Review of Harry Benson's 'Bobby Fischer'

Review of Harry Benson's 'Bobby Fischer'

Leonard Cassuto | The Christian Science Monitor | Aug 19, 2011

As a public figure, the notorious anti-Semite Bobby Fischer has a lot in common with Sandy Koufax, one of the most famous Jews ever to play professional sports. Both Fischer and Koufax walked away from their games at the peak of their powers and left millions of onlookers aglow with memories of their skill and artistry. Koufax retired as a Cy Young Award-winner and strikeout king. Fischer won the World Chess Championship in 1972 and then forfeited his title rather than defend it.

Fischer, of course, had a repulsive second act in which he returned to tarnish these memories. His public hatreds of Jews and the United States of America brought him occasional notice in the years leading up to his death in 2008 – and also after it, when he was briefly exhumed for a posthumous DNA test.

Now photographer Harry Benson has published Bobby Fischer, a collection of pictures taken of Fischer during the earlier, happier time of his ascent. They remind us of how Fischer’s charisma made him America’s first and only chess celebrity.

Benson was not a chess fan. Indeed, he barely knew how to move the pieces. But the reclusive Fischer granted him unprecedented access in 1971 and 1972, during the period leading up to and encompassing his triumph over Boris Spassky. Fischer’s virtually single-handed triumph over Spassky and the rest of the USSR’s powerful chess establishment resonated around the world. His achievement was immediately painted as a symbolic victory in a small-scale version of the Cold War.

Benson’s "Bobby Fischer" presents a marvelous compendium of intimate photos of the grandmaster working and relaxing, in motion and at rest, grimly focused and at lank-limbed leisure. There are many good documentary photos on display here, such as a vivid pre-game handshake between Spassky and Fischer, but the best and most evocative pictures in this extraordinary book are of Fischer alone. Benson, a longtime photographer for Life Magazine, notes in his brief accompanying remarks that Fischer preferred the company of children and animals to that of other adults. His solitude eventually became pathological, but here it encases him in photographic amber, kissing a dog or gazing meditatively out onto a lake in the Icelandic night.

More here.

Fischer's Brain Boost

Frequent walks gave Fischer's brain a boost
Saturday, July 9, 2011 03:05 AM
Basic Chess Features

Many stories concern Bobby Fischer's fondness for walking.

On three or four occasions during the 1960s, I met him by chance as he perambulated around New York. He was always friendly and eager to talk.

Late-night walks often took him to chess hangouts such as the Chess and Checker Club of New York, where he would frequently take on a player of master strength, offering up to 15-1 odds to his opponent and the gathering kibitzers.

He seemed to tremendously enjoy the fun and hilarity provoked by the impromptu exhibitions.

A champion boxer once described to me the difficulty of keeping up with Fischer's walking tours. There seems to have been a method to his locomotion.

Rae Pica, author of A Running Start, wrote: "Movement increases blood vessels that allow for the delivery of oxygen, water and glucose to the brain. And this can't help but optimize brain performance."

Nocturnal walks - a wonderful combination of darkness and contemplation - offered Fischer a private laboratory to explore chess moves.

More here.

Going, going, gone for $76,275

ANTIQUES: Rock and Chess Memorabilia from the '60, '70s Heats Up
By ELIZABETH STEWART -- JULY 9, 2011

If you missed this next auction, and you are a chess fan, you will be heartbroken, because you could have bought the chess set used by Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky in 1972 at the World Chess Championship in Iceland, signed by both masters. The board and the pieces went for $76,275 at Philip Weiss Auctions in New York in April. There’s nothing special about the wooden board, except for the signatures and the provenance. Just another example why provenance is important and should be noted even in your own collections for future generations.

This chess set is the “back room” board – Fischer had a tantrum when he lost his second match and blamed his loss on the cameras in the main hall. So this, the third match board, was used in a small private room with no cameras. Fischer won, and captured the title. And of course the auction house got a hold of Fischer’s letters to Zita, the love of his life, and auctioned them, too for $9,888.

Source: http://www.thedailysound.com