Word: hissing
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...ALGER HISS has always been something of a mystery. His own book on the case, In the Court of Public Opinion, written after his prison term, is a dry, legal brief attempting to prove how Chambers had practiced "forgery by typewriter," but reveals little of the feelings and emotions expected of a man when he is forced to defend his character and honor in an increasingly hostile arena. The reviewers panned the book and the public didn...
Laughing Last is much closer to the book Alger Hiss should have written. If Tony Hiss errs, it is on account of a candor that at times is almost too blunt. We are told more about the sex lives of father and son than perhaps we want to know. But that flaw is understandable, the idea behind the book is to get us to see Alger Hiss as do those close to him, as "Al", the disciplined, kind, warm father and husband who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. So we learn of Al's love...
While in Lewisburg, the elder Hiss made his share of friends, the closest being, surprisingly, the Italian convicts who dubbed him "Alberto" and watched after him. At one point, these friends introduced Hiss to Mafia chieftain Tony Costello, who claimed he had been put away on a bum rap, too. There is the chilling story of two cons, incited by a prison guard, who seriously contemplated killing Hiss until talked out of the idea by one of Alberto's friends. Then, after being released, Hiss faced the frustration of trying to find work with a shattered reputation and a disintegrating...
...sense, this is a dual biography. Tony Hiss is as frank about his own life as he is his father's. He displays what seems to be a characteristic sense of humor; informing us, for example, that the infamous rug Whittaker Chambers alleges he gave Alger Hiss as payment from the Russians is now his prize possession. There are his own bad times too--he had to learn how to adjust to an overconcerned mother and a father in prison as well as the normal challenges of adolescence. Like his father, though, Tony Hiss says he is now a happy...
What will probably hurt the reception of Laughing Last is Tony Hiss's handling of the Hiss case itself. Because he is not making a legal argument, or reviewing the evidence, he touches only briefly upon the major issues. He is content to recapitulate his father's well-known version of the story, which is already in the public record, and to quote the opinions of former Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, who finds the case a shocking miscarriage of justice. Because of the sketchiness of his defense, some people are going to say that he has failed...