The Outsider

Have you felt on the outside of whichever side there is? Welcome to the exclusive club of the Outsiders. Except that, to paraphrase Groucho Marx, a club for Outsiders is no club because, by definition, its members do not belong.

But seriously,the Outsider has always been a fascination with all students of mankind and society.

Colin Wilson's book  "The Outsider"  is a fascinating study of the Outsider in literature and his place in the modern mindset.

Dostoyevsky made the Outsider an angry young man and Salim Javed took the cue. Tennessee Williams explored the social politics of the world of the Outsider and Woody Allen made tons of money in portraying the Outsider as a yuppie.

However there are two books of the post Colin Wilson era that are, to my mind, searing completely unique portraits of the Outsider.

The first is "Waiting for the Barbarians" by J.M. Coetzee, a winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature.

It is about a middle-aged magistrate of an insignificant outpost of a unnamed empire, seemingly disintegrating under the weight of his "outsiderness". However, at the core of his hero, Coetzee discover a rock of rumination that nothing can change, nothing can reduce. This book would leave the student of the Outsider personality type wondering whether being the consummate Outsider is being the consummate philosopher.

The other book that belongs to the very top drawer of Outsider literature is John Kennedy Toole's "A Confederacy of Dunces". Toole himself was the archetypal tragic Outsider. Very gifted as a writer, Toole was rejected by the establishment and suffering from paranoia and depression committed suicide at the age of 31. His mother's efforts got "A Confederacy of Dunces" published which then went on to become a cult classic and posthumously won Toole a Pulitzer Prize. The protagonist of  "A Confederacy of Dunces" - Ignatius J Reilly - is what Toole would have been if he had lots more moxy and a lots less self-pity. Ignatius Reilly breaks the typical tragic hero mould of the Outsider. In many ways the character Woody Allen plays in his movies is Ignatius Reilly given a coat of Manhattan polish and a popular culture airbrush.

The art of advertising at its most powerful takes memes that are outside the mainstream culture and insidiously adapts them to build mainstream brands. Apple starting with it's "1984" commercial was built on an Outsider meme. The iconoclast image that this strategy built for Apple survives (just about) many advertising mis-steps since.

It is not advertising alone that has demonstrated the atavistic appeal of the Outsider meme to the modern psyche. Look at twenty-first century politics. Obama was the ultimate Outsider as a Presidential candidate.

His difficulties as a President only proves the first principle of being an Outsider. Sort of the opposite of  the refrain from "Hotel California" - "you can check out any time you want but you can never leave".

Does India now have it's own Outsider contending successfully for power? Mod as an Outsider? It might be a startling new framework with which to examine this man who might be important to India's fortunes this decade and perhaps decades to come.