Book Review: Sosonko's *The Rise and Fall of David Bronstein*
Genna Sosonko, The Rise and Fall of David Bronstein. (Elk & Ruby Publishing, 2017.) 271 pp.
Memento mori, the medievals said - remember you must die. Going back further, Socrates said that life is a preparation for death. This may seem a glum take on life, but we will all be dead a lot longer than we'll be alive. If the end of this life is the end of us, the value of this life diminishes somewhat, but even then it matters: what of our progeny, our friends, and those we influence directly or indirectly? Even if our story comes to an end (which I don't believe), we are not islands unto ourselves. We must live, and as some do a much better job of living than others, we must learn how to live well.
Perhaps the best way to learn this art is by example: see those who flourish and love, and are loved and capable of receiving that love. See what they do and what they believe, or what beliefs underlie their practice, and emulate them in a way that is relevant to your personality and station in life. Talk to them and learn from them, and if it's possible, learn from their mentors.
There is another way. It's not as good, but it too has value: learn from those who don't know how to live. What made them the bad examples they are? What is the source of their troubles? Was it something they did, or their environment, or some combination of it? As I sometimes tell my chess students, life's too short to learn only from your own mistakes; learn from others' mistakes as well - or only from their mistakes, if possible! It's a sort of Screwtape Letters approach to life, or if you like something more recent and comical, there's something to be said for Opposite-George Costanza:
As C.S. Lewis points out when discussing his The Screwtape Letters, and is at least alluded to in the Seinfeld clip, it's not always exactly clear how to implement the "opposite" of bad advice and instincts, but for the most part we have a pretty good idea of how it will work. If we see someone living a life of bitterness and regret, of narcissism and constant complaint, it's pretty obvious that this is not a desirable life. The person living it is miserable, and makes others miserable until they peel away. We may not know how best to fight those tendencies in ourselves, but seeing them displayed in others helps us to see that we've got a challenge on our hands, and that fixing or at least mitigating those problems is critically important.
What, you may wonder, does this have to do with a chess book? Well, not too much with a normal chess book - though such a book might be the antidote to the "how-not-to" that is sometimes on display at the local club. But this isn't a conventional chess book. No games are given, and there are no positions except those semi-visible in the photos. No moves are given either, except for a few that are alluded to - there are no diagrams. The book is instead a sort of biography of the late great chess grandmaster David Bronstein (1924-2006). Or rather, a memoir of their interactions, interspersed with Genna Sosonko's reflections on Bronstein and his life.
Sosonko is himself a grandmaster (b. 1943), and like Bronstein lived in the Soviet Union, though unlike Bronstein he defected in 1972 to the Netherlands, where he lives to this day. Sosonko knew many, maybe all, of the post-war greats of Soviet chess, many of whom he befriended and some of whom - like Mikhail Tal - he even worked with, pre-defection. He has authored several very appealing books commemorating those players, though there's a touch of ghoulishness to it, as many of these pen portraits were first published in New in Chess Magazine shortly after the player's death.
(This was once spoofed in the satirical chess magazine Kingpin, and on p. 266 of the book reviewed here there's a very funny passage near the end: "And of course, Davy [Bronstein] complained to everybody about this Sosonko dude, who was just waiting pen in hand for him to kick the bucket so that he could publish his memoirs about the near world champion. The interesting thing, though, is that all of Davy's complaints, although frequently unfair and exaggerated, and sometimes even absurd, had a grain of truth in them" (p. 266, emphasis in the original).)
Back to the book. As noted, it's not a traditional, conventional biography. Different events and eras of Bronstein's life are described, but the focus of the book is on the big, gaping wound in Bronstein's soul arising from his drawn world championship match with Mikhail Botvinnik in 1951. Leading by a game with two games to go, Bronstein failed to hold a drawn (but not trivially drawn) ending in game 23 in Botvinnik's last white game, and after a draw in game 24 Botvinnik kept his title, while Bronstein never again got that close to the champion's crown.
Reading this book - and for that matter, other books by Bronstein - one learns that Bronstein had an unending stream of reasons and excuses for failing to win the match (and for not holding the draw in game 23), many of them wildly implausible and sometimes contradictory. And although this was the most significant event of his life, Bronstein's ability to grasp the truth about himself was often tenuous. This is part of the human condition, and some of us have a harder time with this than others (and at different times and in different situations); for Bronstein, this seems to have an especially acute shortcoming.
