Dame Jean Iris Murdoch

Colin Henry Wilson

Colin Henry Wilson (born June 26, 1931 in Leicester) is a prolific British writer whose works include a substantial focus on positive aspects of human psychology such as peak experiences and the narrowness of consciousness.

In his books he puts forward his philosophy of life and man's destiny which can be summed up as positive existentialism. Wilson believes in and relies on man's hidden powers that can help every man and society at large overcome faults and vices. He asserts that man is not as insignificant and helpless as some scientists and philosophers tend to picture him. People can change for the better if they really want to, they should wake from their half-slumbering narrow-minded states of being and see the world as it really is: full of meaning, value and possibilities.

The Mind Parasites is a science fiction horror novel by Colin Wilson published in 1967. It tells about man's struggle for inner freedom and strength, against the enemies that reside within man himself, such as idleness, apathy, inertia. In The Mind Parasites these are allegorically presented as a kind of virus, the Tsathogguans, invisible mind parasites that threaten the most brilliant people on earth. The virus affects human mind, paralyses it, causes depression and may even lead man to suicide. Wilson tells a fascinating story about the attempts of Professor Gilbert Austen, an archaeologist, to find out, investigate and defeat the virus.

Wilson's science fiction is a sort of warning to people; thewriter says that man needs to master his inner reserves, to learn to concentrate his thought, to evolve in order to survive.

Dame Jean Iris Murdoch (1919-1999), a British novelist and philosopher noted for her psychological novels that contain philosophical and comic elements. The influence of existentialist ideas left a profound impression on the work of Iris Murdoch. She has created a series of intricate novels that essentially deal with the nature of man and his delusions. Her novels are by turns intense and bizarre, filled with dark humor and unpredictable plot twists in which innumerable characters representing different philosophical positions undergo kaleidoscopic changes in their relations with each other, searching for an understanding of the meaning of life.

Above all her works deal with issues of morality, and the conflicts between good and evil. Though intellectually sophisticated, her novels are often melodramatic and comedic. She was strongly influenced by philosophers like Plato, Freud, Simone Weil and Sartre, and by the 19th century English and Russian novelists, especially Fydor Dostoevsky, as well as Marcel Proust and Shakespeare.. Her novels often include upper middle class intellectual males caught in moral dilemmas, gay characters, Anglo-Catholics with crises of faith, empathetic pets, curiously "knowing" children and sometimes a powerful and almost demonic male "enchanter" who imposes his will on the other characters — a type of man Murdoch is said to have modeled on her lover, the Nobel laureate, Elias Canetti.

She wrote primarily in a realistic manner but sometimes she would introduce ambiguity into her work through a sometimes misleading use of symbolism, and by mixing elements of fantasy within her precisely described scenes. The Unicorn (1963) can be read and enjoyed as a sophisticated Gothic romance, or as a novel with Gothic elements, or perhaps as a parody of the Gothic mode of writing.

Murdoch values a romantic dreamer in man. Such is Jake Donaghue in her first novel Under the Net, written and published in 1954. It is the story of a struggling young British writer living in London, the story of his wanderings about Bohemian London and Paris. Jake attempts to find his own way in life. He wants to get away from the net of conventional ideas and notions and work out his own mode of thinking. The author's attention is concentrated on the psychological analysis of her hero's inner world, the world which is ruled not by laws but by man's strivings and aspirations.

The Black Prince (1973), for which Murdoch won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, is a remarkable study of erotic obsession, and the text becomes more complicated, suggesting multiple interpretations, when subordinate characters contradict the narrator and the mysterious "editor" of the book in a series of afterwords. In this novel the author investigates different manifestations and aspects of this human feeling. She shows selfish and disinterested, passionate and rational love, love verging on hatred and self-sacrificing love. The most elevated form of love, in Murdoch's opinion, is the one that inspires man for artistic creation.

The novel largely consists of the description of a period in the later life of the main character, ageing London author Bradley Pearson, during which time he falls in love with the daughter of a friend and literary rival, Arnold Baffin. For years Bradley has had a tense but strong relationship with Arnold, regarding himself as having 'discovered' the younger writer. Bradley starts to get trapped in a growing dynamic of family, friends, and associates who collectively seem not to let him achieve the isolation he feels necessary to create his 'masterpiece'.

During this time he falls in love with the Baffins' young daughter, Julian. At first exhilarated, Bradley soon becomes disgusted at his growing obsession with her, and vows not to say anything. But then he loses control of himself and begins a brief and intense affair with her, running away with her to a house by the sea and neglecting pressing needs at home. During his absence his depressed sister, Priscilla, commits suicide. This causes Bradley to return while Julian, it seems to Bradley, is taken away and kept from him. The final action of the main section takes place at the Baffins' residence, where Bradley comes and finds Rachel (Arnold’s wife) who appears to have struck Arnold with a poker, killing him. Bradley's arrest, trial, and conviction for Arnold's murder are briefly described, bringing to a close Bradley's telling of the events.

Chief amongst Iris Murdoch's influences for this novel is the Shakespeare’s play Hamlet. It is openly referenced and discussed throughout, especially by Bradley. It is noted in the Post-Scripts that Bradley Pearson shares initials with the Black Prince, the title of Pearson's fictional as well as Murdoch's real work. Bradley's possible admission of homosexuality is made possible through his seeming self-identification with Shakespeare throughout his narrative, and in his claiming both Hamlet and Shakespeare were homosexual. It is strengthened further by the moments in the book where he finds himself attracted to Julian, during each of which her gender is made ambiguous.

In Murdoch’s novels realistic observations of 20th-century life among middle-class professionals are interwoven with extraordinary incidents that has something of the macabre (deathly), the grotesque, and the wildly comic. The novels illustrate Murdoch 's conviction that although human beings think they are free to exercise rational control over their lives and behaviour, they are actually at the mercy of the unconscious mind, the determining effects of society at large, and other, more inhuman, forces.

In addition to producing novels, Murdoch wrote plays, verse, and works of philosophy and literary criticism.

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