Sep 6, 2023
As Chambers wrote to his friend Bill Buckley, most of us think
the story of Oedipus ends when he learns he married his own mother
and puts his eyes out. In fact, however, Oedipus lived for
years afterwards. After the trials, Chambers lived for 10
years and Hiss for 45. Neither escaped The Case, nor did
their wives and children. (Add this, by the way, to all the
reasons that committing treason is a bad idea.). Each man wrote a
book. Chambers’ became a best-seller, a major American
autobiography, and a sacred text of the post-WWII right.
Hiss’s book sank like a stone, as did another he wrote in the
mid-1980s. Chambers tried to stay out of the public
eye. Hiss tried to stay in it, but failed to establish either
his innocence or the dimensions of the shape-shifting conspiracy
that had framed him. This Podcast recounts the tragic
post-court life of each of our protagonists.
FURTHER RESEARCH
Episode 36: Chambers’ autobiography is
“Witness,” most recently published by Regnery Gateway in
2014. He was working on a huge, never finished book (working
title “The Third Rome”) when he died. Associated essays of
his were published by Random House in 1964 under the title “Cold
Friday” — the name of a field on his farm. His articles for
The National Review (amounting to less than 85 pages) were
published by that magazine in “The Whittaker Chambers Reader: His
Complete National Review Writings 1957-59” in 2014; these and his
earlier short pieces appear in “Ghosts on the Roof: Selected
Essays,” edited by Terry Teachout and published by Transaction in
1996. Two books of Chambers’ correspondence have been
printed: “Odyssey of a Friend: Letters to William F. Buckley,
Jr., 1954-1961” (Regnery Gateway 1987); and “Notes from the
Underground: The Whittaker Chambers-Ralph de Toledano Letters
1949-60,” published in 1997 by Regnery Gateway. Mr. de
Toledano covered the trials for Newsweek Magazine and became a
prominent conservative writer. If you’re interested in what
Chambers did and thought in his last years, the best of the
foregoing works is (in my opinion) the Chambers-Buckley
correspondence.
Hiss’s memoir, “In the Court of Public Opinion” (Knopf 1957),
draws heavily on his Petition for a New Trial on Grounds of Newly
Discovered Evidence. His late-in-life autobiography,
“Recollections of a Life,” was published by Seaver in 1988.
It is as dry as his first book. Hiss’s son, Anthony, maybe
best known as The New Yorker’s railroad correspondent under the
pseudonym E.M. Frimbo, wrote about himself and his father in
“Laughing Last” (Houghton Mifflin 1977) when things were looking up
for his dad. After the verdict of history had turned the
other way, the young Hiss produced “The View from Alger’s Window: A
Son’s Memoir” (Houghton Mifflin 1999). It concentrates on the
correspondence he shared with his imprisoned father. The New
York Times reviewer described the latter book as “deeply
troubling,” “a painful story of the family as a factory of
denial.”“Family Ties,” by Ann Douglas,
https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/99/06/27/reviews/990627.27dougl.html .
That The Times would publish such a review indicates how much, even
among northeastern liberals, the verdict had solidified against
Hiss and for Chambers.
More about the two protagonists’ post-trial lives can be found
in Professor Weinstein’s book “Perjury” at pages 550-72 (chapter
titled “Alger and Whittaker: The Vigil and the Death Watch”); and
at pages 444-514 of the Sam Tanenhaus biography “Whittaker
Chambers.”
Questions: Which protagonist suffered more after the
trials — the imprisoned Hiss or the ostracized Chambers? Do
you have a hunch that one or both of them overcame gloom and died
with a somewhat satisfied, “something ventured, something gained”
feeling? Of the wives and children, only one (Hiss’s son)
capitalized on The Case. If you had been one of the others,
would you have been tempted to follow Tony’s path?
If Hiss was guilty, why didn’t he avoid the limelight like
Chambers did? And, when his son got interested in The Case,
why didn’t Hiss say to him “Son, this has taken over my life, but
it doesn’t have to mess up yours. I’ve got some years to live and
powerful friends on my side; you just get on with your own
existence and leave this to us.” Why would he let his son
take up a cause that Hiss knew was a lie and would likely someday
be exposed as such, making his son look pitiful?