Ghosts on the Roof
Selected Journalism of Whittaker Chambers
(amazon)Terry Teachout (View Bio)
Hardcover: Regnery, 1989.
"The world knows Whittaker Chambers best as a philosopher and a hero of liberty. Because of GHOSTS ON THE ROOF, it will be reminded that he was also a first-rank critic, an incisive stylist, and all in all one of America’s great journalists. Terry Teachout’s valuable collection will go directly to my most easily reached bookshelf, right next to the well-worn copies of WITNESS and COLD FRIDAY." — Richard Nixon
"GHOSTS ON THE ROOF is an important book. Second only to WITNESS as a chronicle of Whittaker Chambers’s fateful intellectual odyssey, it adds much to our understanding of the man and his work. As we would expect, it contains many illuminating pages on the nature of Communism, both in the Soviet Union and in the West. Yet the really astonishing thing about this collection is its intellectual range. On subjects as diverse as Stalin and FINNEGAN'S WAKE, Marx and Kafka and Rebecca West, Chambers writes with distinction, compassion, and authority. The dazzling and definitive demolition of Ayn Rand ('Big Sister Is Watching You') is, in itself, a model of political polemic in the service of moral intelligence." — Hilton Kramer
"Mr. Teachout’s collection of Whittaker Chambers’s essays is an important contribution to history and literature. It will do, alongside his informative and readable Introduction, much to restore the correct perspective. Chambers the artist and the philosopher should no more rely on the Pumpkin Papers for his reputation than on David and Goliath. There was a whole other story, and Teachout gives us a solid taste of the literary star who got swallowed up by one pestiferous satellite. A superb rediscovery of the artistry of a great figure." — William F. Buckley, Jr.
