Read Online Doctor Criminale by Malcolm Bradbury - Free Book Online
Authors: Malcolm Bradbury
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attracted large audiences in Brazil, received an honorary degree in Tokyo. He commented freely on political regimes. He also advised Walter Ulbricht on human rights and Nicolae Ceauses¸cu on
architecture – two items in his dossier that must have embarrassed him considerably.
So came the years of international fame, when he, and his books, appeared everywhere. His sales were said to rival Lenin’s in Russia, Confucius’s in China, Jacqueline Susann’s
in the United States. When by the end of the Seventies ideological hostilities began to soften, and the certainties of the left began to fade, Criminale grew not less but more influential. Now he
was going everywhere, meeting everyone. When the world, or just some particular philosophical congress, needed someone who stood in advance of Marxism, or bridged Materialism, Subjectivity and
Deconstruction, they went, it seems, for Bazlo Criminale. He travelled as if frontiers were abolished; his books crossed the East–West divide as if it had never been there. He became a master
of the conference lapel badge, a virtuoso of the plenary address. He consulted for the great international institutions: Comecon and UNESCO, the Stalin Peace Prize and the Nobel Peace Prize, the
World Bank and the European Community. He became friend to presidents. He took vacations with Gorbachev, went to the opera with Mitterrand, played golf with Reagan, drank beer with Helmut Kohl,
scoffed tea and scones with Margaret Thatcher. When he lectured at Stanford in California, three thousand people turned out to hear him conduct an obscure discussion of Mandelbrot’s Fractals.
Honorary degrees and other state honours came his way; he also became fame itself at its most serious level. One week he was photographed with Shevardnadze at the Bolshoi, the next with Madonna at
the Brown Derby, the next in an argonaut’s cap on the steam yacht of some Italian socialite, arm carelessly tossed round some topless nymph or other, Aegean in the background.
So he had become the philosopher of the Nineties, the charismatic metaphysician of the age of the laptop and Chaos Theory, the philosopher who survived after the end of the old thinking.
Finally, one evening, I put down Codicil’s difficult book, and reflected on what I’d more or less read. The more I thought about Bazlo Criminale, I realized, the more obscure and
mysterious he now seemed. Upstairs Ros sat in the bath watching old videotapes. I climbed the stairs and went and spoke to her. ‘How can anyone please everyone all the time?’ I asked.
‘Get in, sonny, I’ll show you,’ said Ros. ‘I’m talking about Criminale,’ I said, ‘The man who is always praised for his devastating sense of order, his
powers of logic. But I can’t say his life makes all that much sense to me.’ ‘Just forget Criminale for half an hour,’ said Ros, ‘Climb in, there’s plenty of
room.’ ‘How can I forget Criminale?’ I asked, sitting down on the lavatory seat, ‘I’ve been living with this man for what seems like years.’ ‘A few
days,’ said Ros. ‘And the more I think about him, the more I find out about him, the more he turns into a mystery.’ ‘What’s so mysterious?’ asked Ros,
‘He’s just a famous world intellectual and a hot-shot thinker of the Age of Glasnost.’
‘Fine, but what about the times before glasnost?’ I said, ‘This is a man who comes out of the old Marxist world, where they didn’t mess about, believe me. There was right
thinking and there was wrong thinking. If you started on the wrong kind they took your head off to make sure they stopped it.’ ‘It must have been more complicated than that,’ said
Ros, ‘They always had hardliners and dissidents.’ ‘All right, which of them was Criminale?’ I asked, ‘This is a man who’s friends with Brezhnev and mates with
Honecker. At the same time he’s hanging around with Kissinger and giving big lectures in the West.’ ‘I expect he was useful
architecture – two items in his dossier that must have embarrassed him considerably.
So came the years of international fame, when he, and his books, appeared everywhere. His sales were said to rival Lenin’s in Russia, Confucius’s in China, Jacqueline Susann’s
in the United States. When by the end of the Seventies ideological hostilities began to soften, and the certainties of the left began to fade, Criminale grew not less but more influential. Now he
was going everywhere, meeting everyone. When the world, or just some particular philosophical congress, needed someone who stood in advance of Marxism, or bridged Materialism, Subjectivity and
Deconstruction, they went, it seems, for Bazlo Criminale. He travelled as if frontiers were abolished; his books crossed the East–West divide as if it had never been there. He became a master
of the conference lapel badge, a virtuoso of the plenary address. He consulted for the great international institutions: Comecon and UNESCO, the Stalin Peace Prize and the Nobel Peace Prize, the
World Bank and the European Community. He became friend to presidents. He took vacations with Gorbachev, went to the opera with Mitterrand, played golf with Reagan, drank beer with Helmut Kohl,
scoffed tea and scones with Margaret Thatcher. When he lectured at Stanford in California, three thousand people turned out to hear him conduct an obscure discussion of Mandelbrot’s Fractals.
Honorary degrees and other state honours came his way; he also became fame itself at its most serious level. One week he was photographed with Shevardnadze at the Bolshoi, the next with Madonna at
the Brown Derby, the next in an argonaut’s cap on the steam yacht of some Italian socialite, arm carelessly tossed round some topless nymph or other, Aegean in the background.
So he had become the philosopher of the Nineties, the charismatic metaphysician of the age of the laptop and Chaos Theory, the philosopher who survived after the end of the old thinking.
Finally, one evening, I put down Codicil’s difficult book, and reflected on what I’d more or less read. The more I thought about Bazlo Criminale, I realized, the more obscure and
mysterious he now seemed. Upstairs Ros sat in the bath watching old videotapes. I climbed the stairs and went and spoke to her. ‘How can anyone please everyone all the time?’ I asked.
‘Get in, sonny, I’ll show you,’ said Ros. ‘I’m talking about Criminale,’ I said, ‘The man who is always praised for his devastating sense of order, his
powers of logic. But I can’t say his life makes all that much sense to me.’ ‘Just forget Criminale for half an hour,’ said Ros, ‘Climb in, there’s plenty of
room.’ ‘How can I forget Criminale?’ I asked, sitting down on the lavatory seat, ‘I’ve been living with this man for what seems like years.’ ‘A few
days,’ said Ros. ‘And the more I think about him, the more I find out about him, the more he turns into a mystery.’ ‘What’s so mysterious?’ asked Ros,
‘He’s just a famous world intellectual and a hot-shot thinker of the Age of Glasnost.’
‘Fine, but what about the times before glasnost?’ I said, ‘This is a man who comes out of the old Marxist world, where they didn’t mess about, believe me. There was right
thinking and there was wrong thinking. If you started on the wrong kind they took your head off to make sure they stopped it.’ ‘It must have been more complicated than that,’ said
Ros, ‘They always had hardliners and dissidents.’ ‘All right, which of them was Criminale?’ I asked, ‘This is a man who’s friends with Brezhnev and mates with
Honecker. At the same time he’s hanging around with Kissinger and giving big lectures in the West.’ ‘I expect he was useful
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