The Psyche and the Typewriter
Twenty years have passed since the Hiss case floated like a dark cloud across the American scene, yet the broody shadow lingers. “It stripped America of its political innocence, and it has neverbeen quite the same again,” writes Mr. Rees, a distinguished British novelist (THE SUMMER FLOOD, A BRIDGE TO DIVIDE THEM), translator (CONVERSATIONS WITH KAFKA),and editor (ENCOUNTER).In this instance, he discovers that even a bad reconstruction of the case, a psychoanalysis effort to portray Whittaker Chambers as evil incarnate and Alger Hiss as innocence raped, reactivates strange and sad memories.