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Chessville
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David Shenk is a good writer. In The Immortal Game he tells story after story. About chess. And he really makes them interesting. Not just to chess players, mind you. To those who don’t play chess – and who wonder why others do. That kind of a writer.
That’s just the Introduction. Shenk moves through his stories, from the earliest days of chess through the Masters to current stories – about 1,500 years later – of the Chess-in-the-Schools foundation: “By 2005… they had a $4 million annual budget supporting fifty instructors in 160 schools.” Several threads keep all of these gems in place. Games have come and gone over the centuries while chess has survived and prospered and seems likely to continue to do so. Shenk takes a look at a number of explanations that have been offered to explain this. My favorite is chess as a form of “medieval presentation software – the PowerPoint of the Middle Ages”:
The author is not just a raconteur, then, he likes to think deep thoughts, too. (By the way, Chessville readers with an academic bend might be interested in Jenny Adams’ Power Play The Literature and Politics of Chess in the Late Middle Ages, from the University of Pennsylvania Press, which I will be reviewing.) Another thread is reflected in the book’s title: The Immortal Game. It refers, of course, it to chess itself. It also refers to the off-hand game between Adolf Anderssen and Lionel Kieseritzky in London, 1851 that came to such a memorable conclusion. Interspersed throughout the book are chapters that follow and explain the moves of that “Immortal Game.” Shenk provides an Appendix with the rules of chess, to help readers unfamiliar (or a bit rusty) with the game – although his often breathless play-by-play, with diagrams and arrows, is enough to keep the reader engaged. (I’ve seen the game a dozen times in the past, and still enjoyed the coverage in The Immortal Game. This can be said of some of stories Shenk presents – they’re not “new” to me, but I like how he tells them.) He doesn’t quite get to the point of ending the game with “Checkmate, baby!” but I would have understood if he had. Readers who enjoyed Anderssen – Kiesertizky can play over “five other great games from history,” with annotations: Bobby Fischer – Donald Byrne 1956 (the “game of the century”); Paul Morphy – Duke of Brunswick and Count Isouard 1858 (“the Opera Game”); Wilhelm Steinitz – Curt von Bardeleben 1895 (the “Battle of Hastings”); Gersh Rotlewi – Akiba Rubinstein 1907 (the “Polish Brilliancy”); and Anatoli Karpov – Garry Kasparov 1993 (“one of Kasparov’s finest”). Woven through the book, as well, is the author’s personal search to learn more about his great-great-great grandfather, Samuel Rosenthal – a Polish Jew who fled to France and held chessic court in Paris. Rosenthal played in tournaments at Baden-Baden (1870), Bonn (1877) and London (1883), and was part of a Parisian team to play a two-game correspondence match against a team in Vienna. For the latter he received “a spectacular engraved gold pocket watch” (which was subsequently lost). The Spanish queen regent, Shenk tells us, awarded Rosenthal the Charles III Order for his contributions to chess. (Cool family stories. The best I can pull out my own history is that many years ago, seeking religious freedom and improved tan lines, my ancestors left England by ship, headed for the Bahamas. The first time out they were immediately captured by Dutch pirates and imprisoned. The second time they made it across the Atlantic – and wound up in New Jersey. Go figure. It’s always been said that if I’d been with Chris Columbus, we’d have discovered Berlin.) The Immortal Game is also full of meditations, by the author and by others, as to how “chess holds its master in its own bonds” (Albert Einstein.) Many a chess widow or widower would agree wholeheartedly with Shenk’s description:
The artist-turned-chess-fanatic Marcel Duchamp is given as a stunning example of the progress of the “disease” called chess. An artist turning the art world on its ear, Duchamp walked away from it all – to more-deeply involve himself in the world of the 64-squares. Notably, on his week-long honeymoon, he spent the time working out chess problems… Is it too early to suggest The Immortal Game as a gift for the holidays? Those who play chess and those who don’t both will enjoy it. Likewise, readers who like a tale well told will quickly be caught up in the stories. Who might not be interested? Some masters and grandmasters might find the games and notes, aimed at the average reader, “beneath” them; and if they have “no use” for chess history, they might do better with the latest issue of the Informant. For that matter, some chess historians (often an oxymoronic term) with too much starch in their shorts might find parts trifling and inexact.
Truth be told,
though, the “average” chess player is neither titled nor plays in
tournaments, rated or otherwise. He or she gets in an occasional game
with a friend or colleague or family member over lunch, after dinner, or
instead of “doing something more productive.” These are the readers
that Shenk writes for. These are the people who will truly enjoy his
stories.
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