A Grindable Ending

The Unhappy Death of Bobby Fischer

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    icon Jan 24, 2008
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In the aftermath of 9/11 attacks, Bobby Fischer declared on Philippine radio, "This is wonderful news. I want to see the U.S. wiped out."

On the event of his death at age 64 on January 17th, 2008, I wondered what on earth happened to Fischer that would fill him up with such sorrow and hate.

This is my search for Bobby Fischer


It's as if a lost manuscript by Camus was secreted to Bobby Fischer, and it became the blueprint of his troubled life. In it the author conceived a brilliant but tortured existence that found no solace in wealth, fame, spirituality, or love. Perhaps the original template for his love and humanity cracked at a very early age leaving him bitter and engulfed in an existential quagmire of mistrust, shame and self-hatred. 
Bobby Fischer defeated Russian superstar Boris Spassky in 1972 to become the first and only American to win the official World Chess Championship. He was, for a time, one of America's greatest cultural heroes, along the lines of Arthur Ashe, Elvis and Babe Ruth. But his controversial behavior and mean-spirited remarks led to his inescapable decline.

Typically, the United States Chess Federation was willing to forgive many of Fischer's public rants; after all, he was single handedly responsible for the popularity of the modern chess era. But his support gradually eroded, as members of the organization grew tired of his odd behavior and inexplicably bitter public comments.

On October 28th 2001, the Federation unanimously sanctioned Fischer and denounced him for his loathsome and brutish 9/11 remarks. Fischer's fall from grace was precipitous and complete. His brilliance gave way to madness - his life unraveled and the phoenix never recovered.

But why should this matter to anyone? And who is Bobby Fischer, anyway?

Bobby Fischer was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1943 to Regina Wende, a naturalized American citizen of German Jewish descent, later a teacher, a registered nurse and physician and Han-Gerhardt Fischer a German bio-physicist.

The couple divorced in 1945 when Bobby was two years old. At the age of six, Bobby learned how to play chess from instructions found in a chess set that his sister had purchased at a candy store below their Brooklyn apartment. He played chess on his own for over a year before joining the Brooklyn Chess Club and was taught by its president, Carmine Nigro.

Young Bobby was hooked and he began an ascent to greatness driven by a series of mentors including chess journalist Hermann Helms and Grandmaster Arnold Denker. Denker would take him to hockey games at Madison Square Garden to watch the New York Rangers. They became lifelong friends - filling a void left by an absent father and a busy and emotionally unavailable mother.

By 1956, Fischer won the United States Junior Chess Championship - and he never looked back. In 1957, in quick succession, Fischer defended his title of Junior Chess Champ, won the U.S. Open in Cleveland and the New Jersey Open Championship. In 1958 he won the invitational U.S. Chess Championship in New York and by doing so, earned the title of International Master, at age 14, the youngest U.S. champion in history.

By the early sixties his reputation and status as master chess player was firmly established. And yet in 1962, Bobby revealed that he had "personal problems".

In retrospect it is perfectly understandable that Bobby would experience trouble with fame and notoriety. Given that he dropped out of school at age 16, Bobby was inexperienced with the ways of the world, smart but undereducated. He was starting to travel in wide circles and would dine with the educated and elite - a realm in which he could never compete.

Instead he would take out a hand held electronic chessboard and occupy himself as others discussed more worldly topics. He was at an intellectual and spiritual impasse that he could never overcome.

After embracing and rejecting Nietzche's nihilism, Bobby gained inspiration from the teachings of Herbert W. Armstrong and his son Garner Ted Armstrong. He began tithing to their denomination, the Worldwide Church of God. They predicted imminent apocalypse but the apocalypse never happened and by 1972 the church was reeling from allegations of sexual misbehavior involving Garner Ted Armstrong.
Fischer denounced and left the ChurchŠ though for several years he had lived a lavish lifestyle through the Armstrong's largesse (spending part of Fischer's endowment on Fischer).

1972 was a pivotal year for Fischer, he left the clutches of the worldwide Church of God and he became a World Chess Champion.
PBS televised the match between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky in Reyjavik Iceland and the drama as captured (at least partially) for all to see.

Fischer had reached the peak of his powers and this would be the most publicly scrutinized match ever, marketed as the "match of the century". It was became a metaphor for the battle between the United States and the Soviet Union for world dominance. In essence, Spassky and Fischer were pawns of the cold war.

For a sport that is notoriously dull to the unenlightened (me), this was riveting drama on a field of 64 squares under hot lights and strategically placed microphones. It seemed that the entire world was watching. Fischer was certainly in his prime but his youthful boldness (the bum-of-the-month boasting) gave way to anxiety and an emerging paranoia.

He almost quit before the match ever began. But he finally agreed after a series of escalating demands that drove the prize money to an unprecedented amount of $250,000. Fischer was also guaranteed a mighty slice of film and television revenues. The wait was worth it as Fischer's performance was both elegant and despicable, consisting in unequal parts of high drama, psychological warfare and political intrigue.

He even played brilliant chess.

Shelby Lyman filmed the program - created it, really - and it became the highest rated PBS show ever.

Bobby Fischer returned to the United States as a hero. In a televised ceremony New York Mayor John Lindsey sang his praises and gave Bobby the key to the city. Shelby Lyman recalls, "Here's Bobby in his great moment of triumph. He's resplendent in this beautiful suit. The world is his - he's young, handsome, women adore him, there's all this money if he wants it. And he later said to a reporter, "The creeps are beginning to gather." He was referring to press, lawyers, agents - anyone he thought was out to take advantage of him."

This doesn't seem to be an over-the-top or extreme form of paranoid thinking - it's even reasonable to suggest that all those hangers-on were not altogether concerned about Bobby's best interests - but it does signal the emergence of a quality of thought that would lead to a loosening of associations and a plunge into the murky waters of mental illness. And it would ultimately contribute to Fischer's unhappy death.

In his later years, Fischer enjoyed a near anonymity that was both chosen and necessary. By most accounts, Fischer's mental health had gradually eroded and given way to a fixed and patterned paranoia and a curious anti-Semitism that betrayed his birthright, his mother being Jewish.

In his later years from 1999 to 2005 Fischer's primary means of communicating with the public was through sometimes-bizarre radio interviews from the Philippines, Iceland, Cambodia, and Russia.

He made as many as 33 radio broadcasts across the world.  Hours after the 9/11 attacks, Fischer spoke with Pablo Mercado on Philippine radio. Fischer railed against U.S. foreign policy Š"that nobody cares that the U.S. and Israel have slaughtered Palestinians for years".

Informed that the World Trade Center and the Pentagon had been attacked, he asserted, "This is wonderful news. What goes around comes around even for the United States." 

Fischer called for President Bush's death and expressed hope that a coup de' tat would topple the U.S government.

For over 15 years, Fischer was on the lam from U.S. authorities on charges of tax evasion (Fischer himself insisted that he had not paid any taxes since 1976), embargo-breaking (he played a chess tournament in Yugoslavia) and inciting violence against a U.S. President.

Despite his ill health and his fugitive status, Fischer eluded agents of the U.S. government and lived out his life as a free man and a troubled genius - a man who had an end game of a rook and a bishop, versus a rook and a knight, with many pawns in between.

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