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Summary: Whittaker Chambers, 20th cetury hero
Review: This book is more than an account of a trial or a political movement--it is an account of a "suffering servant". Chambers was truly an American hero as well as a prophet. He not only unmasks Soviet Communism, he also paints a dark picture of the materialistic nihilism that animates the West. If he had lived to see the universal homogeneous society that our world has become he would not have been surprised. He considered himself in the tradition of the Russian radicals of the 19th century--those radicals who destroyed themselves to fight injustice--and his life was consistent with this. Today he is castigated as a "conservative" by the fashionable left . He abhorred being called a conservative-preferring "man of the right". He was much more than any ideological label can convey. Instead he was closer to the Old Testament figures who dared to call the people back to Truth. Like many of them he was destroyed for it. Experience this book!
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Summary: changed lives will result
Review: i was encouraged to plunge into this rather imposing work by a friend who just loved it. she was right. i am a person who values truth. i put a high priority on being able to express oneself clearly, concisely, and without shrinking from the truth. whittaker chambers does all of the above in superb fashion. i began reading this book assuming it would be a somewhat long but fairly easy read. i was wrong. the ideas and truths expressed by chambers require time and thought. i generally refuse to mix work with play, but in this case i found myself reaching for a pen to underline or emphasise large passages. they encouraged me and have reaffirmed my convictions at a time i needed it most. thank you chambers for doing what you knew you had to at a time that it seemed unwise.
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Summary: correction to reader review titled "psychotic masterpiece"--
Review: Quick correction to several misstatements in previous reader review titled "psychotic masterpiece": 1. Hiss was guilty. See book titled "Venona," by Haynes and Klehr. 2. Chambers was an editor for Time magazine, not Life. 3. Chambers was neither pychotic nor delusional, but a lucid and intelligent man whose testimony is well documented. See corroborating biography of Chambers by Sam Tanenhaus; and "Perjury" by Allan Weinstein --neither book written by right-wing idealogues.
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Summary: Dostoevsky & Malcolm X Would Have Loved It; So Will You
Review: Two things may strike anyone who delves into this masterpiece for the first time: the Dostoevskian nature of Chambers' life, almost an exact parallel of CRIME AND PUNISHMENT (ideological sin, conspiracy, facing the law, and finally, redemption); and the uncanny way in which Chambers' life resembled that of Malcolm X. Both men were captured by an extreme ideology, and both came to renounce it--experiencing great inward suffering and the ostracism of their friends as a result. (Just as was the case with Dostoevsky as well.) Chambers and Malcolm wrote moving and deeply-felt autobiographies; Dostoevsky put these experiences into novels instead. Both Dostoevsky and Malcolm X would have seen Chambers as a kindred spirit. One is also also struck by the empathy Chambers feels for the members of his Communist cell. His testimony that he denounced them with remorse and pity was not mere cant; it is obvious throught his book. At several places he comments on their compassion and sense of humanity. He sees Communism as a mass movement that one simply gets caught up in, not realizing the consequences. In Chambers' eyes, it is Communism that is evil, not individual Communists. His charitable treatment of his ideological enemies makes a refreshing contrast to the tactic that is ubiquitous today among the intelligentsia--to engage in ad hominem attacks in place of arguments. Opponents cannot have reached their conclusions by conviction; they simply "represent" or are "apologizing for" capitalism, racism, or other "mean-spirited" institutions. In WITNESS you will find an answer to this dishonest self-righteousness; one that will stand for all time--the story of a man who, on his own, painfully threw off the ideology that had once meant everything to him, simply because he arrived at a different and very heartfelt conviction--for which he suffered and sacrificed everything. One need not agree with Chambers' religiosity to see, as he saw, Communism's monstrous evil. He seems to have made one error, when he said that he was leaving the winning side (Communism) for the losing side (the West). He could not have foreseen the collapse of Commuunism in 1991. But was this really an error? Could a Marxist government ever seize power in a major nation again, as in 1917? My answer would be yes, if there is some crisis, such as a war or a depression, that would allow it to succeed. Chambers wrote that Communism simply worships man instead of God, and therefore sees all things as possible--not in the hereafter, but in this world. (Hence, Marx's dictum that it is necessary to change the world.) I would disagree with Chambers on this point. Marxism exists--and may reassert itself--because there will ALWAYS be those who NEED to keep a utopian dream in their pocket. Why? Because they cannot accept reality and their role in it, holding themselves to blame for every evil. If you want to dissuade Marxists, the strategy is not to try to persuade them that religion or capitalism are good, but that they themselves are not evil, "privileged" people who are partially to blame for all the world's ills. Posterity may very well hold WITNESS and Malcolm X's autobiography as the two greatest autobiographies of the 20th century. Don't miss out on reading this one.
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Summary: Infinitely more than a mere polemic
Review: Whittaker Chambers, one of the enigmas of the American 1940s and 1950s, has written not only a compelling representation of his experiences with the American Communist Party, but an intimate narrative of his family and spiritual life. He was an intellectual giant whose contributions went largely unheralded and in fact reviled, even to this day.
