A New Book On Nakamura; Guess Who Doesn't Like It
Now that Hikaru Nakamura is well esconced in the world's top ten (currently number five), it's not surprising that someone would write a book on him - and someone has. Or rather, two someones: Fighting Chess With Hikaru Nakamura has been co-authored by GM Karsten Mueller and Raymond Stolze. The book isn't out yet, but already at least one critic is on the warpath:
It is truly disgusting that people are allowed to write books and profit off of our games without our permission.
I know what you're thinking: it was probably written by one of Nakamura's opponents, disgusted that he's not going to get a cut of the profits. But it turns out that the critique above was penned by someone else. Try again.
What's that? You say it was written by a retired player (let's call him RP) who received a large royalty check from Nakamura, speaking magisterially about players - or at least top players - in general? Why would he do that? Oh, of course. RP's games were taken and compiled into chess databases without giving him so much a single red cent. Nakamura, like practically everyone else, has benefited from having access to RP's games, so to do right by him Nakamura generously sent him a tidy sum out of gratitude and as a matter of principle. Well, that's a very clever guess and an ennobling thought! Its only shortcoming is that the quote wasn't from RP either.
There are doubtlessly hundreds if not thousands of players whose games have enriched and assisted Nakamura's chess in one way or another over the years, and I doubt that many received any special remuneration for those games from an intermediary (e.g. a publisher) and fewer still - if any - from Nakamura himself. But it must surely have been written by one of them, as it's unlikely that the book's hero would have felt free to benefit from the widely and inexpensively available history of our game for the 15 years or so he's been working at the game, only to protest when someone else benefits from his games. Right? Wrong.
But then, who could have written the quote? The mystery deepens....
One thing we can note is that this is a really troubling situation. I mean, what if this were to continue in other fields? You might have people other than Albert Einstein writing about relativity and journalists writing popular books on current scientific research done by Ph.D.s. That would be awful! Or perhaps someone might get the bright idea to write stories about other people's lives. (We need a word for that - maybe "nonautobiography" will do? It's kind of unwieldy, but I'm sure if that concept ever takes off some wordsmith will coin a happier term.) The prospects for this sort of disgusting practice seem almost unlimited.
Well, if any of my readers can figure out who wrote the quote above and would share it with all of us, it would be most appreciated.
Reader Comments (11)
Looks like this is a post from Naka's twitter feed. How sad. I suppose he'd like to abolish song covers, mashups, derivative works and public viewing of his works as well.
His games are in the public circle. The analysis is what's being sold. The oration and analysis based on publicly accessible data. has he himself never read a chess book?
I feel your radiating love for Nakamura in every post you mention him.
[DM: I feel your selective memory radiating its forgetfulness of my consistent praise of his play at the U.S. Championship.]
He probably already regrets tweeting it, one or many of his friends probably made these points to him over lunch. Nakamura always comes off as a bit of a pig-headed socially maladjusted [...individual] anyway, so this little outburst should be surprising to nobody. Good catch though Dennis.
Nakamura has a point about the misleading " with" in the title which implies some kind of endorsement or coauthorship.
[DM: That's a different point, and a more interesting one. I wasn't fooled by that title, but it is slightly ambiguous and could have been phrased even more ambiguously to create that impression. I've noted other times when publishers came up with misleading titles and criticized them for it, so that's a legitimate issue.]
I agree that Nakamura does not have any rights to the games he plays, and anyone should be free to write a book about it, so that part is absurd to complain about.
However, I can understand being a bit bent out of shape over the "with Hikaru Nakamura" book title; to me, at least, it gives the misleading impression that Nakamura was involved with the writing of the book itself.
[DM: Right, though I'm not sure how many people will really be fooled by the "with", considering he's not listed as an author. But I think that general point is legitimate.]
It's funny how he's disgusted that the book exists and yet he put a link to it on his twitter post, raising awareness of the book!
I thought Fischer set the precedent for attempting to copyright his games. I read that he was trying to get legal counsel from an attorney connected to Arnold Denker (I forget how) back in the 1970s. Anyway, Fischer=DP (dead player).
"Nonautobiography"? Is that an unauthorized biography? Or how about unauthorized autobiography? For the latter see Lemony Snicket and a series of unfortunate events. See also Julian Assange's nonselling book.
[DM: The attempt to copyright games goes as far back as Lasker, I believe. As for "nonautobiography", that was of course a joke, pretending that the word "biography" didn't exist.]
The whole copyrights' question is not a trivial topic really, especially in our times of global connectivity, but I'm not speaking about it.
I want instead to list some possible interpretations for the comment tweeted by GM Nakamura.
- We could see Nakamura as a spoiled brat ranting about, just the way his Chess-hero always did (Fischer), without really understanding what effect this can have on Chess fans and spectators, who might tourn against him.
- Or we could think Hikaru is himself (or pays the services of) some marketing genius, plotting for the good of himself and (US)Chess in general: "Hikaru Nakamura, the top sportsman you love to hate"-campaign.
- Or, finally, we can think GM Nakamura is again impulsively and naively stating his too-genuine-feelings, only to cover his regret later, because he's not expert of the ways of the world enough to count from one to ten, and then say some moderately condivisible fake-joke-thing like: "I'm still alive and kicking: next time call me for a Preface guys, when you write a book on me!" (saying without words: "and we'll find an agreement for my gracious contribution to Your appreciated work on My interesting games").
Now, you guess what my explanation of choice would be on Naka's tweet, but feel free to choose yours!
It looks (from a follow-up tweet the next day) that he really is mostly upset about the "with Hikaru Nakamura" part of it.
Maybe he just Freudian-slipped the word "names" into the word "games".
I think modern chess players probably suffer from great envy when they see the vast incomes other sportspeople and media stars can commend from coverage rights & back-catalogues. Copyrighting of games has been mooted in the past and trashed as unworkable.
Oh well, maybe we should 'warn' kids about these financial drawbacks before they take up the game?!
I am a big fan of the H-bomb, but if he was really serious and on his toes he would write his own collection of his game, which would be a much more desirable book.