he must also have been an Outsider Writer. Another recognised Outsider Artist who also wrote is Adolf Wölfli (1864-1930), and the examples of Darger and Wölfli suggests that the Outsider Writer should be defined by work that is self-taught (naïve), driven by a deep-seated need to write rather than publish, and it should not have been recognised by the literary establishment at the time of composition.

In addition to these considerations, to be taken at all seriously as a classification, Outsider Writing should be at pains to be like the Outsider Art movement and keep itself free from writers who simply fail to make the grade.

(Part Two of this blog post will consider a number of writers who might be considered Outsiders.)

R B Russell