South Florida Sun Sentinel, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Sunday, March 15, 1998 - Page 100
Bobby Fischer: Champ, stubborn fellow
Genius is a starry attribute. But posterity often finds genius easier to bear than its harried contemporaries.
I was a friend and colleague of Bobby Fischer during his rise to the top. We trained together and collaborated on his My 60 Memorable Games which was destined to become a classic yet almost never saw the light of day.
After completing the manuscript, Bobby scratched out all his notes and returned the proofs to Simon & Schuster. Since the games alone were available elsewhere, the company said there was no point in proceeding with the project. He paid back the advance, and the contract was canceled.
A few years later he got a letter from the publisher asking whether they should destroy the plates or ship them somewhere at his expense. Bobby figured he could save money by storing them in his walk-up flat in Brooklyn and asked for my opinion. I warned him that lead plates weigh a ton and might crash through the floor, killing tenets below. It was better, I said, to store them in a warehouse.
This made an impression.
“Well, I guess the world's coming to an end anyway,” he sighed. “Maybe I'll let 'em publish the book.”
At that moment I realized he had suppressed the manuscript because he was afraid of giving away too many secrets. The publisher agreed to go ahead with the book but wanted fresh material, so we restored the notes and added 10 more games. That's how 50 became 60 memorable games when the book appeared in 1969.
I wasn't so lucky in persuading him to defend his title against Anatoly Karpov in 1975. Fans thought he was crazy for spurning millions of dollars to crush the darling of the Kremlin. Diehards blamed it on some kind of commie plot.
Mathematicians proved that his demand for a 10-win match (draws not counting) with him keeping the title on a 9-9 tie gave his challenger a better break than the old 24-game format where Soviet champions had a rematch clause plus draw odds. A psychiatrist opined, “A paramount theme is his refusal to compromise his principles.” A French playwright depicted our hero as “a persecuted poet who defends human dignity.”
Alas, this claptrap only made him more stubborn. “When you were the challenger you didn't want the champ to have any edge,” I argued. “So why are you demanding one now?”
“That's beside the point!” he snapped. “The Russians always made their own rules and got away with it. let's give 'em a dose of their own medicine.”
“But you now have a chance to set a shining example,” I replied. “By quitting you're letting down your fans and handing Russia the title without a fight.”
He said that if he got his way just this once he wouldn't seek any edge in future matches. Trying to reason with him was useless.
Bobby made a brief comeback in 1992 and won $3 million. Today he lives in Budapest and has all but given up the game he loved.
* “My 60 Memorable Games” published in 1969.
