Bobby Fischer Goes to War: How the Soviets Lost the Most Extraordinary Chess Match of All Time
by David Edmonds and John Eidinow
Ecco

On September 11, 2001, America's only World Chess Champion went on the air in Manila, exultantly announcing that it was a very good day indeed. A simple Internet search will turn up audio files of the broadcasts for the curious — a strong stomach is needed for a display of anti-Semitism and paranoia far beyond any reasoned critique of US foreign policy. Fischer, a fugitive from the United States since 1992, was in Belgrade that day, playing in a rematch of what David Edmonds and John Eidinow call "the most extraordinary chess match of all time": the 1972 Bobby Fischer-Boris Spassky World Championship showdown in Reykjavik. It was a rematch that "tarnished the Reykjavik legend just as a bad sequel to a movie can sully the original." This book is a full, compulsively readable account of that legend.

Edmonds and Eidinow describe the Soviet chess system, the Cold War politics that suffused the chess world and the rapid rise of Bobby Fischer with great verve and liveliness. Their main focus is the match itself, as well as the extraordinary circumstances that surrounded it. They tell, with considerable narrative skill, how it was doubted that Fischer would even turn up — the brinkmanship he displayed and the delays he threatened were often seen as either a deliberate tactical ploy or greediness over money. Even here, Fischer's behaviour was often more extraordinary than generally reported at the time. In Reykjavik at last, but still embroiled in arguments about appearance money and any forfeit of games due to his lateness, Fischer suddenly handwrote a letter of apology to Spassky offering to give up every cent of his prize money. His advisers had to tone this down, a process one described as "feeling like a cop trying to talk a jump case down off a ledge."

When Sergei Pavlov, the USSR's Sports Minister and former head of the Komsomol, commissioned a non-chess journalist to write an anti-Fischer article in 1964, Soviet chess players were appalled. The article had castigated his "ignorance in most spheres of social life, unthinkable for a contemporary cultured person" — a hint that Fischer was not kulturnyi, a Russian term best translated (were it not for the corroding effects of irony) as "civilized." This was seen in Soviet chess circles as an unacceptable burst of personal vituperation into the rarefied sphere of chess. Despite further pressure from Pavlov, no more personal attacks on Fischer appeared in the literature. Chess, although used by the regime for showpiece propaganda purposes, was also an oasis of relatively free expression; visitors were struck how uninhibited and fresh discussion of the World Championship was compared to the sterility of most Soviet media.

Spassky was portrayed as the kulturnyi embodiment of the Soviet system. Yet in his own way, Spassky was as much a rebel as Fischer, posessing an excess of individualism, as Soviet sports apparatchniks saw it, leading to fears that he was not the right man for the job of taking on the American wunderkind. Edmonds and Eidinow describe the Soviet manipulation of players in the state's interest; foreign travel in particular was approved or forbidden to suit political motives. Spassky's habit of expressing opinions such as "The Soviets have destroyed nature," and describing Latvia as an occupied country, would have had grave consequences in a less talented player. The teenage Spassky was given to emotional outbursts at losing games — a trait he later suppressed, but overall he was far from the Soviet "iceman" presented in the Western press.

Reykjavik — located, suitably enough, on a Mid-Atlantic faultline between East and West — would be the arena for what many saw as the Cold War ritualized into a man-on-man confrontation. The politics of the era fill the book. Henry Kissinger takes time to phone Fischer as he sulks prior to the match and Soviet officials fret that a defeat could damage national prestige. For all the Cold War rhetoric, Edmonds and Eidinow observe that many Americans supported Spassky, many Russians quietly cheered on Fischer and that the State Department tried to distance itself from the young American. Theodore Tremblay, the US chargé d'affaires in Reykjavik, was supremely embarrassed by the whole affair, and downplayed the idea of Fischer as a representative of the United States as a whole.

That all this was taking place in Reykjavik is itself a tangled tale of chess politics and money. Spassky's favorite cities were Reykjavik, Amsterdam, Dortmund and Paris, while Fischer's were Belgrade, Sarajevo, Buenos Aires and Montreal. The Soviet champion's chosen cities were capitalist, while Fischer's were communist (Fischer had always been very popular in Yugoslavia). Fischer moaned that Reykjavik was a backwater, regarded as a "hardship posting" for American GIs, yet despite his complaints and delayed arrival, many Icelanders warmed to Fischer. The story of how Fischer bonded, in as far as Fischer could bond, with Saemudur Palsson — the Icelandic policeman acting as his bodyguard — is among the most touching in the book, and the authors' insights into Fischer's personality are poignant.

At the very end of the Sept. 11 broadcast, another side of Fischer appears. "Do you guys have my number?" he asks the host as the interview winds down. "I think I'll ring you off air and give you my numbers." In this instant, after all the noxious anti-Semitism, you can hear the "perpetual lost teenager" Bobby Fischer, of whom Edmonds and Eidinow write: "Those who knew him best rarely have a bad word to say about him. 'Oh, that's just Bobby,' they smile indulgently, when discussing one or another bizarre episode."

Indeed, while Fischer's boorishness is legendary, the authors find plenty of chess figures willing to forgive. "He was not a bad boy," said Lothar Schmid, the chief arbiter in Reykjavik, a man with much reason to hate Fischer after the often farcical brinkmanship in which he engaged. Spassky himself reports feeling sympathy for Fischer, saying "he was always seventeen." Fischer was capable of kindness and was utterly honorable at the chess table. His tantrums were always aimed at tournament organizers and officials rather than the opponent.

What's missing in the book is the chess. We are dependent on Edmonds and Eidinow's word on the beauty of the actual games. One reason chess people were so willing to forgive Fischer's behaviour was the sheer quality of his gameplay. It is perfectly understandable that the authors wished to avoid writing a chess book as such; the casual reader might have been repelled by pages of notation and boards, and the records of these supreme games are widely available. That aside, this book is an exemplary account of this most extraordinary match. The authors do include an appendix detailing FBI surveillance of Fischer's mother and their deduction from these records that Dr. Paul Nemenyi, a Hungarian engineer, was Fischer's natural father. If true, this would mean the raging anti-Semite is Jewish on both sides of his family — an irony typical of this fascinating account of one of the strangest encounters in any sport.

— Seamus Sweeney (seamus.sweeney@campus.ie)