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Fields of Force: Fischer and Spassky at Reykjavik (1974)

Chess may be the deepest, least exhaustible of pastimes, but it is nothing more. As for a chess genius, he is a human being who focuses vast, little-understood mental gifts and labors on an ultimately trivial human enterprise.
-George Steiner, Fields of Force

Today, it is hard to imagine the sensation of Mr. Fischer's success when he wrested the world championship away from Boris Spassky in Reykjavik, Iceland, in 1972. In the middle of the Cold War, the Brooklyn-raised iconoclast took the crown from the well-oiled Soviet machine that had dominated the chess world for decades. And this after he barely showed up for the match at all, and then lost the first game and forfeited the second!

Partially due to Mr. Fischer's outrageous behavior leading up to and during the "match of the century," the international media coverage was incredible. The games were shown live around the world. I was nine years old and already a strong club player when the Fischer-Spassky match took place, and I followed the games avidly. Fischer, who had crushed two other Soviet grandmasters on his march to the title match, nonetheless had many fans in the Soviet Union. They respected his chess, of course, but many quietly enjoyed his individuality and independence.

After the match ended in a convincing victory for the American, the world was at his feet. Chess was on the cusp of becoming a commercially successful sport for the first time. Mr. Fischer's play, nationality and natural charisma created a unique opportunity. He was a national hero whose popularity rivaled that of Muhammad Ali. (Would the secretary of state have called Ali before a fight the way Henry Kissinger called Mr. Fischer?) Sales of chess sets and books boomed, and tournament prize funds soared. With Bobby Fischer in the lead, chess was headed for the popularity of golf and tennis. [...]

Opportunities abounded, but Mr. Fischer's was a purely destructive force. He demolished the Soviet chess machine but could build nothing in its place. He was the ideal challenger--but a disastrous champion.

The conventional wisdom says that Bobby Fischer was a guileless and petulant child who just wanted his own way. I believe he was conscious of all his actions and the psychological effect his behavior had on his opponents. The gentlemanly Mr. Spassky was ill-prepared to deal with the belligerent American in Reykjavik. In 1975, Mr. Fischer's challenger was the young Mr. Karpov, whom I would later meet in five consecutive world championship matches.

Unable to even contemplate defeat, Mr. Fischer left chess. Bereft of the only thing he had ever wanted to do in his life, he turned his destructive energies inward, espousing a virulent anti-Semitism--despite his own Jewish heritage.
-Fischer's Price: Chess may have been the only thing that kept the champion in touch with reality (Garry Kasparov, July 19, 2004 , Opinion Journal)

George Steiner is a critic whose reputation is the subject of considerable controversy, chiefly over the question of whether he knows as much as he leads his readers to believe he does. He is, as well, the author of the cringe-inducing novel, The Portage to San Cristobel of A.H., in which he, one assumes accidentally, makes Adolph Hitler something of a sympathetic character. This book, which he appears to be long out of print, is rather a curiosity, but one that invokes both these controversies at least tangentially. Published as The Sporting Scene: White Knights of Reykjavik in Britain, it collects Mr. Steiner's New Yorker coverage of the notorious Fischer/Spassky World Chess Championship of 1972. The author does manage to give the impression that he knows more about chess than any man who's ever lived, and that Fischer and Spassky would have been hard pressed to beat him. He is also, understandably, fascinated by the horrible behavior, cheap gamesmanship, egomania, and greed of Bobby Fischer. It could not have been known at the time just how disturbed Mr. Fischer really was--or perhaps he was not yet truly insane--but reading about him in retrospect it's clear that everyone, including Mr. Steiner, cut him way too much slack. It is sort of creepy to watch as Mr. Fischer, an exploiter himself, is exploited for his entertainment value even as alarms should have been going off somewhere about how unbalanced his mind was.

At any rate, the book succeeds as sports reportage, capturing the manic nature of the confrontation, the Cold War atmospherics surrounding it, and something of the tortured personality of Bobby Fischer. It's richly illustrated with game positions, but an appendix with notations of the actual games would have been useful. David Edmonds and John Eidinow wrote Bobby Fischer Goes to War: How the Soviets Lost the Most Extraordinary Chess Match of All Time just a couple years ago and it has probably supplanted this book's place as regards the topic, but this one still seems worth reading if for no other reason that Mr. Steiner was there to experience the tumultuous match personally.

(Reviewed:19-Nov-05)

Grade: (B)

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Fields of Force: Fischer and Spassky at Reykjavik (1974)

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