Knight Moves

Earlier today, I mentioned my analysis of Janet Maslin's review of Bobby Fischer Goes to War, and it got me to wondering if other reviewers had gotten a firmer handle on the book.

Louis Menand does a great job in his New Yorker article, capturing many of the book's nuances, though I might quibble with his assertion that David Edmonds and John Eidinow act as if "chess, a game they give no indication of knowing a great deal about, is normally an esoteric pastime." They don't go into particularly deep analysis, true, but even their rough summaries display some familiarity with the subtleties of the game. I'll admit, though, that those subtleties come across more as a grasp of the psychological intricacies than of specific piece-moving strategies.

Over at USA Today, Stephen J. Lyons thinks he's found "a good old-fashioned psychological thriller replete with dramatic political overtones," but otherwise does little more than summarize the storyline, as does Jesse Berrett at the San Francisco Chronicle. For Newsday, Wesley Yang starts out with a political stance--"the fathomless absurdity of a Soviet state insecure enough to leave nothing outside the realm of surveillance is matched by the tragic obscenity of the lives it stunted"--of questionable relevance to this particular narrative, which certainly does focus on the Party's obsessive handling of the nation's grandmasters but has little if anything to say directly concerning the regime's oppression. From there, he shifts to Fischer's bad behavior and then winds up at a place that quite confuses me:

Alas, the emphasis on the context and subtext of the match works to the book's detriment. The basic premise that the "collision of personalities, of moral and legal obligations, of social and political beliefs" surrounding the match are themselves worthy of exhaustive study never quite justifies itself.

Frankly, I'm not sure how somebody can read about the "collision of personalities" between Fischer and Spassky and the environments that shaped them and not find them worthy of study; you couldn't make up two antagonists this compelling. I concede Yang's point (echoed by Menand, remember) that there isn't much chess analysis in the book, but I firmly disagree with him that "we are thus never drawn into the basic momentum of competition that every good sports book provides." Believe me, readers get the sense of competition, they get the rising hoopla, even if they don't get the play by play coverage.

Come to think of it, what do the chess buffs think? British Chess Magazine put Andrew P. Smith on the case, and he calls it one of the best chess books he's ever read, particularly singling out the insights into Spassky's play within the context of the Soviet chess scene.