Reviews for The haunted man

The average rating for The haunted man based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2008-01-21 00:00:00 Nick Manning An absolutely essential primer for those few individuals who have encountered, or are interested in the work of the great author of "A Voyage to Arcturus" and other even more obscure works of philosophy and fantasy. Wilson describes his own difficulties in reading Lindsay, the difficulties that he (and probably anyone) will find with the author's sometimes-torturous language, and a short thesis on Lindsay's philosophy -- the heart of what his novels are about -- and its relationship to earlier European philosophers, particularly Nietzsche. I particularly like Wilson's division of writers over the past century into "high flyers" (those concerned with a world beyond our own) and "low flyers" (those concerned very much with the mundane nature of man). A terrific intro both to Lindsay and to Wilson as a critic, this small paperback also appears as part of an anthology on Lindsay with longer pieces by JB Pick and EH Visiak that, like this little volume, is sadly long out of print and nearly impossible to find.

Review # 2 was written on 2012-12-31 00:00:00 Raphael Riordan A succinct literary crticism of the work of 1920s gnostic visionary and philosophical fantasist David Lindsay. Despite it being Lindsay's most important work Wilson spends a disproportionate amount time (in what is already a very short work (63 pages)) discusing A Voyage to Arcturus (33 pages) givng over the remaining 30 pages to the author's remaining 5 works! That said Wilson's workaday prose is a refreshing alternative to much literary crticism of the day bringing clarity to the densely complex theological and philosophical concepts and frameworks (gnosticism, Manicheanism, Nietschze, Schopenhauer, et al.) via which he reads and interprets some of the themes (and, Wilson argues, the supposed intentions) of this mind-blazingly original novel (and novelist)! Literary elitists have always been down on Colin Wilson's 'populist' style and approach but here it forms the basis of an illuminating, if a little unbalanced, analysis of that original blazing talent.