Bill Hopkins’ The Leap!

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Bill Hopkins ^[2] (1928–2011) was a British Right-wing writer and intellectual who was associated in the 1950s with the so-called Angry Young Men, which was less a movement than a loose journalistic appellation for writers from mostly working- and middle-class backgrounds who were dubbed “angry” because of their disillusionment with post-Second World War British society. Some of the Angries hardly knew each other.

In 1957, Hopkins’ first novel, The Divine and the Decay, was published in in London by MacGibbon & Kee.[1] ^[3] Also in 1957, MacGibbon & Kee published his manifesto, “Ways Without a Precedent,” in Declaration,[2] ^[4] an anthology of the Angry Young Men, along with contributions by Colin Wilson ^[5], Stuart Holroyd ^[6], Lindsay Anderson, Kenneth Tynan, John Osborne, and others, including Doris Lessing, who was neither young nor angry, and was also a woman.

It was a promising start. Many of Hopkins’ fellow Angries went on to enjoy outstanding careers. Anderson was an award-winning film, television, and theatre director, as well as a critic. His best-known movie is If . . . . (1968). Tynan enjoyed success as a theatre critic and writer, best known for some filth called Oh! Calcutta! (1969). Osborne was a playwright, screenwriter, and actor best known for Look Back in Anger (1956). Wilson published well over 100 books. Holroyd, too, became a prolific author. (The odd girl out, Lessing, wrote more than 50 novels. She won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2007 — and actually deserved it.)

Hopkins’ career, however, was cut short by the storm of criticism that greeted The Divine and the Decay, which was condemned not just as bad writing but as a danger to liberal democracy.[3] ^[7] To protect human rights and impressionable youth, Hopkins’ publisher decided to withdraw and pulp all unsold copies, even though the book was enjoying respectable sales not merely despite but because of the critical furor.

Hopkins never accepted the judgment of his critics, of course, but the experience was still demoralizing. When the manuscript of his second novel, Time of Totality, was accidentally destroyed by a cigarette, Hopkins did not bother to retype it.[4] ^[8] Instead, Hopkins became a successful art and antiques dealer. He disappeared so completely from the literary scene that Doris Lessing thought that he had died young.[5] ^[9]

The Divine and the Decay was republished in 1984 as The Leap! by a London-based firm called Deverell & Birdsey.[6] ^[12] Hopkins’ faithful friend Colin Wilson penned a Foreword. This time, however, the book went almost unnoticed. If the first edition was aborted, the second was stillborn.

When it comes to literature, I never read bad books. I admit that I have started many of them. But as soon as it becomes clear that a book is bad, I toss it aside. Life is just too short for bad books. I have read The Leap! twice, which means that I think it is a good book. But if I am reading The Leap! correctly, I must conclude that everyone else has gotten it wrong: not just the critics but Hopkins himself, as well as his friends Colin Wilson and Jonathan Bowden ^[13], and even the redoubtable Revilo P. Oliver ^[14].[7] ^[15]

To a man, they all see Peter Plowart, the main character of The Leap!, as an earnest portrait of a Nietzschean Übermensch who aspires to dictatorial power and is willing to wade through oceans of blood to attain it. This sent Hopkins’ critics into paroxysms of rage while spurring his friends to admiration and apologetics.

But I read The Leap! as a darkly comic depiction of a man who is both loathsome and laughable. Plowart is a narcissistic sociopath. He has delusions of grandeur. He thinks of himself as a great man, a man of destiny. He also thinks himself far cleverer than he actually is. Moreover, he repeatedly sabotages himself through arrogance, impulsiveness, and downright stupidity.

The Leap! is genuinely comic, but darkly comic, because Plowart leaves a wake of misery and death behind him. He may well die in the end. Hopkins leaves that unclear. But if he does survive, it is by sheer luck and the connivance of another piece of human dross.

The Leap! is ideal material for a Coen Brothers film in the vein of Blood Simple or Fargo. Many episodes of the plot are farcical, featuring a cheating wife, a jealous drunken husband, and even a lover climbing into a window with a rope and grappling hook. Midway in the novel, Hopkins introduces a letter confessing to a shocking murder. This letter is stolen, then retrieved, then stolen again, then used as blackmail to arrange a sexual encounter (employing the aforementioned rope and grapple), then retrieved through another murder. No, Plowart does not drop an anvil on the victim’s head.

