The Thirties. By Malcolm Muggeridge. (Hamish Hamilton. 9s. 6d.) MR.
MUGGEIUDGE has earned his reputation as a critic ; but his latest book, The Thirties, will not enhance it. The history of the last ten years afforded almost boundless possibilities to a writer so incisive and sat:Tical. But no form of writing exacts a stricter discipline than satire ; and Mr. Muggeridge has fairly thrown aside all literary discipline. He has overloaded his narra- tive with trivialities, amusing in themselves, but tedious in the mass ; he has abandoned the rules of syntax, so that many of his sentences must be laboriously construed as though from a foreign language ; he has bludgeoned his subject with loud derision, where a thrust of wit would have done more deadly execution. Mr. Muggeridge may be justified in his angry contempt for all con- temporary persons and phenomena ; but he would express it more effectually with the exercise of some selection and a little restraint.
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