| Bobby Fischer The Wandering King (Batsford 2005 - www.chrysalisbooks.co.uk, 160 pages, paperback, algebraic notation, $19.95) by Hans Bohm and Kees Jongkind is that rare chess book you can actually read. In fact almost the entire book, with the single exception of game one of the 1992 match between Fischer and Spassky, is prose. This book consists primarily of interviews that were done for a Dutch TV special on Bobby. Many of those interviewed will be quite familiar to the chess public (Karpov, Korchnoi, Benko, Ree, Schmid, Seirawan, Sofia Polgar, etc.) but others definitely won't like Fischer's fitness trainer Harry Sneider. It's impossible to write a book on Fischer that is completely new and original but the authors deserve credit for trying to be through and I learned some things I didn't know before. Bobby didn't ask that all children be banned from the playing hall in Reykjavik, just those that couldn't play chess. He also insisted that women in stiletto heels also be forbidden entry. The authors point out these demands might initially seem a bit odd but children get bored easily, especially when they don't know what they are watching. The playing hall floor carried noise very easily. This sort of balanced approach by the authors is present throughout The Wandering King . The good, bad and ugly is all here including some very unpleasant excerpts from Fischer's radio interviews in recent years. The FBI material on Fischer and his mother is also analyzed. I found the most interesting parts of the book to be the interviews with Hans Ree, Jan Timman Yasser Seirawan and the reminiscences of Hans Bohm who was present at the 1972 match. Ree, who played Fischer in Israel, visited a kibbutz with Bobby at the invitation of another tournament participant, Bernstein. The vision of the avowed anti-Semite visiting a kibbutz is one of many contradictory images of Fischer that The Wandering King presents. The heartfelt reflections of Bohm, who made it to Reykjavik at all costs, feigning illness during the Icelandic stopover on a flight from Europe to New York, really brings the magic of 1972 back to life. Timman points out that when comparing the careers of Fischer and Kasparov the latter often mentions that Fischer was a shell of himself in 1992. The Dutchman asks what will history have to say about Kasparov's match loss to Kramnik, without a single victory for Garry. There are mistakes here and there in The Wandering King. On page 114 Eugenio Torre is referred to as the "the only grandmaster of this island archipelago". It would be accurate to say he was the first, in 1974, just ahead of Rosendo Balinas (1976), but several other Filipinos also hold the GM title. The section, on Torre, where it's related that a hidden camera and a camera with a telephoto lens where used to film him during the making of the television program, struck me as creepy. Fortunately it's the only incident like this in the book. I remembered the old story regarding the marathon game at Zurich 1959 between the Barcza and Bobby where at the end of the encounter Bobby is eager to analyze while the Hungarian only hopes for some rest. The authors say Bobby tried hard for more than 100 moves but in fact the game was drawn in 95. By the way the "old" Barcza was only 48. On page 31 it is Dr.Gaba not Graba. One curiosity for me was the description of the Fischer family's early moves "from Oregon to Arizona to California, and finally descended to Brooklyn". I remember Mobile, Arizona, quite well from Profile of a Prodigy which also relates that Bobby was already in New York at the age of 6. Since he was born in Chicago in 1943, the family did indeed move a great deal in Bobby's formative years. I wonder where in Oregon and California the family lived? Speaking of Bobby's family there is plenty of information about Bobby's mother and his biological father Paul Nemenyi, who died in 1952. One can't help but come away with the conclusion that Bobby had very bright parents. One also realizes that his mother Regina was a forceful personality who achieved a great deal at a time when it was not easy for women to succeed professionally, especially as a single parent. Bobby Fischer The Wandering King will not be the last book on Bobby Fischer but it makes for interesting reading. |