What I’m reading, Part 2

My reading plan (of just yesterday) got derailed already. By a book that caught my eye in a second-hand bookstore yesterday. It is called Bobby Fischer Goes to War: How A Lone American Star Defeated the Soviet Chess Machine, and it is the story of “the most extraordinary chess match of all time”, that being of course Fischer vs. Spassky in Reykjavik, 1972. It’s a bright red book, and whatever – I picked it up, flipped through it for two seconds, decided: “I must have this” and bought it for 50 cents. And … ehm … I finished it this morning. It’s not a very well-written book, not really, but it moves quickly, it’s a great story, so that helps – and the prose is clear, concise, with a good sense of how to get across the excitement of that time in the chess world.

Bobby Fischer, for many reasons, is one of those guys I’m always on the lookout for. Those mad weird genius guys. Those “aberrations” whom I find so infinitely fascinating. Geniuses. I could not care less about how sane he is, or how insane he is, how rude he was, how boorish, how out of control, how arrogant, also his most recent lunatic anti-American shenanigans … All of these things just make me want to learn MORE about him. What is it like to be Bobby Fischer? What does he SEE when he looks at a chess board? The book doesn’t try to answer that question, but it does attempt to analyze his game, why he was so distinctive, so feared, so dreaded, and also – (this is what I find really fascinating) the effect that he had on his opponents. Men were shattered, psychologically, after playing against Fischer. Something, some essential energy, drained out of them. World champions, grand masters, whatever … Fischer crushed something in them when he won. And that appears to have been his goal. He played the game with HATE. Which is why he probably was the great player that he was. He didn’t just win, he destroyed his opponents confidence in themselves, in their intelligence, their deductive abilities … what was it about Fischer’s game that could do that to otherwise calm cool customers??

Boris Spassky said, in regards to Fischer: “When you play Bobby, it is not a question of whether you win or lose. It is a question of whether you survive.”

Arthur Bisguier, an American player, who was a chess aide to Fischer in his earlier teenage years, said, “If [Bobby] wasn’t a chess player, he might have been a dangerous psychopath.”

It’s really not my business to discuss the ins and outs of chess – because honestly? I don’t know how to play. My friend Allison, who loves chess, tried to teach me one afternoon (one rather wine-soaked afternoon, I might say: we sat in the lobby of the palatial W Hotel, off Union Square Park – where you can get chess boards, and drink wine, and play. People sit there all day, playing chess. It’s a very cool atmosphere – I highly recommend it for any New York area chess fans). Anyway, I didn’t learn to play chess when I was little, and now I feel it’s too late. The intricacies elude me.

But that doesn’t stop me from being thrilled to learn more about those who love this game. My friend Beth’s husband Tom is one of those people. It’s a realm of STUDY. Games are analyzed, picked apart … I find it completely intriguing. In the same way that I find mathematical genius intriguing.