The Troubled Genius of Bobby Fischer
January 30, 2011
One night in 1960, author and chess fan Frank Brady sat down for dinner in a Greenwich Village tavern.
Across the table from him was Bobby Fischer, just a teenager but already a grand master of the game. Fischer was never without his pocket chessboard, and as they lingered over dinner, he pulled it out and began to rehearse for an upcoming match. His eyes glazed, his fingers flew over the little board, and he seemed completely unaware of his surroundings as he whispered to himself about possible moves.
Brady found that in the presence of Fischer’s chess genius, his eyes were full of tears.
He describes the scene in his new book, Endgame: Bobby Fischer’s Remarkable Rise and Fall — From America’s Brightest Prodigy to the Edge of Madness.
Brady tells Weekend All Things Considered host Guy Raz that he first became aware of Fischer while both were playing in a New York chess tournament in the mid 1950s.
“I remember some older man kibitzing the game, and Bobby spun around and said, ‘Please! This is a chess game!’ The man was about 65 years old, and he was silenced by this child.”
Brady later became friends with Fischer, and wrote about him often, including a 1965 biography.
But Fischer was a troubled genius. He dropped out of sight after winning the 1972 World Championship against Boris Spassky of the Soviet Union. Today, he’s better known as a paranoid recluse whose frequent anti-Semitic and anti-American rants drove away friends and angered the U.S. government.
“Paraphrasing Churchill, he was an enigma inside of a conundrum,” Brady says. “Think of him as the greatest chess player who ever lived. The Mozart of chess. And then think of him as a failed human being, one who fell, tremendously and quickly and swiftly, fell from grace.”
Full article here.
There will only be one Fischer.
A little Bobby is in all of us. You jerks.
Fell from grace………hmph…Has anyone even thought that Fischer..may have been right about a lot of his views…? I honestly doubt it…because people think in herds…Fischer…right or wrong…was a wonderous person..deserving all our amazement. He wasn’t crazy…just had his opinions…and I’m not convinced they were wrong.
Mike Magnan.
I agree with everybody. Deep comments.
I add. Unbelievable the number of persons that has earned money with Fischer. And they still continue.
Susan, sweet greetings.
Stef
Brady is a great example of people miling it for all its worth. Reminds me of that writer character in the movie “Unforgiven”
Why can’t he shut up???? Cause there’s a buck to me made.
Sort of pathetic.
Yes, people exploited Fischer and made money off of him (*cough* Herbert W. Armstrong *cough*).
That doesn’t mean that his rantings were okay. Not many of you would support a random scraggly-haired, unkempt older man who ranted about how the United States should be destroyed, and how the Jews were responsible for everything that happened to us.
The fact that Fischer was a great chess player doesn’t give him (or anybody else) the right to act like a jerk.
I know you’re American, Tom Barrister, so I unsterstand your resentment towards Fischer.
You surely are a clever person, so you’ll understand that even the unpopular words of Fischer on the 11 september and about the Jews were, probably, the outcome of an unleashed rage on who, first “sucked him dry like a lemon”, and then disowned and mocked him.
But as I’ve already said in other posts, for my part, all this doesn’t add or take off anything to that awesome chess player called “Bobby Fischer”.
Too bad I can’t master English very well, otherwise I’d have circumstantiated much better my concept.
Best regards.
Susan, sweet greetings.
Stef
Stef….I’d think you mastered Enclish well enough. HOLA!
Mike Magnan