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
Hi Ray - I agree with the conclusions of this very engaging article. I’d like to contribute another possible aspect. For writing to be deemed truly ‘Outsider’ I imagine it would have to verge on illiteracy or glossolalia… or a young child telling a story perhaps. Outsider art isn’t only defined by the social status of the artist in question as ‘an outsider’ but in their unadulterated immediacy to instinct and the unconscious and expressed in a way that is uniquely their own, a way that often repels the values of the establishment and popular tastes. I’d suggest writers associated with German Expressionism, Dadaism etc. and in some ways works that would be reminiscent of Beckett or later Joyce in their form but of course both of those writers arrived at that point after a sophisticated rejection of literary convention rather than writing out of ‘madness’, sensual instinct or primal necessity. The formal aspects of an ‘Outsider literature’ would surely have to draw parallels with the raw, untutored, sensual, naïve and unconscious content and expression of ‘Outsider art’. I’d wholeheartedly agree with Darger as an example but the inclusion of writers such as Mary Shelley, George Eliot and Virginia Woolf would surely render the definition meaningless.
ReplyDeleteAny definition would not only have to involve the fact that the writer had gone unrecognised by the establishment but that he/she had also created their work while largely or entirely oblivious to the artistic establishment or indeed a literary canon. By this definition they could hardly self-consciously adopt the stance of being ‘an outsider’.
In some respects Austin Osman Spare springs readily to mind for his self-published incantatory writings which verge on the nonsensical at times and depend upon an assumed knowledge of his obsessive approach of melding irrational revelation with rational argument. Blake too might make an interesting case in point as another commentator has already mentioned. As you seem to have implied it sounds like the recent adoption of the term ‘Outsider writing’ is more to do with coining a new trendy genre without much substance.
- Stephen Clark.
Perhaps someone might explain the difference between outsider art and folk art. Not long ago, watching Jeopardy, I thought the answer was "folk art" but the correct answer was "outsider art."
ReplyDeleteThe books 'Other Traditions' by John Ashbery might be considered a brief survey of some outsider writers...
ReplyDeleteBy your definition, surely any number of modern a
ReplyDeleteThese are thought-provoking articles. After reflection, I feel certain that:
ReplyDelete- Outsider writing by definition cannot be a "movement." It's possible that a specific group of people could be isolated with each other's work away from the mainstream, though it seems unlikely -- but the Dargers and Wolflis of the world will never be aware of each other and surely wouldn't recognize each others' work as kindred if they did encounter it.
- Outsider writing by definition cannot be a "genre," as the work of different outsiders won't have anything in common except by total coincidence.
- The topic of outsider writing cannot be outsider status. That's not naive, and anything in reaction to something mainstream isn't "outside" the mainstream conversation, but part of it. The Beats' loud self-proclamation and mutual admiration was all contrasting themselves with a mainstream.
- Mental illness and social isolation will be common among outsider writers, but they're no guarantee that the work will be "outsider writing," and therefore they can't define the term. I knew a man with paranoid schizophrenia who had finished a novel and most of a book of short stories, together with a book of accompanying hymns. His illness was all over the writing, but it was a sort of pastiche of HP Lovecraft's dream stories with funny-animal comics and the writer's sexuality. Very unusual and interesting to read, but not naive.
I also encountered a man in two different cities who tried to sell his poetry on the street. He was mentally ill --- paranoid, claiming governments were trying to suppress his ideas --- but it didn't affect his work, which from what I saw of it was just inane. Most people who are naive to mainstream writing won't produce works of genius in their "purity" --- they'll just write a guesstimate of what writing is supposed to be like.
So I think author biography can't be the point of "outsider writing" if that term is to be of any value --- the work has to bring something radically new that was not part of any mainstream or movement before.
Would Henry Darger's "The Story of the Vivien Girls" be considered an outsider writer?
ReplyDeleteOr are only published writers eligible?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Darger
Aha!
DeleteJust reread Part 1, where the Darger query was answered.
Also, Darger's Vivien Girls is available.
Prices vary, as I suppose, depending on pages, number of illustrations, format.
Thank you for letting me answer my own foolish question.
Sandor Berger was my Uncle, my Mothers brother. Till 3 years ago, I did not even know his name, or where he lived or if he even existed. My Mother survived Auschwitz and Mauthausen Concentration camps and never breathed a word about her family or experience. Only in the last 2 years did I discover she had 3 brothers and a sister, that she was from Csenger in Hungary, my Grandparents names etc. I visited Csenger 2 years ago, and last May, there was a memorial in Csenger for victims of the Holocaust and a few remaining survivors and their families came from around the world to attend. I managed to acquire several of the poetry books by Sandor Berger and Chris Mikul was kind enough to scan a large number of pages from Sandors book about Long Bay prison in which he describes what happened to him and my family during the Holocaust.
ReplyDelete"Empress Teresa", by Norman Boutin?
ReplyDeleteOr "The Young Visiters", by Daisy Ashford? Probably the best novel ever written by a nine year old girl.
ReplyDelete