The Leap! is set in Britian in the 1950s. Peter Plowart is the second-in-command of a Right-wing political party, the New Britain League. On the eve of an election, he decides to murder the party leader, Sir Gregory Bourcey, and take control. He finds someone to commit the crime. Then, to give himself an alibi, he travels to the fictional isle of Vachau, in the Channel Islands.

This is a hare-brained scheme. Because Plowart has arranged the murder, presumably he can arrange the time. Thus he can provide himself with an alibi anywhere, simply by being with someone at the time of the crime. And wouldn’t it be better to be with people who knew him, rather than strangers who might take no notice of him? Beyond that, simply having an alibi is not sufficient to clear one of involvement if one had partners in crime.

Being a narcissist, Plowart is the kind of man who walks into a room and immediately sizes up everyone in terms of a hierarchy: some are to be sucked up to; most are to be shat down upon. This, he tells himself, is the Nietzschean way: will-to-power and all that.

But that’s just a rationalization for a self-defeating psychological compulsion to gain attention for himself by causing pain in others. Beautiful and charming narcissists attract admiration by being beautiful and charming. Ugly and disagreeable narcissists attract attention by being obnoxious. Everywhere Plowart goes, he takes pleasure in making others uncomfortable, even if it is merely by being a surly conversationalist. Nota bene: If you want to gain power, shouldn’t you be concerned with making friends rather than enemies everywhere you go?

Despite his conviction of his own superiority, Plowart’s obnoxious behavior is rooted in an inferiority complex. He is convinced that he will fail in every relationship, so he destroys them in advance in order to maintain a sense of control. Convinced that he is doomed to lose, he resolves at least to lose on his own terms.[8] ^[16]

Because Plowart decided to go to Vachau for his alibi, he can’t easily keep abreast of the news, especially news of his crime. Thus he takes a short-wave radio with him. When the radio is accidentally broken on the journey, he flies into a rage and slaps the man who bumped it. When the man and his friends threaten retaliation, Plowart draws a knife. Who are these peasants to get in his way? Why should he treat them any better than a dog he might kick in the street? But it turns out that all three are among the 70 residents of Vachau. He’ll be seeing more of them. Nota bene: If you are trying to establish your alibi for an upcoming murder for which you will be a person of interest, it is best not to act like a violent psychopath in public.

Plowart then takes great pains to get his radio fixed. When this proves impossible, he seeks out a place on Vachau where he can listen to the radio the next day. It is only after he hears of Bourcey’s murder the following morning that he begins to think that he has shown a bit too much interest in listening to the news, something that practically everyone he has encountered could testify to, along with his violent temper. What a brilliant alibi this genius has woven for himself.

When Plowart arrives on Vachau, the natives already know who he is and give him a chilly reception. When an outcast named Buffonet carries Plowart’s luggage for money, he is beaten for breaking ranks. Fortunately, Plowart is not the only outsider on the island. He stays in the house of a crippled English drunkard named Lumas and his unfaithful local wife. The host installs Plowart in an attic room, accessible only by a ladder. This is the room used by his wife and her lover for their assignations, since the cripple cannot climb the ladder. As soon as he sets foot in his new room, Plowart tears down the pictures and tears up the rugs. Beyond creating conflict, what is the point of such behavior? He’s only a temporary resident. When Mrs. Lumas asks Plowart to change rooms (because her lover will soon visit), he haughtily refuses, deepening her resentment. This pointlessly boorish behavior will soon have consequences, as everyone but a Nietzschean Übermensch could predict.

A police detective was sent to interview Plowart about his comrade’s death. As a general rule, detectives love criminals with highly inflated egos: medical doctors, college professors, your garden variety Übermensch. They are never as clever as they think they are, so it is child’s play to catch them lying. Plowart is arrogant and evasive. In the first few seconds, he establishes himself as the prime suspect by pretending to be surprised at the news of Bourcey’s death, even though the locals — and thus the detective — know that he already heard the news. He has, moreover, already written and posted statements on Bourcey’s death.

