Wilson - The misfits : a study of sexual outsiders

I owe a considerable debt of gratitude to Bob Mellors for generously providing me with so much biographical information on Charlotte Bach, and to Della Aleksander for filling in some important gaps. I wish to thank the Percy Grainger Museum in Melbourne for providing information about Grainger. Geraint Jonathan drew my attention to the passage on James Joyce in Chapter Nine. I also owe a debt of gratitude to Kazue Kobata for insights into Mishima. The idea of this book originated in a conversation with my friend, Donald Seaman.

Colin Wilson
Gorran Haven, 1987

From the Marquis de Sade to Japanese novelist Yukio Mishima, who ritually disembowelled himself in 1970, The Misfits examines Charlotte Bachs controversial theory that sexual deviants may be more highly evolved than the sexually normal.

Following the history of morbid sexuality down through Byron, Gogol and Swinburne, we observe the rise of hard porn, study the real-life necrophile Sergeant Bertrand, and the beginnings of modern sex crime with Jack the Ripper.

Analysing the sex lives of James Joyce, D.H. Lawrence, Bertrand Russell, Lawrence of Arabia and many others, The Misfits is both a sequel to Colin Wilsons classic The Outsider and a fascinating catalogue of human sexual perversity.

Front cover shows the painting Maid to Order III
1971 by Allen Jones. Private Collection.
Reproduced courtesy of Marlborough Fine Art London Ltd.

ILLUSTRATED
SEXOLOGY

UNITED KINGDOM 4.50
NEW ZEALAND $17.95 RRP INC.GST
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Non-fiction

The Outsider cycle:

The Outsider
Religion and the Rebel
The Age of Defeat
The Strength to Dream
Origins of the Sexual Impulse
Beyond the Outsider
Introduction to the New Existentialism

Books on the occult and paranormal:

The Occult
Mysteries
Poltergeist
Psychic Detectives
Strange Powers
The Geller Phenomenon
A Dictionary of Possibilities (with John Grant)
Afterlife

Other Non-fiction:

An Encyclopedia of Murder (with Pat Pitman)
An Encyclopedia of Modern Murder (with Donald Seaman)
A Casebook of Murder
Order of Assassins
Rasputin and the Fall of the Romanovs
Bernard ShawA Reassessment
New Pathways in Psychology
The Quest for Wilhelm Reich
The War Against SleepThe Philosophy of Gurdjieff
The Lord of the UnderworldA Study of Jung
The Craft of the Novel
The Strange Genius of David Lindsay
Frankensteins Castle
Access to Inner Worlds
Eagle and Earwig (Essays on books and writers)
Poetry and Mysticism
A Book of Booze
Starseekers
Brandy of the Damned (Essays on Music)
Anti-Sartre
A Criminal History of Mankind
The Essential Colin Wilson

Autobiography

Voyage to a Beginning

Fiction

The Sorme Trilogy:
Ritual in the Dark
The Man Without a Shadow (retitled The Sex Diary of Gerard Sorme)
The God of the Labyrinth

Other Fiction:

Adrift in Soho
The World of Violence
Necessary Doubt
The Glass Cage
The Mind Parasites
The Killer
The Philosophers Stone
The Black Room
The Space Vampires
The Schoolgirl Murder Case
Rasputin: A Novel
Spiderworld: The Tower
Spiderworld: The Delta

Grafton Books
A Division of the Collins Publishing Group
8 Grafton Street, London W1X 3LA

Published by Grafton Books 1989

First published in Great Britain by
Grafton Books 1988

Copyright Colin Wilson 1988

ISBN 0-586-07013-3

Printed and bound in Great Britain by
Collins, Glasgow

Set in Caledonia

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publishers prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Acknowledgements

ONE: The Secret of Charlotte Bach

TWO: Charlotte and the Mysteries of Evolution

THREE: Anarchy Incarnate

FOUR: Romantic Agonies

FIVE: Rebel Angel

SIX: From Rebellion to Sex Crime

SEVEN: Victorian Misfits

EIGHT: Guilt and Defiance

NINE: Misfits or Mystics?

POSTSCRIPT: The Fifth Window

Bibliography

Index

Colin Wilson is one of the most prolific, versatile and popular writers at work today. He was born in Leicester in 1931, and left school at sixteen. After he had spent years working in a wool warehouse, a laboratory, a plastics factory and a coffee bar, his first book The Outsider was published in 1956. It received outstanding critical acclaim and was an immediate bestseller.

Since then he has written many books on philosophy, the occult, crime and sexual deviance, plus a host of successful novels which have won him an international reputation. His work has been translated into Spanish, French, Swedish, Dutch, Japanese, German, Italian, Portuguese, Danish, Norwegian, Finnish and Hebrew.

COLIN WILSON

A Study of Sexual Outsiders

GRAFTON BOOKS

A Division of the Collins Publishing Group

LONDON GLASGOW
TORONTO SYDNEY AUCKLAND

One: THE SECRET OF CHARLOTTE BACH

Magnus Hirschfelds Sexual Anomalies and Perversions. Case of musician who preferred schoolgirls. The problem of absurd good news. Are moments of vision an illusion? Why do so many sexual perversions date from the nineteenth century? George Selwyn, the necrophile. The Outsider. True case on which Barbusses Hell is based. Criminal Outsiders. Origins of the Sexual Impulse. How do we define sexual perversion? Opposing views of Tolstoy and Gide. A letter from Charlotte Bach. Her theory of emergent evolution. The instability of great artists. Sexual perversion as the driving force behind evolution. Charlottes account of herself. The transvestite professor. Charlotte becomes a cult figure. My article about her in Time Out. Bisexual behaviour of the ten-spined stickleback and zebra finch. Charlottes eight sexual types. The eight-hour orgasrm Thats what its aboutevolution! What type was Charlotte. Charlottes alter ego, Carl Hajdu. How Carl Hajdu became a transvestite. Charlottes novel Fiona. Hajdus breakdown. Derrick Alexander discovers Hajdus secret. Hajdu becomes Charlotte Bach.

Two: CHARLOTTE AND THE MYSTERIES OF EVOLUTION

Man and/or Woman. Carl Hajdus sexual development. The desire of men and women to become their opposite. Displacement activities. Social releasers. Man is a Peter Pan species. Charlotte on alchemy. Her new vision of science. Why I rejected Charlottes theory of evolution. Dr Johnson behaves like a pig. Charlotte versus Darwin. Charlotte and Fiona. Charlottes murder. Charlottes kleptomania. Charlottes mendacity. The criminal streak in Dostoevsky. My account of Charlotte in Mysteries. Charlotte Bach and the Marquis de Sade.

Three: ANARCHY INCARNATE

The most evil man who ever lived. De Sades kindliness. Must we burn de Sade? De Sades childhood: The whole universe should humour my whims ... De Sades love of flogging. His hatred of religion. His first arrest. De Sades marriage. The Rose Keller incident. The Marseilles incident. De Sades imprisonment.