Whittaker Chambers : a biography

691 Pages·1998·4.01 MB·English

by  Chambers

Also by Sam Tanenhaus
Literature Unbound: A Guide for the Common Reader

Copyright © 1997 by Sam Tanenhaus
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in
the United States by Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random
House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Tanenhaus, Sam.
Whittaker Chambers: a biography / Sam Tanenhaus.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-30778926-6
1. Chambers, Whittaker. 2. Anti-communist movements—United
States—History. 3. Hiss, Alger. 4. Spies—United States—
Biography. 5. Journalists—United States—Biography. I. Title.
E743.5.T36 1997 973.91′092—dc20 [B] 96-36087
Random House website address: http://www.randomhouse.com/
Title page photo: Whittaker Chambers testifies before HUAC on August 25,
1948—“Confrontation Day”—while Alger Hiss looks on (far left).
UPI/CORBIS-BETTMANN
v3.1
To the memory of
Joseph Tanenhaus
(1924–1980)
and to
Kathy and Lydia
“An intellectual hatred is the worst.”
… he went his way,
Down among the Lost People like Dante, down
To the stinking fosse where the injured
Lead the ugly life of the rejected.
And showed us what evil is: not as we thought
Deeds that must be punished, but our lack of faith,
Our dishonest mood of denial,
The concupiscence of the oppressor.
And if something of the autocratic pose,
The paternal strictness he distrusted, still
Clung to his utterance and features,
It was a protective imitation For one who lived among enemies so long:
If often he was wrong and at times absurd,
To us he is no more a person
Now but a whole climate of opinion.…
—W. H. Auden, “In Memory of Sigmund Freud”1
Contents
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Outcast (1901–1925)
1. Vivian
2. Distant Horizons
3. A Serious Man
4. Signing On
Bolshevik (1925–1932)
5. His Brother’s Keeper
6. Upheavals
7. The Hottest Literary Bolshevik
Spy (1932–1938)
8. Going Underground
9. The Ware Cell
10. Saving the World
Defector (1938–1939)
11. Disappearances
12. “Whose Ghost Are You?”
Crusader (1939–1948)
13. The Clash of Swords
14. “God Bless You, Harry”
15. Ghost on the Roof
16. Sorrow Songs
Witness I: The Hearings (August-December 1948)
17. Fetching a Bone
18. Pure Dynamite
19. “I Can Make That Fellow President”
20. A Man Named Crosley
21. “I Could Not Do Otherwise”
22. The Means of Justice
23. The Pumpkin Papers
24. Indictment
Witness II: The Trials (January 1949–January 1950)
25. Preparations
26. “Unclean! Unclean!”
27. Rich Finds
28. The Woodstock
29. Alger and Priscilla
30. Lucifer vs. the Serpent
31. Verdict
32. The American Jitters
33. Blind Analysis
34. Eleven Words
Exile (1950–1961)
35. Public Recluse
36. Witness
37. Close Calls
38. The Last Path
39. “The Witness Is Gone”
Appendix: Sifting the Evidence
Notes
Select Bibliography
Acknowledgments
About the Author
OUTCAST
(1901–1925)