The Very Best of Malcolm Muggeridge

Rating:
Summary: Muggers, Once Over Lightly
Review: A pessimist reading Muggeridge might become a bit more optimistic. An optimist reading MM may move somewhat the other way. But for those suffering the far more common modern malady of a nearly flatlined brainwave pattern from being inundated by dead prose, a dose of the divine Mr. M. comes as a reviving jolt of the paddles. Intoxicated by that first disorienting rush of life, one may do odd things. I named my website alivingdog.com after reading Malcom's take on a phrase from Ecclesiastes" A living dog is better than a dead lion." Ian Hunter, having sustained a nearly fatal dose, went on to write Malcom Muggeridge: A Life, and now, the madness not yet abated, to edit 250 pages of pithy quotes and diverting anecdotes in The Very Best of Malcom Muggeridge.

Spanning 60 years of writing, these brief excerpts run from a paragraph to a page, and were gathered from newsprint, radio, TV and books. Thirteen chapters provide a rough thematic grouping and a sort of directional arrow cavorting with jaunty energy through the book. Only one caveat colors my wholehearted recommendation of this book; these short snippets may appear as overly brief and telegraphic; some of Muggeridge's more thoughtful bits take pages to get going. Nevertheless, these short bits may serve as springboards for readers into the full-length works, as an apertif whetting the appetite for the full-course meal. Following Ian Hunter's lead, new readers will hopefully press on to track down the books meantioned, the best of which, notably the two-volume Chronicles of Wasted Time, read seamlessly from start to finish.