Word: hissing
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...need in chambers to erase guilt by resurrecting likenesses of his dead brother, and then to prove his misculinity by destroying them, is offered by Zeligs as the motive for Chambers' falsifications against Hiss. The only problem with this neat analysis is that it applies equally well if Chambers told the truth. Whether he destroyed Hiss through real or forged evidence, his motives may still be as Zeligs defines them...
...unswerving premises of Friendship and Fratricide, for all the author's talk of "the spirit of free inquiry," is that Hiss was innocent. By assuming rather than substantiating this, Zeligs places his analysis within an unconvincing and circular logical structure, which in turn calls otherwise well-argued propositions into question. The book fails as a whole because its often compelling psychoanalysis is so clearly founded on clumsily linked, improperly evaluated facts...
...opposite extreme, Zeligs occasionally probes too deep for his own good. His discussion of Chambers' mistaken recollections of individual dates -- some critical, some petty -- seems particularly force. "In the second Hiss trial," writes Zeligs, "Chambers . . . testified that Richard [his brother] had died on September 19, 1926. Whether Chambers knew it or not (and it is likely that he did), September 19, 1926 was the birth date of Alger Hiss's stepson. Timothy Hobson (an easy slip away from September 9, 1926, the actual date of Richard's death)." Zeligs attempts to tie this error into a chain of meaningful mistakes...
...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, to Hiss or anyone else...