Plowart is later told that a letter has come for him from the mainland, but the detective has intercepted it. Plowart demands the letter before the detective has a chance to open it. When he reads it, he is thunderstruck. Plowart the genius apparently chose complete imbeciles to kill Bourcey. They were supposed to make it look like a robbery gone wrong, but they forgot to steal anything. Plowart has a nasty temper, so to placate him, one of the imbeciles sat down and wrote a letter of apology detailing the entire murder and incriminating both of them in the process.

Later, Mrs. Lumas’ brutish lover Lachanell gives Plowart a well-deserved beating and steals the letter. But he, too, is an imbecile. When he reads the letter, his first thought is not to protect his lover from the homicidal psychopath staying in her house. Instead, he uses the letter to blackmail Plowart so he no longer prevents him from visiting Mrs. Lumas. Plowart, however, lures Lachanell into a trap and incites the drunken Mr. Lumas to attack him. Lachanell is stabbed, maybe even killed, and the incriminating letter is recovered and burned. Hopkins’ description of how Plowart hatches this scheme is telling: Plowart spends a morning chain-smoking and getting staggering drunk on rum. This is typical sociopath behavior. Shallow emotions lead to easy boredom. Boredom leads to the pursuit of easy stimulation though drugs and alcohol.

The most remarkable resident of Vachau is a young woman, Claremont Capothy, the daughter of the Island’s Seigneur. (Vachau is modeled on Sark, which had a feudal form of government until 2008, when it was ended due to the connivance of the European Union and the billionaire Barclay brothers.) Claremont is highly intelligent, psychologically insightful, and entirely self-possessed. She immediately sees through Plowart’s façade of self-confidence and superiority. He is crippled by an inner emptiness and tormented by nightmares. The inner emptiness is his lack of a soul, i.e. empathy for others, hence his lack of conscience and estrangement from humanity, which he mistakes for superiority. Her diagnosis of Plowart is: “. . . fear is your strongest characteristic, and you can only go forward by a desperate explosion of will.”[9] ^[19]

Plowart is drawn to Claremont because he wants to know the secret of her self-possession. She is also a beautiful young woman. And, being a narcissist, he needs an audience. Unfortunately, since Plowart is a phony, he needs an audience of people he can fool, which simply adds to his loneliness. He seems to fool nobody but himself, but after a few moments, most people give him a wide berth, so he persists in his delusion of superiority. He is in the pit of hell but thinks he is just lonely at the top.

Claremont proves to be a dangerously perceptive audience. After just a few minutes of Plowart’s Nietzschean posturing, she intuits that he was behind Bourcey’s murder. When she asks him flat-out, his reaction is damning. You’d think a genius would have anticipated such a possibility. Plowart’s lack of empathy made it possible for him to commit murder. His narcissism makes it impossible for him to keep it a secret. Also, his lack of empathy guarantees that his attempts to manipulate others are clumsy and obvious to normal people.

In the absence of her father, the Seigneur, Claremont is the law on Vachau. But instead of arresting Plowart, she tries to help him. Clearly she is smitten. Claremont is drawn to Plowart because, like so many women, she initially mistakes his Dark Triad traits—narcissism, sociopathy, and would-be Machiavellianism (as we see, his schemes are pathetically clumsy and self-defeating)—as healthy “Alpha” traits. Hopkins does not really describe Plowart’s appearance but does mention that he has a superb physique, which can’t hurt.

The two have a brief but complicated relationship. When Plowart tries to rape her, she stops him cold by displaying her naked body, which is beautiful, but the gesture destroys his ardor. Later, she invites him to stay over at the Seigneury, which leads to what Ayn Rand called “rape by engraved invitation.” Claremont’s superior self-possession, however, leaves Plowart feeling empty and humiliated. But when Plowart gleefully outlines how he incited Lumas to assault and likely murder his wife’s lover, Claremont decides that Plowart cannot be helped. Instead, he must die.

Claremont tells Plowart that the secret of her self-possession is a quasi-mystical experience she had when she swam to some rocks off Vachau through a swift and deadly current. At a certain point, as she crossed the dangerous waters, “the rocks moved” toward her.

What she means by this is unclear. Did the current suddenly shift? Or did she overcome the currents and her fear “by a desperate explosion of will”?

Maybe she never swam to the rocks at all. Maybe she is trying to lure Plowart to certain death. Or maybe she is just trying to test him by putting him in a dangerous situation. (Something she has already done in the novel.)

