Thursday, 22 July, 2004

Bobby Fischer, or My Favorite Martian My friend Robert who is the video/film cataloger for Univ. of Maryland libraries - a real librarian asked me to try to write about Bobby Fischer in the wake of Fischer's arrest in Tokyo last Friday/Thursday. Robert had a punk rock band in high school (Roanoke, VA), with some friends, named after Bobby Fischer. Named after? What was the name exactly. Dunno, That detail seems not to be in my notes, but I would have picked the Bobby Fischer five. Their encore song, of course, would be: "Breaking rocks in the hot sun, I fought the law and the law won! Bobby Fischer is Robert's obsession not mine, but as I'm the one with a scribble box... Assignment accepted, but I allow myself a dissent in a future post from another observation he made at the start of the week. Also he has provided me with a short set of links to Fischer stuff on the web The Observer | Sport | Profile of chess champion Bobby Fischer Definition of Bobby Fischer - wordIQ Dictionary & Encyclopedia First Bobby Fischer Interview - January 14, 1999 Bizarre. Bobby Fischer: Profile of a Prodigy a book he has read but does not own Bobby Fischer Goes to War : How the Soviets Lost the Most Extraordinary Chess Match of All Time a book he owns, but has not read How to Beat Bobby Fischer My 60 Memorable GamesThe book Fischer wrote, I think my sister Ann has this book My personal recollections of Bobby Fischer involve a car radio, a small black and white television. Various towns in the lower cape: Pocassett where my grandfather had a cottage, Woods Hole - a small annual garden show off a (very) small winding road, where we ran the car battery low listening to chess match commentary on the radio as my mother shopped for flowers. And somebody named Shelby Lyman. The Guardian story above mentions Lyman and describes his PBS show World Chess Championship, but they don't add his analysis catch phrase "but, and it is a big but..." After Reykjavik like most people I lost track of Fischer particulary when he declined to defend his championship passing it over to Anatoly Karpov. Robert figured it was a true mystery were Fischer had dropped out of the world to. Sad, but in a damaged romantic sort of way (Roberts theory on Fischer is that when he dropped out of highschool to devote himself to chess and his mother and sister moved out of the apartment, he was able to indulge intoxicatingly in a adolescent fixation and never broke free). Turns out he has been holed up in the Philippines, since the Yugoslavian match. The 17 radio interviews he's given for a Baguio radio station were sort of a clue. Baguio! If only I could drop out the world to Baguio, twist my arm. I never played chess much, only when people forced me, because they figured they could beat me. It was nice the rare occaisions when they were wrong and I beat them, but not that nice. A couple of years ago I saw in a childrens' games catalog a chess version called Quick Chess with 10 pieces per side and 30 squares to the board. I placed a cardboard mask over a chess set I have and figured out what the general rules would have to be and have played a game with my niece. This game is fun and is as much chess as I need. As Jonathan Richman has previously observed "Pablo Picasso never got called an asshole - not like me", and not like Bobby Fischer. 10:44:29 PM    comment [];trackback [];

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. 2004 Paul Bushmiller. Last update: 8/03/04; 00:19:27.