The Occasional Observer

doesn't quite have the cachet of Fischer v. Spassky, I've always enjoyed a good game of chess. Something more than a casual player, I was on my high school's chess team for 4 years, eventually playing 1st board as a senior (although doing it quite poorly). I was never more than a poor amateur as a chess player, but the game has always interested and intrigued me.

And no part of the game's recent history was more intriguing to my youthful self than that of Bobby Fischer. He seemed to me one part national hero, one part sports star, one part genius, and one part (the largest part) mystery. I can remember asking my parents over and over again about him. Why would you become world champion and quit the game? Why would a person choose to vanish into thin air?

Of course I was too naive at that point to really understand madness. And what little of it I did understand seemed incompatible with genius. I hadn't yet encountered the grand tradition of the insane artist.

Bobby Fischer was a lot of things to me. The nostalgic pull of my youth. The competitive excitement of the Cold War (hindsight and victory can defang the tiger, no?). The personification of a truly enjoyable hobby that I no longer have the time for. The inexplicable tendency of humanity to sully the great gifts bestowed upon us.

Of course, in the end, Bobby Fischer was a human being, and one more tortured than most of us. May he rest in peace.