For Him, The Game Was Everything

He became a chess grand master at age 15 and a cold-war hero at 29, when he dethroned the Soviet world champion Boris Spassky in a storied 1972 match. Soon after, though, Fischer, a tempestuous personality, withdrew from the public eye. Following two de cades of seclusion, he emerged briefly in 1992, defying an executive order by President George H.W. Bush forbidding him from participating in a rematch against Spassky in the former Yugoslavia, then under U.N. sanctions. (Fischer won easily.) Later, he was jailed in Japan, accused of a passport violation, and made headlines more than once for anti-Semitic comments. He eventually settled in Iceland. When he died last week of kidney failure, his longtime friend Larry Evans, a chess prodigy and writer, n oted a fitting irony: Fischer died at 64, which is also the number of squares on a chessboard. Evans shared these memories of his late friend:

I was with Bobby from the beginning. I met him when he was 13, on the drive home from a Canadian tournament in 1956. Later, I became his collaborator on "My 60 Memorable Games," his masterpiece. Bobby remembered each game like it was a short story: he memorized opponents' facial gestures, their precise moves, the way in which they interacted. But getting those details out of him was like pulling teeth—he didn't want to give away his secrets. I'd say, "Well, if he makes this move, then what do you do?" I scribbled it all down and tried to be as faithful to his words as I could. Those calculations were key to understanding Bobby's thinking. His sanity seemed to desert him beyond the confines of those 64 squares.

As a human being, Bobby left much to be desired. He was stubborn, difficult, and those qualities got worse and worse as time went on. I think he was bitter because he felt the American government didn't give him the credit he deserved; he felt he'd helped win the cold war, in a small way. And the great tragedy of his life was not defending his world title in 1975 against Russia's Anatoly Karpov.

But his redeeming quality was his sense of humor. We started on his book in 1967, but after months of work, Bobby withdrew the manuscript. A year or so later, we got a note from the publishers, Simon & Schuster. They wanted to know what to do with the lead plates we used in those days to print books. Bobby was living in a Brooklyn flat at the time, and he said, "Larry, do you think I should store the plates in my apartment?" I looked at him like he was crazy. "Bobby, do you realize how many tons that stuff weighs?" I asked. "It'll come crashing through the floor and kill the tenants below." Apparently it was the push he needed: "Well, the world's coming to an end anyway," he said. "I guess I should publish the book."

© 2008