- The Leap by Bill Hopkins
Bill
Hopkins's first novel, The Divine
and Decay, attracted an appallingly hostile press when it first came
out over twenty-five years ago. One usually imagines that twenty or thirty
critics cannot be wrong, but they all seem to have been wildly inaccurate
in so far as this unusual and original story is concerned. By any
standards, it is an outstanding and vehement first novel. A tremendous
amount of careful crafting has gone into it; the prose is alert to a wide
range of sensations and emotions. D.H. Lawrence once said that rules about
writing are only useful to those who want to imitate other people's novels
and, to his credit, Hopkins has written a novel that is of himself
entirely. The island setting; the curious fractious hero; the muscular
political diatribes; the mix of the grotesque and the appealing; the
simmering romanticism; the passionate melodrama; the excursions into pure
fantasy - such a bizarre mix, so far as I know, has few precursors. The
perversity and unpredictability of Plowart's temperament may recall
certain of Knut Hamsun's characters but the likeness is purely
coincidental.
For
the new version of the novel retitled The
Leap, Colin Wilson has written a stimulating foreword, invoking Max
Stirner. He discusses the flaws in the current idea of a Utopia where
everyone can realise their potential and goes on to question the
Jewish-Christian ethic with its tendency to morally elevate the poor, the
sick and the oppressed. Paraphrasing Nietzsche, he suggests that such
societies play false to human nature and a more heroic mould is needed to
channel the tendencies of those naturally inclined towards ambition,
violence, greed and competitiveness. This sounds like sense, but it could
be equally forcefully argued that, even in the context of a western
democracy, the Jewish-Christian ethic is only honoured by default, so to
speak, and it is actually the aggressive, the competitive, the ambitious,
for whom honour and merit is reserved.
Bill
Hopkins added a preface to the new edition wherein he provides information
concerning the novel’s genesis (left-wing millionaire offering Hopkins
money up front and guarantee of publication) and critical reception
(abusive reviews and timid millionaire trying to recall and scrap copies),
mitigated by evidence of the work’s ‘continuing potency’ and appeal.
He outlines his purpose in the original writing:
“The
central problem that concerned me was the dearth of prototypes in the way
of new heroes and heroines capable of generating fresh values and visions
to a spiritually directionless and dying society such as our own. To my
mind, spawning such possibilities is the paramount purpose of literature,
with entertaining or titillating empty-headed readers only a secondary
consideration.”
In
an interview with Dale Salwak, Hopkins had said much the same thing:
“Briefly,
one must judge literature on whether it’s creating men who can change
the world. The phenomena, the circumstances, the events of our living have
become so complex that more and more people are succumbing to nervous
breakdowns and all sorts of psychosomatic disorders. The purpose of
literature is to make men infinitely adaptable and superior to all the
complexities of the future. You can’t continue a literature which is
concerned merely with comforting and bandaging weak people...Literature
has to make Titans.”
One
could take Hopkins side by saying it is better to aim for the stars rather
than sprawl in the gutter, but many would argue that this statement goes
beyond the confines of the subject. Is reading capable of effecting such
changes? Is that its
essential purpose? True, writers like Dickens were able to influence
social reform, but they hardly could be said to have created a new type of
human being anymore than perusing a Superman
comic will teach one how to fly.
A
practical answer to what Hopkins is driving at may be found by reading The Leap. The central character, Plowart, appears to be one of these
prototype Titans - a leader of a political party with sinister Mosleyite
overtones. After arranging the murder of his co-leader and rival, he
retires to a remote Channel Island to quell rumours of his possible
involvement in the crime. He puts up at the house of the despised cripple,
Lumas, whose wife is having an affair. Here we learn that, aside from a
fairly ruthless political credo, Plowart has uncompromising ideas about
interior furnishing, and, on being given a charming airy room, spends
about half an hour ripping all the tasteful landscapes off the wall until
it is a kind of monk's cell. This is to underline the fanatical purity of
his purpose.
