A Reflection on "Searching for Bobby Fischer"

Sportswriter Michael Weinreb offers high praise of both Fred Waitzkin's Searching for Bobby Fischer and screenwriter Steven Zaillian's better-known film adaptation of the work in this essay, and it's worth your time to read it - if only to encourage other writers to favorably discuss our game. I imagine that most of my U.S. audience is familiar with those works, but those of you who aren't may very well want to check them out for yourselves, especially if you are a parent of kids involved with scholastic chess.

Comments

[monoceros4]

I just...well...I don't think it's done the world of chess--especially American chess--any favors to encourage the notion that the only people who have any chance of becoming great masters are exceedingly youthful prodigies. I think Searching for Bobby Fischer did that. And it should never be forgotten that, in its zeal to find chess genius not in steady effort but in innate childhood brilliance, the book and film venerated a boy who, in the end, lacked either the work ethic or (just possibly) the talent to become a great master. The next Fischer "is not here," the Pandolfini character says of his other students. That's not very respectful of their labor, is it? And why should anyone really want to be the next Fischer anyway? Why not be the next Euwe or Smyslov? I respect men who somehow found the time to be champions among their many other talents far more than men who never had any other talent in them.

[DM: There are great players who have also achieved excellent in other realms, but not at the expense of chess but by working hard in both areas. Euwe and Smyslov may not have been child prodigies in the way Fischer or Karjakin were, but they were already world-class in their early 20s.

I partly agree with you both about Waitzkin and Fischer. Waitzkin had lots of opportunities to prove himself a world-class talent before he quit chess, and he never came close (though most of us would be very happy to achieve the things he did in the game!), while there are many aspects of Fischer's life and character that shouldn't at all be emulated. But the expression in the title doesn't really imply a search for someone to fill Fischer's role as a reclusive Jew-hating nut job but rather for the next great American chess player. If the Waitzkins had been Dutch it might have been "Searching for Max Euwe".]

[Kenneth W. Regan]

To supplement Dennis' reply, Waitzkin did prove himaself to be a world-class talent---at tai-chi. In particular he twice won the world championship in a tai-chi disciipline called tui-shou, for "push hands" stylized combat. He also holds a jiu-jitsu black belt obtained by training with a world champion in that sport, and his Wikipedia page (which talks mostly about his chess) saysn he is gunning for the 2013 world title in that sport as well.

[Mark]

Maybe J.Waitzkin just wanted to do something that made him happier than chess. What's wrong with that?

[DM: I'm not sure who you're responding to. Did someone here write that Waitzkin (or anyone else) is obligated to play chess, no matter what?]