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Howard Lovecraft and Bobby
Fischer
One might well argue that Bobby Fischer
is the "H. P. Lovecraft" of chess --- and, with about as much
validity, that H. P. Lovecraft is the "Bobby Fischer" of horror. Each
man ranks at the very top of his chosen field; each possesses an extraordinary
personality. And the lives of both contain elements of tragicomic poignancy. At
the time of his premature death Lovecraft considered himself a failure, never
imagining that posterity would come to judge his fiction among the best in the
genre. From an early age Bobby Fischer knew that he was the best chess player in
the world, and in fact he would have the satisfaction of proving it by winning
the world championship in 1972. But then, because of some inexplicable imp of
the perverse, he declined to defend his title and retired from the game. His
mature playing career covers less than twenty years --- the same span as
Lovecraft's serious writing career. Apart from these general similarities, there
are other, more personal resemblances between these two peculiar geniuses.
Born March 7, 1943, in Brooklyn, Robert
J. Fischer, like HPL, grew up without a father, his parents divorcing when he
was a small child. His relations with his mother were not easy. Where the young
Lovecraft devoted himself to reading and writing in an attempt to subsume all of
human knowledge (or at least a good part of it), Fischer as a boy singlemindedly
set out to master chess. A prodigy, he won early fame --- though at the cost of
normal social development. He dropped out of high school and shunned such usual
male adolescent pursuits as sports and girls.
The 18-year-old Fischer, as reported in
an interview/article in the January 1962 Harper's, did not hesitate to
voice his opinions. He belittled women ("They're all weak, all women.
They're stupid compared to men."), especially their chess abilities;
slurred Jews ("Yeh, there are too many Jews in chess. They seem to have
taken away the class of the game."); complained about New York subways
("People come in there, in their work clothes and all, people come charging
in like animals, it's terrible."); talked on about his suits (17 of them
--- he was pretty well off by his late teens); lamented the decline of chess as
a gentleman's game and of the nation in general (as revealed in the decline in
dress); expressed his admiration for "aristocrats" and his dislike of
Greenwich Village; and put down religion (agreeing with Nietzsche that
"religion is just to dull the senses of the people"). Such
pronouncements bear a real affinity with some of the more arrogant and
intolerant statements of the immature Lovecraft!
Happily, age has mellowed Fischer a
bit. While he remains a bachelor, he has belatedly, like HPL, taken an interest
in the opposite sex. Soon after winning the world championship he informed his
friends at the Worldwide Church of God (Herbert Armstrong's church --- quite a
jump from Nietzsche!) that he wanted to meet girls with "big breasts".
He subsequently dated some of the wholesome if vacuous coeds at American
Collegein Pasadena, California --- carefully chaperoned, of course! (For a
hilarious account of Bobby's antics see Brad Darrach's Bobby Fischer vs. the
Rest of the World.)
While chess is no longer his sole
passion, it seems unlikely that Fischer has taken up Lovecraft as one of his new
hobbies. Probably he would find the Providence Gentleman's tales not sexy enough
for his tastes. And nowhere in his fiction does Lovecraft mention chess.
HPL does mention chess a few times in
the Selected Letters. Since he cared little for games, whether mental or
physical, it comes as no surprise that he made remarks like the following:
"Chess --- an intellectual exercise under arranged conditions --- is
palpably artificial as compared with the use of the intellect in grappling with
the actually unknown" (Selected Letters IV, 75). Late in life he
conceded that chess is "an ancient and picturesque game, which I'd be sorry
to see vanish from the stream of western tradition" and that it is "a
gentleman's game". He added, "I'm no good at it and can't keep awake
over it. I've learned and forgotten the rules three separate times" (Selected
Letters V, 227). Chances are that had Lovecraft lived to witness Fischer's
triumph, he would have dismissed the greatest chess player of our age (just as
he had dismissed the greatest magician of his age, Harry Houdini, for
squandering his intellect) for having wasted his talents on "a mere
game".
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