One Three One by Julian Cope review – a 'hooligan road novel'

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jun/11/one-three-one-hooligan-road-novel-julian-cope-review

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Imagine you're a reader for a publishing house, ploughing through the slush pile. You get the global conspiracy theories, the Apocalypses Rewritten For Our Age!!!, the love stories where the lovers only get it together on page 410. And here's another one, sliding out of its padded brown envelope. One Three One. Not much joy there, you think. A Time-Shifting Gnostic … Phew, a no-brainer. Straight back in the bag. You type in the poor deluded soul's name at the top of the form rejection letter. "Dear Mr Julius Cone, thank you …" Next!

But hang on a sec. Take a closer look. Everything about it may scream "Bonkers!" but you're about to return to sender one of the most brilliant, serious, funny, life-crammed novels any reader is likely to lay their mitts on. And that's exactly because this Time-Shifting Gnostic Hooligan Road Novel is a gloriously mashed mash-up of all those no‑brainer automatic-rejection genres hereabove listed. It is also a dayglo memoir of the rave era, a travel guide to Sardinia's 131 motorway, a carefully laid-out counterargument to CS Lewis's Mere Christianity, an eyewitness account of pre-match shenanigans at Italia 90, a sober attempt to extend the visionary legacy of DH Lawrence and a comic romp.

Character names are always a good way of calibrating a writer's verbal energy level. If they're simmering on gas mark 1, they'll go for John or Susan. Cope must be Chernobyl in meltdown to choose Cowtown Unslutter, Walter-Under-the‑Bridge and even Lord Leander Pitt-Rivers Baring-Gould. These, and many more, cross the errant path of Rock Section, picaresque hero of One Three One.

When we join him, on 10 June 2006, Rock is just about to soil his leather kecks in the toilet of an inbound flight to Sardinia – the mad Mediterranean island where Rock and his hooligan mates were, 14 years earlier, kidnapped, taken to a "fascist cheese factory" and tortured. Rock Section has returned in order to a) seek truth and b) exact vengeance.

In what is the book's most predictable move, Rock Section turns out to be a strung-out former pop singer whose musical tastes are not dissimilar to those of the "arch-drude" Julian Cope, author of Krautrocksampler, and whose wholehearted engagement with Stonehenge-type structures is shared with Mr J Cope Esq, author of The Modern Antiquarian and The Megalithic European. In other words, this novel is the semi-autobiographical culmination of Julian Cope's life's work – that being, as he has modestly explained, an attempt to lay down "the Ur-Text of Rock'n'Roll".

It is hard to imagine Cope's post-the Teardrop Explodes trajectory without that most Iggy Poppian prefix: "Ur-". Everything Cope has done, since fleeing the Top of the Pops spotlight, is an attempt to dig his way back to what goes before, what lies beneath. In a move as simultaneously dumb and sophisticated as the Stooges' "I Wanna Be Your Dog", he has asked, again and again, whether there might be some profounder significance to the "rock" part of rock'n'roll. His life, like that of Rock Section, has been a quest for, er, Elemental Truth.

We live in a society that is not big on wisdom, but Cope has ended up becoming a genuine culture hero. He doesn't just want to listen to a nice record, he wants mighty sound energies to cleanse the Doors of Perception. He doesn't just want to visit prehistoric sites, he wants them to address him by his True Name. And he doesn't just want to write The Next Big Thing, he wants to blow our tiny minds. One Three One is the dream letter into which he has put everything he knows, loves, remembers, hopes.

So, reader, are you going to reject that or not?

• Toby Litt's novels include I play the drums in a band called okay. To order One Three One for £11.99 with free UK p&p call Guardian book service on 0330 333 6846 or go to guardianbookshop.co.uk.