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Summary: Provocative and enlightening. Of great value!
Review: This was an immensely profitable book. Particularly, Chamber's description of the requisite "faith" which drove him to seek out an ideology whose theory practiced. What an incredible indictment of those who shun purely humanistic religions in order to hold to a God-centered faith--but fail in the out-working of that faith in every decision and step of daily life. The historical data found within the book is well worth the price, but Chamber's descriptions of his personal crises and their resolutions are priceless. If Mr. Chambers were alive in 1999, he would remind us that although communism has changed its clothes, it is far from dead.
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Summary: psychotic masterpiece
Review: Whittaker Chambers is my hero in life. I have come to believe that he was deranged, delusional, and that Alger Hiss was innocent, but still Chambers represents to me the triumph of the misfit. Apparently this book is replete with falsehoods. Still, Chambers' style of self-expression really latches on to you. He was a genius in a bizarre, unproductive sort of way. It amazes me that this guy was able to hold a high-level editor position at "Life." Nowadays, he wouldn't rise above the mail room. Reading of his strange, tortured oddesey through life has often given me hope when things looked bleak. I look forward to meeting Mr. Chambers in heaven.
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Summary: Great first draft of a great book
Review: This book is sloppy, disorganized--and a great read. Anybody with a romantic view of communism or the Communist Party, USA, would profit by reading Chambers' account of the Party as it really was in the 1930's. Anybody who thinks that Nixon and the HUAC were merely on a witch hunt in the late 40's would profit as well. Anybody who reflexively pooh-poohs allegations of high level conspiracies will think again after reading this book. Chambers names names and provides a myriad of detail which simply could not have been made up. His claims have stood the test of time much better than the dissemblings of Hiss' supporters. Chambers movingly describes how his world came apart when he broke with the Party. He describes how the left--both Communists and liberals, reacted with a smear campaign against him when he came forward. His prose is powerful, no more so than when he is writing about his children and how he had to defy the party even to have children in the first place. Having said that, however, one must admit that this book could have profited from an editor who insisted on more coherence. The book raises as may questions about Chambers as it answers. For example, Chambers never does convincingly explain the attraction of Communism to an educated person such as himself or Hiss. The excesses of Lenin, Stalin & Co. were so patent and so well known, long before the show trials and the pact with Hitler, that only the worst sort of self-deception can explain one's conversion to the communist cause in the first place. But Chambers paints himself and his former pals as idealists bent on constructing a new and better world on the ruins of capitalism--which, of course, is the very argument used to excuse every excess of the left, be it the Soviets, the Sandanistas, or the SDS. Eventually, Chambers saw through this fantasy. But why did Chambers succumb to the fantasy in the first place? The book is curiously unsatisfactory on this point. Later, Chambers rats out the Communists in the State Department, but for years tries to protect them by withholding evidence of espionage --treason -- until pressed by Hiss in a libel suit. He never adequately explains why to him, the thought (adhering to the tenets of communism) is worse than the act (treason). Most people would hold just the opposite--that the act, not the thought, is reprehensible. This book was written in a white heat during a fearful period of our history, when nobody knew how the cold war would turn out. (Do we, even today?) It took guts for Chambers to come forth, and it took guts for him to write the book. Thus I enthusiasticaly recommend the book as an intensely felt and written period piece. But it is also timeless as an autobiography of ideas. And in a way, it is as up-to-date as today's headlines. The Hiss case reverberates loudly 50 years later, when the right is attempting to get revenge on the left and its poster boy, Clinton, for the Nixon impeachment, which itself was the left's revenge on Nixon and the right for the Hiss case.
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Summary: Yikes.
Review: Whittaker Chambers' self-aggrandizing, self-indulgent, and self-pitying tome of a memoir. I read it because of the recent resurgence of interest in the Alger Hiss case, but I think I wasted my time. The book is so long and detailed that one has to be seriously attracted to the issue (i.e. writing about it) to profit from reading the book. Even worse, Chambers' Manichaean and simplistic ideology (freedom loving Christians versus Satanic communists), which is ubiquitous throughout the book, is boring and uninteresting--so much so that he doesn't even infuriate me when he cavalierly shrugs off the idea that the House Un-American Activities Committee was unethical or scapegoating innocent people--as he says, "I was even less impressed by such shrieks of outraged innocence uttered by some of the Committee's witnesses as sometimes reached my ears. Experience had taught me that innocence seldom utters outraged shrieks. Guilt does." It's great that Chambers takes joy in talking about virtuous Congressman Richard Nixon triumphing in this sinful world, but it definitely doesn't lead to a particularly nuanced or satisfying account.
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Summary: Everything you've always wanted to know about Chambers!
Review: I decided to read Chambers' autobiography as a prelude to reading Tannenhaus's biography of Whittaker Chambers. Witness is certainly all you ever needed to know, or wanted to know about Chambers. At nearly 800 pages it does seem quite formidable at first glance however the work is a necessary read to complete the story of the Chambers-Hiss matter. As you read you will often smile at several original Chambers' musings which bring to mind many political situations of this age. Gregg S. Baumgartner Houston, Texas
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