Editing Whittaker Chambers (section)

===''Time''===
[[File:Clare Boothe Luce and Henry Luce NYWTS.jpg|thumb|right|[[Henry Luce]] and [[Clare Boothe Luce]] (circa 1954) valued Chambers's writing at ''Time'' magazine]]

During the Berle meeting, Chambers had come out of hiding after a year and joined the staff of ''[[Time (magazine)|Time]]'' (April 1939). He landed a cover story within a month on [[James Joyce]]'s latest book, ''[[Finnegans Wake]]''.<ref>{{cite news
 | title = Night Thoughts
 | date = May 8, 1948
 | magazine = Time
 | url = http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,761256,00.html
 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20080216215842/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,761256,00.html
 | url-status = dead
 | archive-date = February 16, 2008
 | access-date = June 3, 2010}}</ref> He started at the back of the magazine, reviewing books and film with [[James Agee]] and then [[Calvin Fixx]]. When Fixx suffered a heart attack in October 1942, [[Wilder Hobson]] succeeded him as Chambers's assistant editor in Arts & Entertainment. Other writers working for Chambers in that section included novelist [[Nigel Dennis]], future ''[[The New York Times Book Review|New York Times Book Review]]'' editor [[Harvey Breit]], and poets [[Howard Moss]] and [[Weldon Kees]].<ref>{{Harvnb|Tanenhaus|1998|pp=174–175}}</ref><ref>{{cite book
 | last = Reidel
 | first = James
 | title = 'Vanished Act: The Life and Art of Weldon Kees
 | publisher = University of Nebraska Press
 | year = 2007
 | page = 121
 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=eV1AENEcMlAC&q=%22wilder+hobson%22+%22harper%27s+bazaar%22&pg=PA237
 | isbn = 9780803259775
 | access-date = January 19, 2023
 | archive-date = August 6, 2022
 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20220806203754/https://books.google.com/books?id=eV1AENEcMlAC&q=%22wilder%20hobson%22%20%22harper%27s%20bazaar%22&pg=PA237
 | url-status = live
 }}</ref>

A struggle had arisen between those, like [[Theodore H. White]] and [[Richard Lauterbach]], who raised criticism of what they saw as the elitism, corruption and ineptitude of [[Chiang Kai-shek]]'s regime in China and advocated greater co-operation with Mao's Red Army in the struggle against Japanese imperialism, and Chambers and others like [[Willi Schlamm]] who adhered to a perspective that was staunchly pro-Chiang, anticommunist, and both later joined the founding editorial board of [[William F. Buckley, Jr.]]'s ''[[National Review]]''. ''Time'' founder [[Henry Luce]], who grew up in China and was a personal friend of Chiang and his wife, [[Soong Mei-ling]], came down squarely on the side of Chambers to the point that White complained that his stories were being censored and even suppressed in their entirety, and he left ''Time'' shortly after the war as a result.<ref>{{cite book
 | last = Herzstein
 | first = Robert E.
 | author-link = Robert E. Herzstein
 | title = Henry R. Luce, Time, and the American Crusade in Asia
 | publisher = Cambridge University Press
 | year = 2005
 | pages = 42–43
 | isbn = 978-0-521-83577-0}}</ref>

In 1940, [[William Saroyan]] lists Fixx among "contributing editors" at ''Time'' in Saroyan's play, ''Love's Old Sweet Song''.<ref>{{cite book
| first = William 
| last = Saroyan
| author-link = William Saroyan
| title = Love's Old Sweet Song: A Play in Three Acts
| publisher = Samuel French
| url = https://books.google.com/books?id=RylaAAAAMAAJ
| pages = 72, 76
| date = 1940
| access-date = July 15, 2017}}</ref> Luce promoted him senior editor in either summer 1942 (Weinstein<ref>{{Harvnb|Weinstein|1997|p=354}}</ref>) or September 1943 (Tanenhaus<ref name="Tanenhaus 1998 175">{{Harvnb|Tanenhaus|1998|p=175}}</ref>) and became a member of ''Time''{{'s}} "Senior Group", which determined editorial policy, in December 1943.<ref name="Tanenhaus 1998 175" />

