Whittaker Chambers

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Whittaker Chambers bigraphy, stories - Defected Communist spy

Whittaker Chambers : biography

April 1, 1901 – July 9, 1961

Whittaker Chambers, born Jay Vivian Chambers and also known as David Whittaker ChambersHe assumed his mother’s maiden name, "Whittaker", in the 1920s. (April 1, 1901 – July 9, 1961), was an American writer and editor. After being a Communist Party USA member and Soviet spy, he later renounced communism and became an outspoken opponent later testifying in the perjury and espionage trial of Alger Hiss. Both are described in his book published in 1952 entitled Witness.

Youth and education

Whittaker Chambers was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania spending his infancy in Brooklyn. His family moved to Lynbrook on Long Island, New York in 1904, where he grew up and attended school. His parents were named Jay Chambers and Laha. Chambers described his childhood as troubled because of his parents separation and caring for their mentally ill grandmother. Chambers’ brother committed suicide shortly after withdrawing from his first year of college. Chambers would cite his brother’s troubled life and eventual suicide as one of many reasons that he was drawn to communism as a young man.

After graduating from South Side High School in neighboring Rockville Centre in 1919, Chambers worked at a variety of jobs before attending Williams College in 1920. He later enrolled as a day student at Columbia University. At Columbia his fellow students included Meyer Schapiro, Louis Zukofsky, Clifton Fadiman, John Gassner, Lionel Trilling (who later fictionalized him as a main character in his novel The Middle of the JourneyStaff., Time (magazine), November 17, 1975. Retrieved September 24, 2008. "Trilling’s first and only novel, published in 1947, made his name known in an unexpected circle—the FBI. Titled The Middle of the Journey, the book described the intellectual torture of a Communist in the process of quitting the party. Reviews which praised its "assurance, literacy and intelligence" aroused the interest of FBI agents investigating Whittaker Chambers’ allegations of spying by State Department Official Alger Hiss. Indeed Trilling had shared a class with Chambers when both were Columbia students, and he frankly admitted fictionalizing Chambers’ story in his novel."), and Guy Endore. In the intellectual environment of Columbia he gained friends and respect. His professors and fellow students found him a talented writer and believed he might become a major poet or novelist.

Early in his sophomore year, Chambers wrote a play entitled "A Play for Puppets" for Columbia’s literary magazine The Morningside, which he edited. The work was deemed blasphemous by many students and administrators, and the controversy spread to New York City newspapers. Later, the play would be used against Chambers while testifying against Alger Hiss. Disheartened over controversy, Chambers left the college in 1925. (From Columbia, Chambers also knew Isaiah Oggins, who went into the Soviet underground a few years earlier; Chambers’ wife Esther Shemitz Chambers knew Oggins’ wife Nerma Berman Oggins from the Rand School of Social Science, the ILGWU, and The World Tomorrow. )

Death

Chambers died of a heart attack on July 9, 1961, at his farm in Westminster, Maryland. He had suffered from angina since the age of 38 and had had several heart attacks previously.

Cold Friday, his second memoir, was published posthumously in 1964 with the help of Duncan Norton-Taylor. The book prophetically predicted that the fall of Communism would start in the satellite states surrounding the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe. A collection of his correspondence with William F. Buckley, Jr., Odyssey of a Friend, was published in 1968; a collection of his journalism—including several of his Time and National Review writings, was published in 1989 as Ghosts on the Roof: Selected Journalism of Whittaker Chambers.

Legacy

Chambers’s book Witness is on the reading lists of the Heritage Foundation, The Weekly Standard, The Leadership Institute, and the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal. He is regularly cited by conservative writers such as Heritage’s president Edwin Feulner.