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----- Forwarded message from spklein52@hotmail.com -----
Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2005 00:38:01 -0400
From: "Sandy P. Klein" <spklein52@hotmail.com>
Reply-To: SPKlein52@HotMail.com
Subject: Nabokov was a fine player and renowned composer of chess problems ...
http://www.time.com/time/columnist/klein/article/0,9565,1054411,00.html[2]
Did Chess Make Him Crazy?
TIME - 9 hours ago
... office, he was a far better general. NABOKOV was a fine player
and renowned composer of chess problems. And the sanest man I know
...
[3] [4] [5]
Did Chess Make Him Crazy?
If you think video games are dangerous, consider the saga of Bobby
Fischer
Tuesday, Apr. 26, 2005
Bobby Fischer is back in Iceland, and that is as it should be.
Fischer put Iceland on the map for the first time since the Vikings
happened by. And Iceland put Fischer on the map, providing the venue
for his greatest triumph, the 1972 world chess championship. That was
before he fell off a psychic cliff.
Three decades later, the fugitive ex-champion, sought by U.S.
authorities for violating U.N. sanctions on Yugoslavia (in 1992 he
played a high-profile rematch with Boris Spassky in Belgrade), is
whisked out of a Japanese jail where he was awaiting extradition and
offered shelter in Reykjavík. No one is too upset about this
arrangement because he's clearly a sick man. His insane rants about
Jews and America, his choice of a squalid, furtive life by a man who
could have lived in princely admiration, his paranoia--he had the
fillings in his teeth removed because if "somebody took a filling out
and put in an electronic device, he could influence your
thinking"--evoke pity and puzzlement.
Fischer is the poster boy for the mad chess genius, a species with a
pedigree going back at least to Paul Morphy, who after his triumphal
1858-59 tour of Europe returned to the U.S., abruptly quit the game
and is said to have wandered the streets of New Orleans talking to
himself. Others have verged more on the edge of eccentricity. The
great Wilhelm Steinitz claimed to have played against God, given him
an extra pawn and won. Neither player left a record of the game.
Why such proximity between genius and madness in chess? There are
three possible explanations. One is that chess is a monomania. You
study it intensively day and night from childhood if you are going to
rise to the ranks of the greats, and that kind of singular focus
constricts your reality and makes you more vulnerable to distortions
of it. "A chess genius," wrote George Steiner, "is a human being who
focuses vast, little understood mental gifts and labors on an
ultimately trivial human enterprise. Almost inevitably, this focus
produces pathological symptoms of nervous stress and unreality."
Plausible, perhaps, but there are lots of folks who are monomaniacal
in other "trivial" spheres and who come out psychically intact. Tiger
Woods was raised from infancy to be a great golfer and is not just
intact but graceful and charming. The ranks of great golfers,
swimmers and Dominican shortstops are not more noticeably skewed to
the deranged than the general population.
Well, then, this must be monomania of a certain sort. Chess is a
particularly enclosed, self-referential activity. It's not just that
it lacks the fresh air of sport, but that it lacks connections to the
real world outside--a tether to reality enjoyed by the monomaniacal
students of other things, say, volcanic ash or the mating habits of
the tsetse fly. As Stefan Zweig put it in his classic novella The
Royal Game, chess is "thought that leads nowhere, mathematics that
add up to nothing, art without an end product, architecture without
substance."
But chess has a third--and unique--characteristic that is
particularly fatal. It is not just monomaniacal and abstract, but its
arena is a playing field on which the other guy really is after you.
The essence of the game is constant struggle against an adversary
who, by whatever means of deception and disguise, is entirely,
relentlessly, unfailingly dedicated to your destruction. It is only a
board, but it is a field of dreams for paranoia.
Now I'm not sure I like this line of reasoning because it means that
I, who have spent countless hours in public parks, chess clubs and my
library at home fighting for my (king's) life, would be stark raving
mad by now. I suspect that I am not. I like to tell myself that I am
in pretty sane company. The game certainly has its pantheon of
upstanding citizens. While ambassador to France, Benjamin Franklin
preferred to eschew the Paris opera for chess at the Café de la
Régence. (Excellent choice.) Napoleon played, although to judge by
one of his games, a diagrammed and illustrated copy of which hangs in
my office, he was a far better general. Nabokov was a fine player and
renowned composer of chess problems. And the sanest man I know, Natan
Sharansky, is a chess master who once played Garry Kasparov to a draw
and defeats me with distressing ease.
