Word: chambersized
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
THE depth and intricacy of Zeligs' treatment of Chambers contrast sharply with the superficial generalizations in which he talks of Hiss. Where Zeligs' vision of Whittaker Chambers never crosses the line from psychological commodity to human being, his appreciation of Alger Hiss stops well short of analysis.
Zeligs draws incomplete and consequently inaccurate portraits of both men. Chambers emerges as cold, sick, and vengeful. Hiss is dry, methodical, charming and generous. While we can understand what made Hiss an appealing person we can at no time comprehend what part of Chambers' character made him even remotely tolerable...
Neither picture has much bearing on the issue of Hiss's guilt. Just as an angered, homosexual Chambers could have been telling the truth, so a calm, likeable, industrious Hiss could have been lying. Zeligs gives no credence at all to his incongruous but hardly indefensible possibility. Nor does he...
In one sense, Zeligs' analysis of Chambers -- the crux of his book -- is a solid contribution to an understanding of the McCarthy Era. In trials like Hiss's, there were inevitably three categories of participants: investigators, victims and informers. Chambers, for all his obvious peculiarities, had much in common with...
At first he looked to the Party for the nation's complete salvation. When he saw himself growing older and achieving as little in the hierarchy of Communism as the Party was achieving in the hierarchy of the country, he despaired of ending up on the wrong side of the...