Odd trio …

… Three Blockbuster Novels From the 1950s, and Their Remarkable Afterlife - The New York Times. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

In the aftermath of Sputnik three towering and best-selling works of fiction by dissident Russians — “Atlas Shrugged,” “Lolita” and “Doctor Zhivago” — were published in quick succession, crowded into an 11-month span, from October 1957 to September 1958. Today, all three still live on, each a universe in itself, read and discussed — and fought over — as if written not in prose but in hieroglyphics or code.

Here is my review of Sam Tanenhaus's excellent biography of Whitaker Chambers.
The conclusion seems citing:

… to many, Hiss was a martyr and Chambers a pariah. As Chambers noted in Witness: ``No feature of the Hiss case is more obvious, or more troubling . . . than the jagged fissure . . . between the plain men and women of the nation, and those who affected to act, think and speak for them. It was . . . in general the `best people' who were for Alger Hiss . . . the enlightened and the powerful . . . who snapped their minds shut. . . . ''

In attempting to explain ``this curious disjunction,'' Tanenhaus cites critic Leslie Fiedler, who traced it to ``the implicit dogma of American liberalism'' that in any political drama ``the liberal per se is the hero. '' The Partisan Review's Philip Rahv put it more bluntly: The pro-Hiss faction ``fought to save Hiss in order to safeguard its own illusions. ''