Richard Reti, Modern Ideas in Chess (New 21st Century Edition), Russell Enterprises 2009. 132 pages. $19.95.
"Modern", in the colloquial sense, connotes something that's new or relating to the present. From that perspective, Richard Reti's 1923 book Modern Ideas in Chess comes across ironically. Nothing like "cutting edge" ideas that are 90 years old! Much of what he says is very familiar to us today, but it's familiar in part because of his effectiveness as a propagandist.
The book tells an evolutionary tale of thinking in chess. After a brief mention of Adolf Anderssen (the apotheosis of combination-based chess) as the starting point, Reti discusses the big leap in positional understanding represented by Paul Morphy. Then it's on to Wilhelm Steinitz and the Steinitz School (including e.g. Tarrasch), chess technicians like Akiba Rubinstein and Jose Capablanca, and then on to Hyper-Moderns like Alekhine, Bogoljubow, Breyer and Tartakower.
The hypermoderns, a group to which Reti himself belonged, were the enemies of routine chess, but tried to take each position on its own merits and not according to some collection of "rules". This is a commonplace now, when chess writers often say that chess is a very "concrete" game, and the widespread use of computers has only strengthened this conviction.
Reti believes this sort of approach applies to life, too: "Just as in life no universal rules of conduct can obtain [DM: Should we infer from this that one ought to make it a universal rule of conduct not to live by universal rules of conduct?], and just as the man who invariably acts in accordance with the most approved principles will not perforce become great, so it is with chess principles" (p. 90). But despite this apparent skepticism about excessive generalization, Reti happily makes much of a distinction between a European way of playing chess and "Americanism". (Reti was a European, so guess which way he finds superior?)
Americanism, as Reti uses the term, indicates a sort of energetic pragmatism. We're simple thinkers, but we're full of energy and good at achieving what's possible. Capablanca is an example of this (as is to be expected, as he's from the Americas and went to college in the U.S.) - though Reti reassures his reader that "the Americanism of Capablanca's play shows itself in a milder, more attractive garb, probably (as was the case with Morphy) by reason of his Latin ancestry" (p. 131). (Kind of reminds me of Archie Bunker saying that while so-and-so was a black or a Jew, at least he was one of the good ones.) The European, of course, is an artist - God bless him - a DEEP THINKER whose occasional downfall comes when he starts to plod and misses what's right in front of him. A pity, really.
It's clear that Reti's strong preference is for the artist, elevating this bifurcation beyond chess into the broader world. Here's the last paragraph in the book:
At the last London Congress, (August 1922) with the time limit so unfavorable to the European type, they succumbed before Capablanca. Yet they go on investigating and building further. Who will come out of this struggle victorious? Nobody can prophesy the answer. But one thing is certain. If Americanism is victorious in chess, it will also be so in life. For in the idea of chess and the development of the chess mind we have a picture of the intellectual struggle of mankind. (p. 131)
IF there's something to this European/American distinction, one might conclude, based on Reti's example, that the European mind is beset with a navel-gazing pretentiousness that expresses itself in condescending, self-important prose. But better still is to reject this nonsense altogether, or at least to minimize it. There are and have been deep, plodding chess players and pretentious, condescending intellectuals from the Americas, and there are and have been plenty of superficial but pragmatic and energetic Europeans. Reti's distinction prefigures Soviet-era nonsense about the qualities of "Soviet man" and the "Soviet school of chess". Somehow Botvinnik, Tal and Petrosian were supposed to be part of the same "school"? Please.
Fortunately, there is more to the book than pontification about the clash of intellectual civilizations, and even that makes the book an interesting historical document. (Of course, it's not as if any contemporary author would continue in this genre of paralleling chess styles with broader intellectual trends, right? Well... [see about 3/4 of the way down.]) Reti also offers insightful comments about chess and chess players (even if, as noted above, many of them have become commonplaces), and the book presents about 35 (very attractive but generally lightly annotated) games, some of which are little-known.
Those of you with a good knowledge of the history of chess or whose interest in chess doesn't go beyond the latest opening volume or instructional work have little practical need to buy this book. If you have an interest in chess history and don't know a lot about the history of chess ideas, then this may be the book for you. Think about it this way: how many chess books can you think of that generate mainstream discussion almost 90 years after publication? No one cares about the scriptorrhea produced by the chess world's authors of opening books five years after publication, but books that expand our understanding of the game endure - especially when written by one of the greatest players of his time.