John Fowles: "The Collector"

The stated purpose of The Economist newspaper is "to take part in a severe contest between intelligence, which presses forward, and an unworthy, timid ignorance obstructing our progress". I agree with that motto in principle; except I think it misguided to define victory in terms of "pressing forward" and "progress". But the fundamental opposition between intelligence and ignorance is clearly real.

A similar theme is found in John Fowles' first novel, "The Collector". It is a painful book to read; not because it is bad, but because its subject matter is so raw and the delivery and message are so powerful. It is essentially the same struggle - ignorance against intelligence, with intelligence remaining undefeated in spirit, but crushed in reality by the relentless onslaught of ignorance.

The character impersonating intelligence is a young woman; and it is through her that half of the book is told. She is innocent, idealistic; and yet that is no excuse to dismiss her opinions as some hippy fringe nonsense out of which one has to grow. She is the voice of the author (although that is of course a big oversimplification) and the voice of intelligence. She just happens to be a young female; but in fact she starts thinking what she is thinking because of her exposure to the ideas of an older artist, who is a male, with whom she has exchanges like this one:

He let me go up and made me sit on the divan and he put on some music and turned out the lights and the moon came through the window. It fell on my legs and lap through the skylight, a lovely slow silver moon. Sailing. And he sat down in the armchair on the other side of the room, in the shadows.
It was the music.
The Goldberg Variations.
There was one towards the very end that was very slow, very simple, very sad, but so beautiful beyond words or drawing or anything but music, beautiful there in the moonlight. Moon-music, so silvery, so far, so noble.
The two of us in that room. No past, no future. All intense deep that-time-only. A feeling that everything must end, the music, ourselves, the moon, everything. That if you can get to the heart of things you find sadness for ever and ever, everywhere, but a beautiful silver sadness, like a Christ face.
Accepting the sadness. Knowing that to pretend that it was all gay was treachery. Treachery to everyone sad at that moment, everyone ever sad, treachery to such music, such truth.

When she is faced with ignorance - impersonated by a gray young male who is suddenly rich because he won a lottery - she realizes how incomprehensible the ignorant (the Calibans) are to the intelligent, and vice versa:

If he does think about the pictures, he accepts everything I say. If I said Michelangelo's David was a frying-pan he'd say - "I see."
Such people. I must have stood next to them in the Tube, passed them in the street, of course I've overheard them and I know they existed. But never really believed they existed. So totally blind. It never seemed possible.

Why should we tolerate their beastly Calibanity? Why should every vital and creative and good person be martyred by the great universal stooge around?
In this situation I'm a representative.
A martyr. Imprisoned, unable to grow. At the mercy of this resentment, this hateful millstone envy of the Calibans of this world. Because they all hate us, they hate us for being different, for not being them, for their own not being like us. They persecute us, they crowd us out, they send us to Coventry, they sneer at us, they yawn at us, they blindfold themselves and stuff up their ears. They do anything to avoid having to take notice of us and respect us. They go crawling after the great ones among us when they're dead. They pay thousands and thousands for the Van Goghs and Modiglianis they'd have spat on at the time they were painted. Guffawed at. Made coarse jokes about.
I hate them.
I hate the uneducated and the ignorant. I hate the pompous and the phoney. I hate the jealous and the resentful. I hate the crabbed and the mean and the petty. I hate all ordinary dull people who aren't ashamed of being dull and little. I hate what G.P. calls the New People, the new class people with their cars and their money and their tellies and their stupid vulgarities and their stupid crawling imitations of the bourgeoisie.
I love honesty and freedom and giving. I love making, I love doing. I love being to the full, I love everything which is not sitting and watching and copying the dead at heart.

The most blood curdling part of The Collector is not the crushing of intelligence by ignorance. It is the thought that as much as we would like to see ourselves on the side of intelligence, there is a lot recognizable on the side of ignorance too. Worse than ignorance is only ignorance convinced of its intelligence and righteousness, a Caliban convinced he is a martyr. One must listen continuously to oneself to detect the double-dealings in our souls.

I listened for traffic, but there was none. I heard an owl. And an aeroplane.
If only people knew what they flew over.
We're all in aeroplanes.