Claremont joins him in the swim. If the swim is impossible, then she is killing herself. If the swim is possible, then she still may be counting on her superior skills to save her while the currents rid the world of Plowart.

Whatever her intent, the whole idea seems hare-brained. Wouldn’t it have been simpler to just call the police? This sequence, moreover, is the climax of the novel. This is a serious dramatic flaw that I first encountered in A Passage to India. One should never make the climax of a story contingent on an inscrutable twist or kink of feminine psychology.

Claremont is swept away, probably to her doom. Plowart, however, has that “desperate explosion of will.” “The rocks move.” Exhausted, he manages to clamber upon them to safety.

When Claremont and Plowart plunge into the dangerous waters, a local sounds the alarm, and a rescue boat is launched. When it arrives at the rocks, it is captained by Quiller, the local whom Plowart slapped and threatened with a knife for accidentally breaking his radio. Quiller decides to leave Plowart to the elements for allowing Claremont to drown, as well as for being an all-round bastard.

As the boat turns away, Plowart begins shouting, “You can’t kill me, you fools! I’m indestructible, I tell you . . .”[10] ^[22] This is the precise opposite of what he should say. I am sure Plowart’s delusions of grandeur are sincere. But in truth, he’s on the brink of destruction, his life is entirely in Quiller’s hands, and a bit of contrition is his only rational hope. But Plowart is so detached from reality that he can’t even lie to save his life.

As the boat moves off, however, one of the men on board slyly releases a life preserver. It is Buffonet, the outcast. It is never made clear if Plowart finds the life preserver or reaches shore. But he continues his insulting harangue. The last words of the novel are: “Indestructible, you fools!”

You’d need a heart of stone not to find this funny.

The critics of The Leap! evidently thought that Hopkins wished to depict Peter Plowart as a hero to be emulated. Thus the book had to be stopped, first by bad reviews, then by being pulled from publication.

My defense is that The Leap! is obviously a satire, that Plowart is not a hero but a buffoon, that no intelligent person could admire or imitate him, and that Hopkins’ liberal critics should be deeply satisfied that Plowart gets his comeuppance in the end.

But this was not the defense offered by Hopkins or his po-faced friends Wilson and Bowden. Moreover, as the careers of various Alt Right Plowarts prove, there is no shortage of people who will follow transparent narcissists and sociopaths, sticking with them through self-induced crisis after self-induced crisis and never getting the joke.

In a way, it is fortunate that the Right seems to attract only Dark Dyad types: narcissistic sociopaths who are so inept at Machiavellianism that they are incapable of concealing their repulsive traits and reining in their self-destructive impulses. True Dark Triad types would be harder to spot, and thus far more damaging. But they probably gravitate toward mainstream politics, where the real money and power are.

So maybe The Leap! is only a comedy by accident. Maybe it really is a dangerous book. But if Hopkins’ portrait of Peter Plowart can inoculate readers against falling for real-life versions, you may find the The Leap! worth diving into.

Notes

[1] ^[25] Bill Hopkins, The Divine and the Decay (London: MacGibbon & Kee, 1957).

[2] ^[26] Bill Hopkins, “Ways Without a Precedent ^[27],” in Declaration, ed. Tom Maschler (London: MacGibbon & Kee, 1957).

[3] ^[28] I am drawing upon Colin Wilson’s The Angry Years: The Rise and Fall of the Angry Young Men (London: Robson Books, 2007), pp. 126–30.

[4] ^[29] Wilson, The Angry Years, p. 130.

[5] ^[30] Jonathan Bowden, “Bill Hopkins’ The Divine and the Decay,” Western Civilization Bites Back, ed. Greg Johnson (San Francisco: Counter-Currents, 2014), p. 158.

[6] ^[31] Bill Hopkins, The Leap!, Foreword by Colin Wilson (London: Deverell & Birdsey, 1984).

[7] ^[32] Revilo P. Oliver, “Bill Hopkins’ The Divine and the Decay ^[33],” Counter-Currents, June 7, 2011.

[8] ^[34] Greg Johnson, “Honorable Defeatists ^[35],” In Defense of Prejudice ^[36] (San Francisco: Counter-Currents, 2017).

[9] ^[37] The Leap!, p. 53.

[10] ^[38] The Leap!, p. 234.