Book: Bobby Fischer goes to war
Author: David Edmonds and John Eidinow
Price: (Faber, ?14.99)
Even while it was occurring, it was obviously a legendary event - easily the most extraordinary chess match of all time. World championship matches are rarely of much interest outside the fraternity of serious chess players; indeed, it is unlikely most people are even aware when a championship match is in progress. But the 1972 world championship, in which American Bobby Fischer wrested the title from the USSR's Boris Spassky in Reykjavik, was different. It was front page news around the world. Everyone, even people who couldn't tell a knight fork from a smothered mate, had an opinion about it.
Nevertheless, in the subsequent quarter century, much of the brouhaha surrounding this match has been shrouded in secrecy. Certainly, participants on the American side were reluctant to tell all they knew; American chess journalism has traditionally concealed the game's dirty laundry, and in addition, many who were there were silenced by fear of Fischer's wrath. Still, the Americans were positive blabbermouths compared to the Soviets, whose historic silence on questions great and trivial, on matters scientific, political, sporting, artistic and even meteorological, was notorious.
The great advantage David Edmonds and John Eidinow enjoyed when writing their excellent new book, Bobby Fischer goes to War, is that the Soviet Union had ceased to exist. As a consequence, archives once sealed have been opened, and many who toiled facelessly in the service of the state bureaucracy, and who once gloried in their own glowering taciturnity, are now instead delighting in the joys of narrative. They have stories to tell, reputations to defend and impugn, scores to settle. And a lot of it has come spilling out. Contrary to received opinion, the Soviet side of the contest was as fraught with drama and dissension as the American; Edmonds and Eidinow have found conflict where previous commentators have assumed monolithic implacability.
To what extent was contemporary fascination with the match a product of the cold war? In posing and answering this question, the authors seem to want to have it both ways. In one extended passage, they suggest that the advent of d?tente between the Soviet Union and the US had rendered east-west showdowns pass?, and that therefore such a reading of the atmospherics surrounding the contest is inaccurate. Then, a few pages later, they adumbrate all the ways in which the superpowers remained in direct confrontation, and argue that antagonism over the chessboard mirrored global rivalry.
I think it incontestable that the cold war did play a significant role in the story. Since the second world war, every world champion had been Soviet. And since the 1948 tournament, held in Amsterdam and the Hague to select a new champion from the world's top five aspirants to the title (following the death of world champion Alexander Alekhine), every challenger, successful and unsuccessful, had been Soviet as well. For most of the rest of the world, therefore, the question was always simply: which Russian will beat which other Russian? (Technically they weren't all Russians: Botvinnik, Tal and Bronstein were Jews, regarded as a separate nationality by the regime, and Petrosian was Armenian. But all were Soviet citizens.) The contest might have been of interest to chess fans, but it was hard for anyone else to care.
The fact that a non-Soviet should finally be the challenger automatically made the match more interesting. That he should also be from a non-communist country made it more interesting still. And his being an American ratcheted up the interest incalculably. Here, at long last, were two representatives of the two most powerful countries in the world, whose antagonism had defined geopolitics for a quarter of a century, facing each other in mano a mano intellectual combat. The media now had a hook to hang their stories on.
But the particular always trumps the general. This was not a case of Soviet man vs American guy, this was Boris Spassky vs Bobby Fischer. Neither could be said to be an ideal representative of his country. Much has always been made of Fischer's peculiarities. The authors quote a chess master named Bill Hartston, who said, "Chess is not something that drives people mad; chess is something that keeps mad people sane." I don't know if he was thinking of Fischer when he offered this observation, but he could well have been. For Fischer - living alone amid unspeakable squalor since his mid-teens (his mother ran away from home to escape him when he was 15), immersed in his intricate delusional imaginings, isolated and ignorant, full of inchoate rage and confusion - chess was the one rational centre around which he could more or less organise his life. Without it, he could easily have become one of those homeless wackos who wander the streets of big cities all over the world (as indeed he later did for some years, in Los Angeles, after he surrendered his title and abandoned chess, muttering about Zionist conspiracies and communist attempts to control his thoughts via the gold fillings in his teeth).
So he was clearly not the sort of sportsman the free world would have delegated to represent itself. Despite an exemplary professionalism, even politesse, when he was actually at the chessboard, Fischer's social behaviour came close to autistic. It wasn't even self-interested, by and large; it was, rather, arbitrary, solipsistic and often self-defeating. Questioning the integrity of the match organisers, snubbing Spassky (the reigning world champion, and ostensibly Fischer's friend), failing to appear at the opening ceremony, abruptly reneging on painstakingly negotiated financial agreements, insisting play be moved to a cramped, noisy back room because of noise in the main playing hall that later proved undetectable by state of the art audio equipment - these were the bizarre whims of an irrational troglodyte. Edmonds and Eidinow cite appalling instances of indefensible behaviour, and have uncovered many examples not made public at the time; any of them could have, and perhaps should have, scuttled the match. But Spassky felt compelled to play Fischer rather than win by default, while America's need to see Fischer win, to see him defeat a Soviet champion, led to complicity in his worst excesses. If a Soviet player had acted the way Fischer acted, western outrage would have been boundless.
And Spassky? At the time, many saw him solely as a victim of Fischer's incivility, a closet dissident, a gentleman motivated solely by a noble love of his art. Edmonds and Eidinow have given us a much more complex portrait. Their Spassky has something of the brat about him - protected by his talent and his success, he could bait the regime with something close to impunity - less of a dissident than a lazy, indulged child, with a taste for western luxuries. His approach to his own career and to the match with Fischer alienated many who should have been his allies, including some of his grandmaster colleagues and much of the state sports apparatus. Far from being half Jewish, as was ubiquitously reported in the western press at the time, he was descended from a long line of Orthodox priests, and even described himself as "an honourable antisemite." (In a similar vein, the authors have unearthed a discovery about Fischer's parentage that renders his antisemitism even more lunatic than it always was.) Having played off the Soviet sports committee against the Soviet central committee, Spassky succeeded in securing for himself a training regime independent of either. But at what a cost! Like Fischer, he surrounded himself with a small coterie who recognised that sycophancy was the key to survival; this was not a recipe for the rigorous preparation Spassky required before the most demanding contest of his life.
What non-chess players may never be able to understand is the enthusiasm and loyalty Fischer was able to excite among colleagues as well as fans. It had nothing to do with his personality; it was a response to his genius. His play revealed a purity of conception and a courageous directness of execution that made it aesthetically irresistible. Bobby Fischer goes to War is a fine book about a miserable human being. It might prompt some readers to consider revisiting another book, published a generation ago, Fischer's My 60 Memorable Games. It reveals a fineness of character undetectable away from the 64 squares.
