Time - Man of the Year/Time_Man_of_the_Year_Compact_Publishing_3YX-Disc-1_Compact_Publishing_1993.iso/moy/092892/0928640.000

Text File | 1993-04-08 | 6KB | 125 lines

                                                                                ESSAY, Page 78

Memo to the Gods: Never Come Back


By Charles Krauthammer


    The return of Bobby Fischer, the biggest comeback since
Napoleon sailed a single-masted flat-bottom out of Elba (on his
way, mind you, to Waterloo), has been widely noted but quite
misunderstood. After 20 years of self-imposed seclusion, the
greatest chess player of his time returns to life by way of a
rematch with Boris Spassky (the man from whom he took the world
championship in 1972) in, of all places, Yugoslavia. The picture
flashed around the world is that of Fischer spitting on a U.S.
government order charging him with violating the U.N. embargo
on Yugoslavia. The papers are full of Fischer's ravings about
a world Jewish conspiracy.

    This is all very colorful. And quite beside the point.
Mozart has returned. This age is quite consumed with Wolfgang
Amadeus' table manners and toilet practices. But the point is
the music. Can he still compose? Do the gods still sing to him?

    Fischer's deranged politics, indeed his thoughts on
anything other than chess, are of no interest. One does not
learn asceticism from Elvis. One does not learn social etiquette
from Howard Hughes. One does not learn politics from Bobby
Fischer. Fischer once said, "Chess is life." We should take him
at his word. There is no more to his life than chess.

    Those unprepared to indulge Fischer for his mono maniacal
genius should at least indulge him for his looniness. Someone
seized with his hallucinatory visions may be playing in
embargoed Yugoslavia but is living on the moon. Fischer is no
more situated in this world than was another world champion,
Alexander Alekhine, who, when apprehended at the Polish frontier
for lack of papers, retorted, "I am Alekhine, chess champion of
the world. This is my cat. Her name is Chess. I need no
passport."

    Fischer the person is a mere study in pathology, a sad but
unremarkable story. The remarkable story, the mythic story, is
Fischer the player. His drama is the drama of the Return, of the
god who risks immortality to reassume human form.

    Muhammad Ali returned and added to his legend. So did Ted
Williams. But Ali, gone only four years, made his comeback at
30. Williams came back, once (from World War II) at 27, then
again (from Korea) at a still vigorous 35. Those who came back
past their prime -- Bjorn Borg, Mark Spitz, Joe Louis -- merely
embarrassed themselves.

    There are, of course, other ways of coming back. The crew
of the starship Enterprise came back to make millions at the
box office, but at the price of self-parody. Crosby, Stills and
Nash came back, but at the price of cacophony. They could no
longer sing harmony.

    The Fischer phenomenon is more poignant still. He never
was the Crosby, Stills and Nash of chess. He was the Beatles --
the greatest player of his age, probably the greatest player
ever. Wayne Gretzky once won the scoring championship of the
National Hockey League, with 205 points. The runner-up had 126.
There was once that much distance between Fischer and the
world. His play was incandescent. Moreover, his mysterious
exile, his 20-year disappearance into a netherworld of shabby
Pasadena hotels, only added to the legend.

    And then one day he returns. After 20 years, one finally
sees his face. Nelson Mandela's face too was hidden from the
world for decades. When finally revealed, it had the grace, the
radiance that fit the legend. Fischer? The face that 20 years
ago was lean and sharp and taut is now merely gnarled. His
manner, once simply eccentric, is wild and embarrassing.

    And his play? He returned to play a man ranked 101st in
the world and, except for a couple of games in which Spassky
was frankly inept, their play has been roughly even. By world
championship standards, Fischer's game has been inferior -- some
flashes of brilliance, but some appallingly weak play as well.

    Grand masters who 20 years ago would not have dared carry
his coat -- the younger ones would not have been tall enough --
now publicly call his play aimless and amateurish. One Russian
grand master advises patronizingly that Fischer must "realize
that chess has changed in the past 20 years." World champion
Garry Kasparov notes the "low level" of play in the match.
"Incredibly low," says international master Alex Sherzer, with
more than a trace of disgust.

    In Game 5, for example, Fischer was adrift, wandering
eyeless about the board. His rook moves two squares -- then, on
the next move, back one. (Like gaining 8 yds. on first down,
then voluntarily taking a 4-yd. loss on second.) A bishop
thrusts sharply across the board -- to a useless perch at the
edge of play. "What was his [bishop] supposed to be aiming
for?" asked a bewildered Robert Byrne in the New York Times. A
good question made poignant by the source. Thirty years ago,
Fischer defeated Byrne in a win so beautiful it was once
described as "more witchcraft than chess."

    Game 5 ended in pathos. Fischer's position became
hopeless. Ten moves after he should have resigned, he moved his
queen -- proud, powerful, the lion of the chessboard -- and
retreated it to a corner where it cowered for protection behind
three lowly pawns. As Jose Zalaquett, a top Chilean amateur
player, put it, it was an almost physical retreat, a folding
back into the fetal position, awaiting the final blow.

    There are still many games to go in this match. Maybe
Fischer will astonish us again. Maybe he will shake off the
years and, magically, become great again, young again. But if
he continues on this trajectory of mediocrity, he will have
addressed a warning to all the gods living and dead: Never come
back.