But then there is Fischer, the fearsome counterexample, now
pathetically sheltered in Iceland, the only place that appreciates
his genius enough to take pity on his madness. So, Mama, should you
let your baby grow up to be a chess champion? Tough question. In his
novel The Defense, Nabokov, who loved the game as much as I do, has
the hero, the chess master Luzhin, go mad when he is struck by the
realization of the "full horror and abysmal depths of chess."
A bit melodramatic, perhaps. It won't happen to your boy playing
blitz in Washington Square Park.
I think.
Email the Columnist[6] | Joe Klein\'s Archive[7]
-------------------------
Joe Klein is a senior writer for TIME Magazine based in New York and
Washington, D.C. He wrote the critically-acclaimed novel "Primary
Colors." [more][8]
BACK TO TOP[9]
Premium Content
The Battle of the Brains [Jul 31, 1972]
COVER STORY THE negotiations were going so poorly, Presidential
Adviser Henry Kissinger revealed last week, that he felt compelled to
intervene "for the good of the country." Kissinger was...
Iceland Follies [Oct 28, 1974]
BOBBY FISCHER VS. THE REST OF THE WORLDby BRAD DARRACH 240 pages.
Stein & Day. $7.95.One squally night two years ago, just when it
seemed that Bobby Fischer was finally going to board a jet for...
The Trouble with Genius [Mar 15, 2004]
Sometimes, as these three compelling tales show, people are way too
gifted for their own good
Links:
------
[1] http://www.time.com/time/
[2]
http://www.time.com/time/columnist/klein/article/0,9565,1054411,00.html
[3] http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101050502/index.html
[4] http://www.time.com/time/
[5] http://www.time.com/time/columnist/klein
[6] mailto:letters@time.com
[7] http://www.time.com/time/columnist/klein
[8]
http://www.time.com/time/columnist/klein/article/0,9565,490843,00.html
[9]
http://www.time.com/time/columnist/klein/article/0,9565,1054411,00.html#Anchor-4top45
----- End forwarded message -----
Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2005 00:38:01 -0400
From: "Sandy P. Klein" <spklein52@hotmail.com>
Reply-To: SPKlein52@HotMail.com
Subject: Nabokov was a fine player and renowned composer of chess problems ...
http://www.time.com/time/columnist/klein/article/0,9565,1054411,00.html[2]
Did Chess Make Him Crazy?
TIME - 9 hours ago
... office, he was a far better general. NABOKOV was a fine player
and renowned composer of chess problems. And the sanest man I know
...
[3] [4] [5]
Did Chess Make Him Crazy?
If you think video games are dangerous, consider the saga of Bobby
Fischer
Tuesday, Apr. 26, 2005
Bobby Fischer is back in Iceland, and that is as it should be.
Fischer put Iceland on the map for the first time since the Vikings
happened by. And Iceland put Fischer on the map, providing the venue
for his greatest triumph, the 1972 world chess championship. That was
before he fell off a psychic cliff.
Three decades later, the fugitive ex-champion, sought by U.S.
authorities for violating U.N. sanctions on Yugoslavia (in 1992 he
played a high-profile rematch with Boris Spassky in Belgrade), is
whisked out of a Japanese jail where he was awaiting extradition and
offered shelter in Reykjavík. No one is too upset about this
arrangement because he's clearly a sick man. His insane rants about
Jews and America, his choice of a squalid, furtive life by a man who
could have lived in princely admiration, his paranoia--he had the
fillings in his teeth removed because if "somebody took a filling out
and put in an electronic device, he could influence your
thinking"--evoke pity and puzzlement.
Fischer is the poster boy for the mad chess genius, a species with a
pedigree going back at least to Paul Morphy, who after his triumphal
1858-59 tour of Europe returned to the U.S., abruptly quit the game
and is said to have wandered the streets of New Orleans talking to
himself. Others have verged more on the edge of eccentricity. The
great Wilhelm Steinitz claimed to have played against God, given him
an extra pawn and won. Neither player left a record of the game.
