On his (excellent) NYT blog, Dick Cavett wrote a wonderfully elegiac post about Bobby Fischer:

We ordinary mortals can only try to imagine what it might feel like to be both young and so greatly gifted at a complex art. And to be better at it than any other living being, past or present. There are plenty of geniuses and lots of famous people, but few are both. Is anyone really capable of surviving such a double burden? . . .

For me, watching the Fischer shows after all this time contained quite a few surprises. For example, I winced watching the first one when I heard myself use the word “paranoid.” That awful word that in the later, bad years became almost part of Bobby’s name. But back then it passed unnoticed.

On the post-Spassky show it was Bobby himself who uttered the p-word. I re-winced. He claimed that Harold C. Schonberg, then the Times’ music and chess critic, “said I was paranoid.” Somehow the joker in me came up with, “No he didn’t. You’re imagining it.”

Happily he got the joke — a beat before the audience did — and laughed heartily. (People who who knew him were in disbelief that he could actually laugh and be funny on the show.)

He didn’t know it, but I had spotted him earlier that day. We were walking to my studio at the same time, but from opposite directions. He towered over passersby who would stop in their tracks and gaze worshipfully. From a distance, you could see the consonants in his name on their lips: B, F. He seemed unaware of them, with his ever-present little transistor radio clapped to his ear like a teenager.

He had come to like soul music, he said.

Go read it, and savor it, especially the knockout closing.

(via Tony at DSO Records, who's been en fuego lately.)

Comments

[Marcos]

Este badalado livro de Frank Brady sobre Robert Fischer merceeu um “aviso e0 navegae7e3o” lane7ado ao mar por Edward Winter, nas suas famosedssimas Chess Notes (com o nba.6929). F.Winter diz ter recebido uma cf3pia da obra no inicio de Dezembro (2010) onde detectou infameras imprecisf5es; comunicou-as de imediato aos response1veis que lhe agradeceram mas lamentaram je1 ser tarde para as emendar. Esperemos que as anomalias sejam expurgadas em futuras edie7f5es e se alguma vez nos fizerem o favor de o publicar em portugueas que o traduzam de uma verse3o correcta. Ou tenham a sabedoria de consultar, com tempo, Edward Winter. Evitem os curiosos. Estas observae7f5es ne3o dispensam a leitura exacta (em ingleas) na citada fonte (Chess Notes) a que se pode aceder, p.ex., via site do Chessbase. Por razf5es diferentes e9 tambe9m interessante ler o que Kevin Spraggett escreveu, em 11 de Fevereiro, acerca de R. Fisher, de Frank Brady e deste Endgame na sua pe1gina.