Chambers, close colleagues, and many staff members in the 1930s helped elevate ''Time'' and have been called "interstitial intellectuals" by the historian Robert Vanderlan.<ref name=Vanderlan>{{cite book
| first = Robert
| last = Vanderlan
| title = Intellectuals Incorporated: Politics, Art, and Ideas Inside Henry Luce's Media Empire
| publisher = University of Pennsylvania Press
| url = https://books.google.com/books?id=g82OAyn-HKkC
| page = 239
| date = 2011
| isbn = 978-0812205633
| access-date = December 15, 2016}}</ref> His colleague [[John Hersey]] described them as follows:

<blockquote>''Time'' was in an interesting phase; an editor named [[T. S. Matthews|Tom Matthews]] had gathered a brilliant group of writers, including [[James Agee]], [[Robert Fitzgerald]], Whittaker Chambers, [[Robert Cantwell]], [[Louis Kronenberger]], and [[Calvin Fixx]].&nbsp;... They were dazzling. ''Time''{{'s}} style was still very hokey—"backward ran sentences till reeled the mind"—but I could tell, even as a neophyte, who had written each of the pieces in the magazine, because each of these writers had such a distinctive voice.<ref>{{cite magazine
| first = Jonathan
| last = Dee
| title = John Hersey, The Art of Fiction No. 92
| magazine = [[The Paris Review]]
| url = http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/2756/john-hersey-the-art-of-fiction-no-92-john-hersey
| date = 1986
| access-date = 16 December 2016
| archive-date = December 20, 2016
| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20161220141117/http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/2756/john-hersey-the-art-of-fiction-no-92-john-hersey
| url-status = live
}}</ref></blockquote>

By early 1948, Chambers had become one of the best known writer-editors at ''Time''. First had come his scathing commentary "The Ghosts on the Roof" (March 5, 1945) on the [[Yalta Conference]] in which Hiss partook. Subsequent cover-story essays profiled [[Marian Anderson]], [[Arnold J. Toynbee]], [[Rebecca West]] and [[Reinhold Niebuhr]]. The cover story on [[Marian Anderson]] ("Religion: In Egypt Land", December 30, 1946) proved so popular that the magazine broke its rule of non-attribution in response to readers' letters:

<blockquote>Most Time cover stories are written and edited by the regular staffs of the section in which they appear. Certain cover stories, that present special difficulties or call for a special literary skill, are written by Senior Editor Whittaker Chambers.<ref>
{{cite news
 | title = Time's People and Time's Children
 | date = March 8, 1948
 | magazine = Time | url = http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,853283,00.html| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20070930063109/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,853283,00.html| url-status = dead| archive-date = September 30, 2007}}</ref></blockquote>

In a 1945 letter to ''Time'' colleague [[Charles Wertenbaker]], [[Time-Life]] deputy editorial director [[John Shaw Billings (editor)|John Shaw Billings]] said of Chambers, "Whit puts on the best show in words of any writer we've ever had&nbsp;... a superb technician, particularly skilled in the mosaic art of putting a ''Time'' section together."<ref>{{cite book
 | last1 = Weinstein
 | first1 = Allen
 | author-link = Allen Weinstein
 | title = Perjury: The Hiss–Chambers Case
 | publisher = Knopf
 | place = New York
 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=toEfF8xlMmkC
 | pages = 183
 | date = 1978
 | isbn = 9780394495460
 | access-date = August 7, 2017}}</ref> Chambers was at the height of his career when the Hiss case broke later that year.<ref>{{cite web
 | title = Time – Cover Stories
 | publisher = WhittakerChambers.org
 | url = http://whittakerchambers.org/articles/time-c/
 | access-date = June 21, 2013
 | archive-date = June 30, 2013
 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20130630221604/http://whittakerchambers.org/articles/time-c/
 | url-status = live
 }}</ref>