SOURCE: Cort, David. “A Dedicated Madness.” The Nation 210, no. 6 (16 February 1970): 185-86.

In the following review of Odyssey of a Friend, Cort asserts that Chambers's letters expose a superficiality and intellectual narcissism.

The ghost of the late Whittaker Chambers declines to rest in peace, and for very good reasons. He magnificently played a child's game of masquerade, and too many adults believed in him. Richard M. Nixon believed, and in ultimate consequence became the President of the United States. William Frank Buckley, Jr. of National Review still keeps a nonpareil faith and love and has brought out a whole book [Odyssey of a Friend] (first privately printed, now regularly published) of Chambers' letters to him from 1954 to 1961, when his correspondent became extinct.

Whittaker Chambers was not the name of the man, but just the most convenient of a dozen or so aliases. The name, if you care, was Jay...