| Many chess players in the Northwest may remember Paul Eggers. During the 1970�s and 1980�s, he was one of the strongest players in the state. He is a former national master, and took third place in the 1989 Washington State Championship. However, his main interest has been creative writing and he has won various awards in that field. He earned a doctorate in fiction writing and is now a college professor at California State University. He has published two books, the latest a collection of short stories, including some about a fictionalized chess club in Tacoma. The book is called �How the Water Feels.� I bought my copy at a very good price from www.amazon.com. You can also order it from your local bookstore. The following is a short excerpt from one of those stories. The characters are unforgettable and the tone darkly humorous. I can highly recommend the book - Eric Tangborn Excerpt from �A Private Space� (This passage describes a mythical / fictionalized Tacoma Chess Club; Russ Rassmusson here is the former Wash. State champ; the narrator, Gary, is an up-and-coming young player. Rassmusson has invited Gary to train with him for the state championship, two months away.) The club itself was in a small building downtown. It smelled of pipe tobacco and urine, and its rows of chess sets were said to have been specially constructed by a Pakistani craftsman for the 1960 Seattle World�s Fair. The club�s plate glass window, notable for its professionally painted giant knight and pawn, suggested an earlier era, one in which men wore fedoras and women listened to Benny Goodman on the radio . So, too, did the giant ratings-ladder board, a green-felted expanse of plywood, bolted to the wall, on which members� names and chess ratings had been written on white cards, in Magic Marker, and affixed by thumbtacks in order of chess rating; so did the heavy chairs and tables, made of fine burnished dark wood, and the long line of framed black-and-white photos, along both walls, of deceased and still-living world chess champions. There were, as well, bulky onyx ashtrays, purchased and donated, the treasurer said, by retired master sergeant Jim �Ju-Ju� Bowen at an airbase in Guam, and a stainless-steel coffee urn that seemed forever to be percolating. The linoleum floor, installed for free by immediate past vice-president D. Dzironky (�I am Dee,� he said, in thickly accented English), was a serendipitous and pleasing rust and cream chessboard pattern. The club was a home away from home, lovingly tended by the city�s small but committed cadre, and sometimes late in the evening, fresh from a victory, Gary would rub his thumb on the glass of the picture frames, searching for resemblances between himself and the former champions, whose likenesses seemed to stare back with a severe and regal sympathy. There was inside the club an air of calm and order. On the giant ratings board you saw your name and rating, and everyone else did, too. There were no secrets, no withholdings, and you spent your evenings knowing all you needed to know about the fish sitting across from you, or about the fish grimacing by the coffee pot, or about the fish striking the plunger of the chess clock too hard. Even a cursory glance at the giant ratings board told you something very clear and important. Russ Rassmusson had been at the top forever. His card, occupying the first spot on the board, had turned yellow with age, and it still had no creases, no thumbprints, as if never touched by human hands. Rassmusson had been profiled twice in the Tribune; he had once received a complimentary hand-written note from a visiting Latvian champion; he had been elected unanimously to the Washington State Chess Hall of Fame. Recently, though, not all the talk was of Rassmusson. As any visitor in the past six months would have clearly seen, the ratings board had begun to reveal something new, something equally clear and important: below Rassmusson, in the second spot but well above the depressingly but unsurprisingly vast ocean of fish (�The poor, sayeth Jesus, shall always be among you,� said Rassmusson), was the bright, well-creased card of Gary Martindale, the whiz-kid rising so fast some fish once asked him if he was getting the bends. Now, Tuesdays and Thursday evenings, and on weekends, Gary trained with chessmaster Russ Rassmusson. They played five-minute chess for quarters. They reviewed mating attacks with bishop and knight versus king, contemplated rook and pawn endings, studied variations and sub-variations of the King�s Indian, the Sicilian, and the Ruy Lopez. �Pay attention,� said Rassmusson, snapping his fingers. �You�ve got to be here, not floating around.� So Gary straightened in his chair. He watched Rassmusson take apart his Nimzo-Indian. Then he showed Rassmusson a gambit line in the French Defense; Rassmusson found a flaw immediately. They stayed until the buses stopped running. |