Regarding the amorphousness between far left and far right, I’ve always thought that ex lefties make the best conservatives, not just because you actually have to have a certain amount of intellectual vigor on the far left, but because the real enemy of the American academic left has always been the middle classes and the left-liberal part of the middle class is exactly whom the majority of conservative rage (absent any notable racial or gendered controversy in any given moment) is directed towards. Wilson I’ve never read, maybe I’ll have to. I’m always a bit skeptical of the line (Leavis thought this too iirc) that only a narrow vein (of course no longer in production) of fiction constitutes the true novel. Agree with you about sci-fi and avant garde elements being necessary to represent reality now, but we’ve talked about that before.
The two of us are going to start a Colin Wilson revival right here, I can feel it (through occult precognitive abilities).
Regarding the amorphousness between far left and far right, I’ve always thought that ex lefties make the best conservatives, not just because you actually have to have a certain amount of intellectual vigor on the far left, but because the real enemy of the American academic left has always been the middle classes and the left-liberal part of the middle class is exactly whom the majority of conservative rage (absent any notable racial or gendered controversy in any given moment) is directed towards. Wilson I’ve never read, maybe I’ll have to. I’m always a bit skeptical of the line (Leavis thought this too iirc) that only a narrow vein (of course no longer in production) of fiction constitutes the true novel. Agree with you about sci-fi and avant garde elements being necessary to represent reality now, but we’ve talked about that before.