So this afternoon I’m driving back home from the bookstore, and thinking about how there are so many books where the young hero outfoxes the older generation. You can start with Harry Potter and go through just about the whole Young Adult section of the bookstore, and a lot of the Fantasy section, too.
Wouldn’t it be nice, for a change, to see a novel about the older generation whupping up on the youngsters? So I started thinking about a chess novel: a crusty old master, defending his title against the up-and-coming prodigy. It would be all about how the wily old guy staves off the advance of time, keeps frustrating his young opponent, and maybe eventually wins the match…
and that’s when it hit me…
It already happened.
Fischer-Reshevsky, 1961. Reshevsky, the dean of American chess, nearing 50 years old, a famous player on the international scene for more than 40 years. Fischer, the teen-aged prodigy, already a four-time U.S. champion. They play to a standoff, 5½-5½. And then Fischer pulls a Fischer, for the first time in his career. He forfeits the twelfth game in a dispute over the start time for the game, and then he forfeits the whole match because the appeals committee won’t overrule the forfeit.
Although Fischer did have a justifiable ground for complaint (the starting time had been changed without his agreement), as one Website puts it he reacted in the worst possible way. I have to wonder, after reading Bobby Fischer goes to War, if he was surprised at Reshevsky’s tenacity and was afraid of losing fair and square. Forfeiting the match was an easy way out.
The Fischer-Reshevsky match has always been a bit of a mystery to me. I’ve never played over any games from the match. I knew about it mostly from Larry Evans’ very oblique comments in Fischer’s My Sixty Memorable Games. I’m sure Frank Brady discussed it in Profile of a Prodigy, but I don’t remember what he wrote about it. (It’s been thirty years since I read that book.) It just seems like one of those things that people would rather forget; instead they talk about Fischer’s amazing record in U.S. Championships, his 20-game winning streak, etc. And I’m sure that no one has ever written about the match from Reshevsky’s point of view.
I’m not saying that I’ll do this, mind you, just that it’s an interesting idea …
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