The Outsider as a personality type has fascinated me.
The angst-ridden disfranchised individual always on the outside of whatever side there is, has been the protagonist of many a great book and movie.
Dostoyevsky made the Outsider an angry young man, Tennessee Williams explored the social politics of the world of the Outsider and Woody Allen has made tons of money in portraying the Outsider as a yuppie.
But when it come to drawing deep and consistently from the Outsider meme,J.M.Coetzee takes the Noble Prize. His 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature citation states that Coetzee "in innumerable guises portrays the surprising involvement of the outsider".
Last month I read "Waiting for the Barbarians" in which a middle-aged magistrate of an insignificant outpost of a unnamed empire slowly disintegrates under the weight of his 'outsiderness". Coetzee's magistrate is a master of self-rumination. The exploration of every nuance of thought, attitude, belief or action is as deep as it is pithy. In the book the magistrate goes from being a master of his realm to being a much-reviled outcast. The self-rumination however seems to emanate from an inner core that nothing can change, that nothing can reduce. This even tone is a portrayal of the concept of the eternal soul and ever-changing Maya without ever once using those cliched terms. Got me thinking that perhaps being the consummate Outsider is being the consummate philosopher. I have now started reading Coetzee's "Slow Man", eager to engage with yet another masterful exposition of the Outsider gestalt.
