Wittingshire: Across a Dark Sea, the Light

It's funny what pops out of the past at you. Last night, late, I wandered over to Wittingshire, and found that Amanda had a post that begins:

While reading a two-year-old copy of Touchstone, I ran across an article by David Mills about Malcolm Muggeridge (1903-1990), the talented writer, Socialist, and outspoken agnostic...

And I stopped and stared. Muggeridge? Socialist? Those two things collided mentally -- I was sure I'd read something about a Malcolm Muggeridge and Russia, but it seemed something different, something that made me think he was a hero of sorts. I'm not prone to admiring Socialists, so I sat a while and then - a light dawning - turned around and looked at my wall of post-it notes, right behind where I sit here. I'm not sure I've added a post-it in the last year. Some of these post-its have probably been there three years, and perhaps are sharing molecules with the wall. I don't know. It's one of those organizational projects that didn't work well enough to keep it up, but didn't fail to the point that it made sense to take down what was already there. Mostly it's background notes for something I was writing, and Briticisms or Frenchisms that I ran across that struck my fancy. There's no rhyme to it, and very little reason.

(Why I think I'll need a definition of "gormless twit" is beyond my recollection. I don't think I'm the sort of person to call somebody that even if they deserve it. Do I need to know the French call junk food malbouffe?)

And there, amidst the potpourri was a small note on which was written:

Muggeridge, Malcolm/ Manchester Guardian reporter who "struck back at Stalin's 'imbecile foreign admirers.'" From Book Review in Washington Times of (see over)"Modernization from the other Shore" by David C. Engerman.

This note was written after I'd barely learned to use the Internet, and well before I had a blog - a between-times of high-tech meets old-high-tech (I remember the days when Post-Its were the best new thing). These days, of course, I'd save the book review as a blog draft, and take it from there (or let it sit, unposted but filed after a fashion). But this was in my post-its phase, and there it sits, smudged and usually unremarked, but just where I could find it by turning 180 degrees from my computer. Sometimes old-high-tech is wonderful.

Here's the book review, by the way. How nice the Washington Times has kept it archived. This review, by Woodford McClellan, an emeritus professor at the University of Virginia, has some significant history in it, as well as some good swipes at journalists who skew their reports to fit their worldviews, and leave misery in their wake. I was glad to see the article again. Thanks for the nudge, Amanda.

Her post, I might add, was to a large extent about Muggeridge's long journey to becoming a Christian. So now I know a grand total of two things about the man: he wasn't afraid to call a spade a spade and, like C.S. Lewis, he tried disbelief and couldn't make it make sense. Interesting.

The book in the review:


Modernization from the Other Shore: American Intellectuals and the Romance of Russian Development