Why such proximity between genius and madness in chess? There are
three possible explanations. One is that chess is a monomania. You
study it intensively day and night from childhood if you are going to
rise to the ranks of the greats, and that kind of singular focus
constricts your reality and makes you more vulnerable to distortions
of it. "A chess genius," wrote George Steiner, "is a human being who
focuses vast, little understood mental gifts and labors on an
ultimately trivial human enterprise. Almost inevitably, this focus
produces pathological symptoms of nervous stress and unreality."
Plausible, perhaps, but there are lots of folks who are monomaniacal
in other "trivial" spheres and who come out psychically intact. Tiger
Woods was raised from infancy to be a great golfer and is not just
intact but graceful and charming. The ranks of great golfers,
swimmers and Dominican shortstops are not more noticeably skewed to
the deranged than the general population.
Well, then, this must be monomania of a certain sort. Chess is a
particularly enclosed, self-referential activity. It's not just that
it lacks the fresh air of sport, but that it lacks connections to the
real world outside--a tether to reality enjoyed by the monomaniacal
students of other things, say, volcanic ash or the mating habits of
the tsetse fly. As Stefan Zweig put it in his classic novella The
Royal Game, chess is "thought that leads nowhere, mathematics that
add up to nothing, art without an end product, architecture without
substance."
But chess has a third--and unique--characteristic that is
particularly fatal. It is not just monomaniacal and abstract, but its
arena is a playing field on which the other guy really is after you.
The essence of the game is constant struggle against an adversary
who, by whatever means of deception and disguise, is entirely,
relentlessly, unfailingly dedicated to your destruction. It is only a
board, but it is a field of dreams for paranoia.
Now I'm not sure I like this line of reasoning because it means that
I, who have spent countless hours in public parks, chess clubs and my
library at home fighting for my (king's) life, would be stark raving
mad by now. I suspect that I am not. I like to tell myself that I am
in pretty sane company. The game certainly has its pantheon of
upstanding citizens. While ambassador to France, Benjamin Franklin
preferred to eschew the Paris opera for chess at the Café de la
Régence. (Excellent choice.) Napoleon played, although to judge by
one of his games, a diagrammed and illustrated copy of which hangs in
my office, he was a far better general. Nabokov was a fine player and
renowned composer of chess problems. And the sanest man I know, Natan
Sharansky, is a chess master who once played Garry Kasparov to a draw
and defeats me with distressing ease.
But then there is Fischer, the fearsome counterexample, now
pathetically sheltered in Iceland, the only place that appreciates
his genius enough to take pity on his madness. So, Mama, should you
let your baby grow up to be a chess champion? Tough question. In his
novel The Defense, Nabokov, who loved the game as much as I do, has
the hero, the chess master Luzhin, go mad when he is struck by the
realization of the "full horror and abysmal depths of chess."
A bit melodramatic, perhaps. It won't happen to your boy playing
blitz in Washington Square Park.
I think.
Email the Columnist[6] | Joe Klein\'s Archive[7]
-------------------------
Joe Klein is a senior writer for TIME Magazine based in New York and
Washington, D.C. He wrote the critically-acclaimed novel "Primary
Colors." [more][8]
BACK TO TOP[9]
Premium Content
The Battle of the Brains [Jul 31, 1972]
COVER STORY THE negotiations were going so poorly, Presidential
Adviser Henry Kissinger revealed last week, that he felt compelled to
intervene "for the good of the country." Kissinger was...
Iceland Follies [Oct 28, 1974]
BOBBY FISCHER VS. THE REST OF THE WORLDby BRAD DARRACH 240 pages.
Stein & Day. $7.95.One squally night two years ago, just when it
seemed that Bobby Fischer was finally going to board a jet for...
The Trouble with Genius [Mar 15, 2004]
Sometimes, as these three compelling tales show, people are way too
gifted for their own good
Links:
------
[1] http://www.time.com/time/
[2]
http://www.time.com/time/columnist/klein/article/0,9565,1054411,00.html
[3] http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101050502/index.html
[4] http://www.time.com/time/
[5] http://www.time.com/time/columnist/klein
[6] mailto:letters@time.com
[7] http://www.time.com/time/columnist/klein
[8]
http://www.time.com/time/columnist/klein/article/0,9565,490843,00.html
[9]
http://www.time.com/time/columnist/klein/article/0,9565,1054411,00.html#Anchor-4top45
----- End forwarded message -----