Wednesday, December 13, 2006

THE INSIDER

Another serial killer and another sorry slew of expert hypotheses stretched out across the pages of our newspapers and TV news channels like the Suffolk police combing a muddy field for clues. The one thing you can be sure about these armchair detectives' so-called revelations into the mind of the murderer, psychological profiles, criminological deductive pattern analyses, and all the other tasseomantic nonsense, is that they'll be way off the fucking mark when the killer is caught. By accident. And it goes without saying that it won't shame these CSI fantasists into keeping their mouths shut next time around.

So, right on cue, in today's Daily Mail, that ubiquitously touted rogue Colin Wilson crawls out from under his stone to take a stab at it (forgive me for the mixed metaphor, I couldn't resist it). Wilson's dabbled in philosophy, fiction, non-fiction, mysticism, true crime, the occult, to list but a few - and I've read much of it. Am I alone in thinking his work is as lightweight and unbelievable as it's poorly researched and articulated? In fact, to me, it's just more voluminous rubbish.

4 comments:

Sypha said...

H'mm, I guess I haven't read enough of his stuff to really comment (all I've read is his introduction to Ian Brady's book and the pieces he did for the hoax "Necronomicons"). I do think it's great that he has a lot of interests, but I think it would be a mistake to classify him as an authority re: any of those interests. I do have his book "The Occult" but I haven't read it yet... not really sure why.

Nick Talbot said...

Wilson really is a piss-poor hack. He was waiting for an event like this so he could grind out something to top up his pension.

Nick Talbot said...

... and his book on Fred and Rose West consists of paragraphs cribbed wholesale from Howard Sounes's book on the Wests, interspersed with references to Wilson's own back catalogue.

Odile Lee said...

After his book on mediums and such, and his pathetically disguised need for some kind of afterlife- which I may add negated all his supposed scientific posturing, my youthful liking for him went back to nil.
He's a cretin.