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.