Chess is not the likeliest path to worldwide celebrity, but Bobby Fischer was no ordinary player. The freakishly talented, freakishly flawed Fischer, who defeated the Soviet Union’s Boris Spassky in the 1972 World Chess Championship, one of the great spectacles of the Cold War, played the game as if it was a blood sport. Dick Cavett once asked him in a TV interview “where is the greatest pleasure” in a match, and Fischer responded, with glee, “When you break his ego — this is where it’s at.”
Brilliant player, bad moves
Recounting Bobby Fischer’s tragic path from prodigy to pariah
Spassky said of him that “[i]t’s not if you win or lose against Bobby Fischer; it’s if you survive.” Combative and charming by turns, Fischer, for a time, put the cloistered, cerebral world of chess in the spotlight — he even made the cover of Sports Illustrated. But Fischer’s fame curdled into infamy, and in his last years — he died at 64 in 2008 — he was known more for his anti-Semitic ravings and battles with the US government than for his moves on the chessboard.
In “Endgame,’’ Frank Brady, a communications professor at St. John’s University, tells the story of Fischer’s life with dramatic flair and a sense of judiciousness. Fischer could be unruly, pathologically touchy, and repulsively insulting, but he played chess brilliantly. At times, Brady, who knew Fischer and studied his life for decades, cannot quite keep the fiend and genius in balance, however much he fills us with a sense of Fischer’s torments. “Endgame,’’ to its credit, is not written solely with chess aficionados in mind; Brady, a longtime chess hand and founder of Chess Life magazine, explains the technical aspects of the game with an appealing clarity as he tells the story of Fischer’s fame and fall.
Fischer and his sister, Joan, were raised by their doting, caring mother, Regina, a Swiss Jew who came to the United States as a child — the evidence remains unclear as to the identity of Fischer’s father. Fischer came out of Brooklyn with a preternatural gift for chess. By 6, he was beating his 36-year-old mother and 11-year-old sister. Money was a constant struggle. However, Regina, who studied to become a doctor but left school before completing her training, strived hard to provide for her “little chess miracle,” leaving Fischer to the life of a “latchkey child.’’ From early on, Fischer displayed both this trademark social awkwardness and single-minded focus on the game — he would even rehearse chess moves in the tub. “The neurons of Bobby’s brain seemed to absorb the limitations of and possibilities of each piece in any given position,’’ Brady writes, “storing them for future reference.’’
Advertisement
Advertisement