Scenes
like this and other shows of irascibility - for instance, when he breaks a
radio and hurls abuse at the islanders - give the impression of mental
instability. In fact, one
could write about The Leap as an
astute study of grandiosity and delusion. And it must be admitted that
Plowart's rudeness gives the novel far more piquance than a more bland
hero would provide. Plowart may be strident and preposterous, but he is
also highly charged and vitally responsive. Eventually he meets the young
dame of the island, the attractive Claremont, who acts as his sounding
board. She is fascinated by the blunt force of his charisma. If you are
stronger and morally superior to your opponents, he argues, why not remove
them by violent means if the outcome is a better future for the majority?
With
increasing passion, he said: "I shall murder five hundred men with my
bare hands, with rusty hatchets, with garrotting wires, with guns, knives
and poisons and stain my soul so red it's past all religious redemption -
if it will make our species great."
Claremont might have tactfully pointed out
that, although stab-in-the-back Machiavellianism can sound bracingly
simple, were there several Plowarts on the scene, each obdurately
convinced of his future greatness, things could become very messy and
competitive.
After
various dialogues and intrigues, we reach the penultimate scene where
Plowart is challenged by Claremont to swim out to some dangerous rocks
which, she claims, can be ‘willed’ to move towards the swimmer; the
act of ‘willing’ confers tremendous inner strength. Believing this,
Plowart takes up the challenge and they both swim towards the rocks.
Claremont, who is the stronger swimmer, drowns, while Plowart is saved by
a coincidental twist of fate. The final image is of him swimming towards
the shore and proclaiming his indestructibility.
With
its tilted logic and perverse originality, the end would seem to place an
almost magical faith in the power of bludgeoning self-affirmation. Plowart
is left buoyant in the tide of human affairs and the world awaits his
return.
Not
only is the plot memorable, the rhetoric in The
Leap is animated and subtle in places and, thankfully, Plowart's views
are intelligently balanced by Claremont who is liberal, compassionate and
sensitive. A genuinely even-handed approach is evident in these exchanges;
like Shaw, Hopkins can ventriloquise for radically opposing viewpoints.
When Plowart speaks of taking hold of the wheel of Mankind's Charabanc and
driving it full-speed to the terminal of belief, Claremont points out that
he has no idea of his destination, to which the other, with rather lofty
and untypical mysticism, responds, "The definitive act of the
visionary is to presume his revelation will come inevitably."
For a political leader, this is a delightfully blithe assumption
and it is perhaps superfluous to point out that Plowart is a slippery and
opportunistic debater. He criticises the hypocrisies and lies implicit in
the affairs of liberal democracies; yet one wonders why he finds such
practises reprehensible, as presumably - to further his aim - he would use
the same tactics himself; (he has made it perfectly clear that he believes
in violence and deceit as legitimate political strategies). He talks about
the necessary 'violence' of surgeons, psychiatrists, vets and soldiers, as
if to equate the incidental infliction of pain during a curative procedure
with that of a military engagement - hardly a sustainable analogy. And
later he cites as an example of maximum compassion an ambulance driver on
a battlefield, though what such an act of caring courage has in common
with Plowart's brutalist ethic one is at a loss to say. So, although the
denunciatory polemic is enjoyable, much of it is basically
law-of-the-jungle trumpeting and, in fact, it could be argued that what
Plowart advocates has been tried out on several occasions with results
even less praiseworthy than the liberal democracies for whom he has
boundless contempt.
If one was assessing a political manifesto, these reservations would be a serious deficiency, but fortunately The Leap is a novel and none of the foregoing detract from it as intelligent and audacious entertainment - one of the outstanding novels of the sixties. Structurally there are flaws. The narrative sprints ahead and then halts abruptly. When the book should be working swiftly towards its climax, an inappropriate break is introduced when the reader is presented with the love letters of a doomed affair. What Hopkins is up to here - juxtaposing sexual craving against Plowart's power craving? - is none too clear, but it does not ultimately matter. These slightly off-key touches, if anything, increase the books appeal, in that it makes no concessions to surface slickness, although the writing is consistently apt and immediate. So finally one has to admit that The Leap aims - and succeeds - in its intent: to be a controversial, gripping read that challenges and stuns comfortable assumptions.