Doubt vs. Lies in Malcolm Bradbury’s Doctor Criminale

Abstract

The lie as both a personal and collective entity is central to Malcolm Bradbury’s 1992 novel, Doctor Criminale, in which lies have a wide range of contexts—political, academic, cultural, historical, geographical, etc.Using J. Mahon's definition of lying (i.e., a lie requires four necessary conditions) this article analyzes Bradbury’s work as a collective investigation. One of the conditions—the “untruthfulness condition”—requires that the intentionally deceptive statement be detected. We seek to demonstrate that one of the essential instruments for detecting lies is doubt, in this case the skeptical doubt of the narrator, Francis Jay, who undertakes a quest for truth regarding the internationally celebrated intellectual, Doctor Bazlo Criminale—a figure of modern cosmopolitanism in the view of the public but, in fact, a liar. We also explore the ethics of lying in totalitarian regimes, drawing on St. Augustine’s taxonomy of culpability and G. Mellema's recent work on the distinctions between personal and collective responsibility. The phenomenon of public intellectuals and their ambiguous personal impact throughout the twentieth century is also highlighted.Finally, the article emphasizes the duplicitous nature of detection, showing that compliance with all the conditions for lying takes place in what Wayne Booth has called “a secret communion of the author and reader behind the narrator's back.”