COLIN AND DAMON WILSON – WORLD FAMOUS CULTS AND FANATICS 1992. Magpie Press.
Headline derivative and over-sensationalized look at the
most extreme religious cults and sect leaders throughout history. The only real
interest here is that there is a focus on historic religious fanatics, such as
Indian Thugee and Assassin cults, racist orders like the Ku Klux Klan, as well
as a look at modern suicide cults like that of Jim Jones in 1978. Some
inclusions are deserved, such as that of Charles Manson, though Rasputin, while
undoubtedly a strong religious advisor, was not really a cult leader, but a
political supporter of a doomed tsar. Many of the stories here are little more
than summaries of the key events, which anyone could have extracted and
digested from the popular media. Quite why he needs a co-writer from his family
on one this is a mystery. Many of the stories have in fact appeared in Colin
Wilson’s other books on true crime. He now recycles his ideas for different
works. The book makes for light, if uncomfortable reading, in its tabloid
approach to stories that certainly need telling. There are some very poor
quality grainy photographs to further pad this cheap and cheerful formulaic
work, which looks like Wilson has adopted writing by numbers approach. In fact
he has several similar books on set themes of crime and occultism on the boil
of late. It shows a once fine writer simply recycling and regurgitating old hat
material in a very lazy quick buck fashion. The stories are of some interest,
especially if the reader has not seen them before; at least the Wilsons do look
at cults of yesteryear too, but there is no real attempt to analyze how such
cults arise or who might follow them. The leaders are simply there with no
attempt to show us why. http://www.colinwilsonworld.co.uk/
© Copyright. Arthur Chappell
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