Vintage Muggeridge
Barlow, Geoffrey
than he ever defines American interests, analyzes the Soviet threat, or explains under just what circumstances Americans might have to fight. America Can Win seems to have been writ-ten in a sterile...
...Paul's Family Magazine, P.O...
...What editor Geoffrey Barlow has assembled instead is a collection of Malcolm Muggeridge's lectures and ad-dresses dealing with "religion and society," the proceeds intended to benefit the activities of Mother Teresa in Calcutta...
...But such casual reductionism cannot come anywhere near conveying the true flavor of so complex and elusive a figure as Muggeridge...
...Why do conservatives buy liberal magazines for their children...
...Box 772 A Fort Scott, KS 66701 1-800-523-5562 VINTAGE MUGGERIDGE: RELIGION AND SOCIETY Edited by Geoffrey Barlow/Wm...
...B. Eerdmans, a religious publishing house, inevitably aroused expectations of a well-chosen and long-overdue anthology, expectations which are not meant to be satisfied by the finished product...
...n L.hn GrecnI .I Whltnn, Vol...
...Johnson, Blake and Dostoevsky, than right with Voltaire, Rousseau, the Huxleys, Herbert Spencer, H. G. Wells and Bernard Shaw...
...But there are, as always, striking moments, such as the highly characteristic passage in "The Prospect of Death" where Muggeridge reflects on the evidences of immortality...
...Regular viewers of "Firing Line" know him as the benign Christian apologist who speaks eloquently of the road to faith every Christmas...
...The Anglican Digest...
...It is the great vindication of Muggeridge's career that he has so clearly found his own beatific vision at last...
...America Can Win seems to have been writ-ten in a sterile environment from which all foreign policy considerations have been deliberately excluded...
...In essence, it is the Book of Ecclesiastes with the pious interpolations left out...
...And it is altogether fitting that this great satirist of the follies of thetwentieth century should bring his extraordinary list of publications to a close with a collection of sermons and addresses on religion whose sale will go to benefit Mother Teresa's ministry...
...But the ferocity of Muggeridge's satire, as Orwell clearly implies, was initially based on a pessimism so complete as to be nihilistic in its import...
...One of these pieces, the 1968 sermon "Another King," was previously published in Jesus Rediscovered...
...The variety of Christianity which he so eloquently espouses in his extreme old age is anything but orthodox...
...People smell power," he remarked in 1959, "as a bull smells a cow in heat...
...And to call him a conservative is to impose on his political views a coherence and consistency which they do not possess...
...Un frn,dum...
...We would still like to know where the Senator stands...
...hand...
...Lind, America Can Win should have been more of a campaign book...
...This, anyway, has been the strongly held conviction of the greatest artists, saints, philosophers and, until quite recent times, scientists...
...The others, which range from a lecture on Dr...
...This "indiscriminate walloping" quite logically took the form of satire, and indeed Muggeridge became our century's preeminent satirist of the will to power and the liberal death wish...
...In Great Britain he is known as a television personality, in America as a humorist...
...some other destiny than merely using up such physical, intellectual and spiritual creativity as has been vouchsafed us...
...Most readers of The American Spectator surely think of him as an elder statesman of conservatism...
...and xeh Ircanun...
...Like Chambers, Muggeridge put his trust in the socialist promise of an earthly paradise, experienced the most horrid disillusionment imaginable, and ultimately found refuge in religious belief...
...Finally...
...I'd rather be wrong with Dante and Shakespeare and Milton, with Augustine of Hippo and Fran-cis of Assisi, with Dr...
...Humor" is a strange euphemism to apply to the corrosive brand of savage, lacerating satire which he has been dispensing for five decades...
...If "no one should seek to lead this nation who is not totally committed to Malcolm Muggeridge is a hard man to pin down...
...I have had no wish to renew acquaintance with my past writings, whether published or unpublished," Muggeridge has written, and he does not exaggerate...
...George Orwell, writing about Muggeridge as early as 1940, correctly observed that Mr...
...The University Bookman Send $10 for a one-year subscription to: St...
...A quarterly for children 7 to 97...
...He is a brutal critic of the medium which has made him famous...
...His novels, needless to say, are even rarer...
...its security," no one, likewise, should be allowed to lead this nation who does not have a clear notion of the purposes for which, and the adversaries against which, it must ultimately be secured...
...Malcolm Muggeridge's "message"—for it is a message, though a negative one .. . boils down to a simple disbelief in the power of human beings to construct a perfect or even a tolerable society here on earth...
...One must admit that there is nothing particularly essential about this volume, though it is good to have the "Firing Line" appearances readily available between hard covers...
...Conserve our culture with (St...
...There have only been two collections of his secular prose to date, Tread Softly for You Tread on My Jokes and Things Past, neither of which was ideally satisfactory and neither of which is currently in print...
...a journal of Christian culture for young people...
...There must, in other words, be another reason for our existence and that of the universe than just getting through the days of our life as best we may...
...Nothing is open to him, therefore, except an indiscriminate walloping of all human activities whatever...
...He gives no more evidence of believing in God than of trusting in Man...
...Similarly, Vintage Muggeridge is in all actuarial probability the last book we can reasonably expect within the life-time of Malcolm Muggeridge...
...Viewed in this light, Muggeridge's career takes on intriguing similarities to the life of that other right-wing journalistic bird of paradise, Whittaker Chambers...
...3, No...
...With apologies to Mr...
...One other resemblance, this one exasperating, should be mentioned: neither Whittaker Chambers nor Malcolm Muggeridge cared enough about his own work to supervise the publication of anything remotely resembling a decent collection of essays...
...Johnson to transcripts of three of Muggeridge's "Firing Line" appearances, are uncollected...
...So the announcement of a book called Vintage Muggeridge by Wm...
...The Earnest Atheist, Muggeridge's lethally funny biography of Samuel Butler, and The Thirties, his pungent social history of Great Britain between the floods, have been unavailable for years...
...National Catholic Register . a well-conceived and much needed Christian magazine of quality...
...Unless, of course, the promised final volume of Chronicles of Wasted Time is nearing completion, as is devoutly to be hoped...
...Terry Teachout is an associate editor of Harper's...
...A quality magazine for children...
...When Evelyn Waugh died, Muggeridge called him "above all a mystic in search of a beatific vision...
...Paul's Familcr Magazine ** **,, # # * I lnhke the ahary'a nn I:p.pr.,and, Uphhcd b. the unbwum Jo...
...1 SUMMER 1986 52.75 * This children's magazine is orthodox, humorous, fun, challenging and beautifully illustrated...
...This in all actuarial probability," the last-named of these authors wrote at the age of 93 in the preface to Shakes Versus Shav, "is my last play and the climax of my eminence, such as it is...
...Paul' FamilyMagazine rt...
...Muggeridge's views on Christianity and society have already been presented with the greatest possible clarity in Jesus Rediscovered...
...Such pessimism cannot be sustained this side of sanity, and so it is hardly surprising that Muggeridge turned with increasing frequency to Christianity both as a subject matter and as a philosophy of life...
...B. Eerdmans/$7.95 Terry Teachout THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR OCTOBER 1986 45...
...Both men moved from passionate faith in the left to uneasy coexistence with the right, from sensual chaos to domestic asceticism, from brilliantly executed secular journalism to profoundly spiritual reflections on the desperation of our times cast in the supple medium of autobiography...
...We raar the .mMil tree hand...
Vol. 19 • October 1986 • No. 10
