SOURCE: Epstein, Joseph. “Enfant Terrible.” Commentary 42, no. 6 (December 1966): 94-6.

In the following review of The Most of Malcolm Muggeridge, Epstein pronounces Muggeridge's biting criticism self-indulgent and unseemly, but at times an amusing and useful corrective to mass-media fed hero worship.

Malcolm Muggeridge revels in undocumented revelation. A piquant example is to be found in the essay on Max Beerbohm in this volume. “Beerbohm, it seems to me to emerge,” he writes, “was in panic flight through most of his life from two things—his Jewishness and his homosexuality.” Nor is Muggeridge skimpy with hyperbole; in a piece about his lecturing experience in the United States, he reports that “Americans for the most part talk without listening, and do not expect, or particularly want, to be listened to.” The sacred is not of itself necessarily profane for Muggeridge, but anyone or anything which attains sacrosanct status is—and duly...