Doctor Criminale by Malcolm Bradbury Read Free Book Online Page B

key modern idea and he was gnawing it like a bone. ‘The Philosopher
King’ was the title of one of the articles (from an American magazine) I read in the pile that Ros brought home; it described him as the only true philosopher left in a post-philosophical
culture, the man who has singlehandedly reinvigorated philosophy by writing its epitaph. Clearly no late modern idea was really an idea, no contemporary ideology pulling its weight as an ideology,
until Criminale had tried it, put it through the fine grinder of his mind, tested it to destruction, given it – or withheld – his imprimatur. You could say, indeed, that by the
beginning of the Eighties Criminale had already become to modern thought pretty much what Napoleon was to brandy. Nobody would have taken the stuff so seriously had not someone so obviously
important and prestigious taken such an interest.
    In short, as I came to discover, in those taut and tiring days after the Booker, Criminale was a true Modern Master. In fact if you want to find out more about him, as I did, you only need turn
to the small volume on him (by Roger Scruton) in the ‘Modern Masters’ series, edited by Frank Kermode, published by Fontana Books. Here he appears in the list between Chomsky and
Derrida – a fate, to be fair, not of his own choosing, but simply deriving from the random lottery of the alphabet. In what the blurb aptly defines as ‘a truly exhilarating examination
of Criminale’s work’, Scruton warmly compares him with Marx and Nietzsche, Lukacs and Rosa Luxemburg, Gorky and Adam Smith (of course Scruton compares everyone with Adam Smith), and
sees him as the modern Goethe. Not every single one of these comparisons goes in Criminale’s favour, but there is one that does. The others were all dead. While Criminale was alive, and well,
and living in . . . well, where on earth was Criminale living? Probably not on earth at all, but in some jumbo jet overflying the Pacific. For Criminale wasn’t just famous, he was also that
new phenomenon: the intellectual as frequent flyer, more airmiles to his credit than Dan Quayle. And the truth is, as I soon found out, researching and re-researching our one-hour feature for the
series ‘Great Thinkers of the Age of Glasnost’, trying to keep up with a truly all-round man is truly all-round work. Of Criminale there seemed to be simply no end.
    *
    One day Ros’s big friend Lavinia showed up. Big she was indeed – big across the shoulders, monumental everywhere else, dressed like a sofa, but ten times more
aggressive. I realized that some stormy dispute had blown up between Ros and her partner, and that what’s more I was its subject. Lavinia, it seemed, had serious doubts about whether someone
like myself, untrained and unwashed in the field of television production, should have been entrusted with a key project on which the future of Nada Productions depended. The word
‘toyboy’ was used, I well remember, several times, both in my presence (‘So this is the toyboy, is it, darling?’) and then on the other side of a half-open door I happened
to sit down quite close to.
    ‘But he’s brilliant, really,’ I heard Ros declare several times. ‘In bed maybe, darling,’ said Lavinia, ‘But really, Ros. All he does is sit on his pretty
little butt all day and read things. That’s not how you research a major programme. Perhaps you’re tiring the poor sod out.’ ‘No, Lav, he jogs every lunchtime, he can take
it,’ I heard Ros say, not with perfect truthfulness. ‘Okay, you’re giving
him
the treatment,’ Lavinia said, ‘Fine, but what I’d like to know is, when is
he going to give
us
the treatment?’ ‘He’s made lots of notes,’ said Ros. ‘Darling, if it was notes I was after I’d have commissioned Andrew Lloyd
Webber,’ said Lavinia, ‘I have to have a real treatment. Something I can go to Eldorado with and raise oodles of money, right? Sex is sex but cash is better. Where the hell