The writer is dead, but he’s still feeling good about the future

At 82, writer Colin Wilson died last week. But he hasn’t lost his self-confidence.

Acclaimed at 24 when he published The Outsider, he remained convinced of his own greatness. “I suspect that I am probably the greatest writer of the 20^th century,” he told The Guardian in 2006. “In 500 years’ time, they’ll say, ‘Wilson was a genius,’ because I’m a turning point in intellectual history.”

It’s easy to laugh Wilson's hubris. But then, who among us doesn’t believe we are—or could become—a turning point in intellectual history? As my father used to say was the universal human motto, “There will never be another me.”