Hitchens on Muggeridge

Not only is The Weekly Standard the bastion of warmongering neoconservatism- and that's a good thing, too!- it has got to have one of the more interesting books and arts reviews. The New Republic is an academic journal by any other name when it comes to the arts, and if you want to read that sort of thing then you had best stick with The Times Literary Supplement. "Fresh, witty and irreverent" aren't words that spring to mind about the worthy TNR's deep pondering.

But the Standard gives us such pleasures as, in their most recent issue, Christopher Hitchens reviewing a reprint of Gregory Wolfe's biography of Malcolm Muggeridge. It turns out to be the perfect editorial choice. Hitchens is notorious for a lot of things, mostly now on the Left as it happens, but certainly one of his most audacious literary assaults was against Mother Theresa. And it was Muggeridge who made Mother Theresa an international celebrity with his film Something Beautiful for God.

Yet, strangely enough, the review is a wonderful read. Hitchens has written recently and reverentially about Orwell. But in so many ways he has always struck me as a Muggeridge rather than an Orwell. Both men share a sort of performer's zest which, I think, Orwell lacked. I cannot imagine Orwell performing on BBC or C-SPAN, with the zest and hamminess (and I mean that as a compliment) of Muggeridge and Hitchens.

Surprisingly enough, Hitchens never belittles Muggeridge's religion. Indeed, he gives a rather sound and even sympathetic account of Mugeridge's lifelong flight towards God. That is just one of the delights to be found in the review. Read it.