There’s a particular criticism of devoted readers that I hear occasionally — a challenge to just stop reading about things and to go out and actually do them instead. I’ve often wondered if those who make this challenge have ever read a really, really good book. I wonder this because my experience has been that very few things spark my interest in a particular subject as much as a great book. The reader isn’t sidestepping actually experiencing real life — he or she is being introduced to parts of life that are normally inaccessible. It’s the beginning of the experience, not the totality of it. Surely I am not the only one who recalls, as a child, finding that one great book that sparked one’s interest, and then the continued search for more books and more information and more access to the subject.
There’s a reason this is on my mind — I am reading Frank Brady’s new book, Endgame, about Bobby Fischer. I loved playing chess as a child — I remember learning the game sometime in the 3rd or 4th grade, and playing frequently at school and with friends. I remember reading a few “Chess for Beginners”-type books. I was never a particularly strong player (my chess zenith was beating a teacher who had once won a match against the Junior Champion of Britain whilst said champion was watching TV and eating a sandwich), but I enjoyed it. And then, I stopped playing. Not intentionally. Other parts of my life just crowded it out.
Endgame has forced me to question why I dropped chess. It’s really the story of a troubled genius, not a book about chess, but it brought chess back into my mind, and made me remember why I enjoyed it. I’ve caught myself thinking through old chess questions or problems I had, Googling for more information, and looking for chess apps for my phone. Not because I plan to make chess a central part of my life — but because a book made it interesting to me again.
I said that Endgame is not really about chess, and I think that’s true — chess is the background, not the story itself. As I’ve read it, I’ve been struck by the parallels to The Fall of the House of Zeus. I don’t know that Dickie Scruggs counts as a “genius” in quite the same way that Bobby Fischer did, but there’s no question that he saw angles nobody else did and accomplished things nobody else could. And both Bobby and Dickie, heady with their own success, ignored the cautionary voices around them and indulged their own fantasies of invincibility. And both fell hard, in their respective arenas.
I know I’ve rambled a bit here, but sometimes I feel like that’s the appropriate response to a book — to ramble from thought to thought, to ruminate and consider. Some books throw everything into sharp contrast, and demand an immediate response, but other books are quieter. They may not change your life, but they can still add something to it.
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