Barry's Blog

In his day, Bobby Fischer was the very best chess player in the world, and arguably the best the world had ever seen. And yet, for the past 30 or so years of his life, he was as Brian Carney called him in his Wall Street Journal article reporting his death last week at the age of 64, "the chess world's mad uncle, an embarrassment to be apologized for, belittled or ignored."

After defeating Boris Spassky in 1972, and with him, the entire Soviet chess establishment, he rarely played in competitive tournaments, to the point that he was stripped of his title in 1975 for refusing to defend it against the challenger, Anatoly Karpov. He spent the last three decades of his life living in hiding or seclusion in Hungary, Yugoslavia, Argentina, the Philippines, Japan, and in the end, Iceland, the site of his world championship victory.

Fischer was always an eccentric, and a difficult man, even before he beat Spassky. Throughout his life he seems to have carried a grievance that extended beyond chess. His belief that the Soviets were out to get him at the chess board seems to have evolved into a sense that the entire world, especially the Jews, conspired against him. Mig Greengard, a chess columnist, once recounted what was his favorite Bobby Fischer quote. In 1960, in a tournament in Buenos Aires in which he uncharacteristically finished 13th, Fischer was leaving the tournament hall after a win. One of the assembled admirers offered him a compliment: "Great game, Bobby." Fischer snapped back, "How would you know?"

Throughout his life Fischer epitomized pride and arrogance. In his view, there was no one in the world, besides himself, who understood what he was doing at the chess table. In his article, Carney quotes the French philosopher Alexander Kojeve, who once wrote that "the only defense against madness is the accord of your peers. That is, if you can convince no one else that your beliefs are well-founded, then it's probably you who are crazy, and not the rest of humanity." Great advice for the human race, wouldn't you say?

Fischer's hubris, and tragic life, are terribly reminiscent of G. K. Chesterton's observations in his classic work, Orthodoxy, an eloquent defense of the Christian Faith. Chesterton argues that it is mysticism, not cool, calculating logic, that keeps us sane. Orthodoxy, originally published one hundred years ago, is instructive in our own day amidst the debate about God and the "new" atheism, a worldview that seeks to strip our world of it's wonder and awe. Listen as he contrasts the Christian worldview with that of the Materialist:

"The Christian is quite free to believe that there is a considerable amount of settled order in the universe. But the materialist is not allowed to admit into his spotless machine the slightest speck of spiritualism or miracle...the Christian admits that the universe is manifold and even miscellaneous, just as a sane man knows that he is complex. The sane man knows that he has a touch of the beast, a touch of the devil, a touch of the saint, a touch of the citizen. Nay, the really sane man knows that he has a touch of the madman. But the materialist's world is quite simple and solid, just as the madman is quite sure he is sane. The materialist is sure that history has been simply and solely a chain of causation...Materialists and madmen never have doubts."

As for our need of mystery and awe, Chesterton argues: "It is mysticism that keeps men sane. As long as you have mystery you have health; when you destroy mystery you create morbidity. The ordinary man has always been sane because the ordinary man has always been a mystic...He has always had one foot in earth and the other in fairyland. He has always left himself free to doubt his gods; but unlike the agnostic of today, free also to believe in them...Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad; but chess players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists very seldom...The poet only desires exaltation and expansion, a world to stretch himself in. The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits."

Who could imagine that Bobby Fischer's life, as tragic as it was, would be so instructive in terms of our desire for wonder, mystery, and enchantment, in this drama that we call life?

For FinishingWell,

Barry Morrow