The classic study of alienation creativity & the modern mind THE OUTSIDER was an instant literary sensation when it was first published in 1956 thrusting its youthful author into the front rank of contemporary writers & thinkers Wilson rationalized the psychological dislocation so characteristic of Western creative thinking into a coherent theory of alienation & defined those affected by it as a type the outsider Through the works & lives of various artists including Kafka Camus Hemingway Hesse Lawrence Van Gogh Shaw Nietzsche & Dostoevsky Wilson explored the psyche of the outsider his effect on society & society's on him Nothing that has happened in the decades since has made THE OUTSIDER any less relevant; it remains the seminal work on this most persistent of modern-day preoccupations