At any rate, this wound, or whatever it was in his soul that made this one failure so searing, was something that poisoned him. Even though he lived for another 55 years, the ghost of game 23, his antipathy towards Botvinnik, and perhaps the shame he felt or projected onto others for not winning the title haunted him to his death. Sosonko makes this point constantly throughout the book, and it's likely that he did so in part because Bronstein himself went on and on about it to him for decades.
It is evident that Sosonko also feels admiration for Bronstein and tried to be a friend to him. He attempted at times to help Bronstein see that some of what he claimed was nonsense, but it simply didn't work, and he stopped trying. To the extent that Sosonko's representation of Bronstein and his neuroses was accurate, it must have been exasperating and exhausting to be his friend.
Since much of the book shares with us, the lucky readers, the sense of that exasperation as Sosonko recounts over and over and over and over and over again Bronstein's complaints (about game 23, the match in general, about Botvinnik, about young players, about Mikhail Tal's being celebrated even though Bronstein was playing the same kind of chess before Tal did, about ratings, about the competitive element in chess outweighing the artistic, about not getting a pension from FIDE, about this and that and the other thing, etc., and always returning to the same topics), we might wonder what exactly is the point of the book. To make us suffer as Sosonko did, at least to a very small degree? To undermine the light-hearted persona Bronstein presents in some of his works (at least those not ghostwritten by his mentor and patron, Boris Vainshtein)? As a debriefing session or therapy for Sosonko?
It's not clear. Because Sosonko is such a good writer, the book isn't as painful as it could have been coming from someone else's pen (or keyboard). But it's still a fair question to ask why we should read it, because for all the fine writing, and for the attempts to understand Bronstein and emphasize that he was a brilliant chess player with a sharp, creative mind, it's still the sad story of a person whose life was lost in bitterness and regret. So if you do choose to pick up this book, dear reader, look at the life of David Bronstein with compassion and with an eye to avoiding his mistakes - including the meta-mistake of not trying to overcome his mistakes. Very few of us will have to live under a regime like that of the Soviet Union, thank God, and few of us will experience the competitive pain of coming so close to become the world's #1 in anything and coming up just short. But we all have our wounds and our shortcomings. By reflecting on a life of great talent that was not well lived, we can learn lessons that help us to avoid the pitfalls that unfortunately ensnared Bronstein.
Reader Comments (5)
A thoughtful post to start the day.
This sent me to look for the game in question and read the assessment given in the contemporary account written by Wade and Winter in 1951.
They wrote "It is not surprising that, worn out with the strain of holding together for so long this terribly difficult endgame, he failed to realise that he could still make things very difficult by abandoning the QP and bring his Knights to QB3 and Q3..." and then proceed to give another 10 - 15 moves and lots of variations, before concluding " Certainly not a resignable position".
I can well imagine that if you are the type of person who dwells on moments like these it could hold a grip over you.
Interestingly, in the portrait of Bronstein they paint him as "a likeable and cultured young man, entirely lacking in foibles whom it is a pleasure to play against ( always excepting the result)."
As you mention, a valuable life lesson to learn, if you are capable of seeing it.
Kvetching isn't a mortal sin, Dennis; I'm sure many "beloved" figures in international chess have committed those. I will decline your advice to look to them as models on how to live life.
[DM: Practically everyone complains from time to time, myself included. Bronstein, as portrayed in this book, goes WAY beyond that. It is the dominant theme of the book, its leitmotif, practically the entire story. And the point I'm making isn't one of sin, mortal or venial. It's that we can recognize Bronstein's life - or Bronstein's life as portrayed by Sosonko, *and* even in Bronstein's own words, at times, as relayed by Sosonko - as a very unhappy one full of regrets. This can be said regardless of one's religious views and even without worrying about whether Bronstein is blameworthy, whether he was the victim of both circumstances and brain chemistry, etc.
P.S. I'm confused by your last sentence. What "beloved" chess players did I put forth as models on how to live life? I offered none. In another post I mentioned Tal, and while I think there are aspects of Tal's life and personality that are worthy of emulation, there are other aspects that would be terrible to follow (though in his case it's mitigated somewhat by the physical pain caused by all his seemingly limitless ailments). But he does offer an interesting counterpoint to Bronstein, showing that extreme hardship needn't result in a life of bitterness and regret.]
Just questioning the assertion that Gennady Sosonko defected to the Netherlands from the USSR in 1972. By my recollection he emigrated legally, first to Israel and then to the Netherlands.
[DM: You're probably right,and that's what Wikipedia gives as well. Maybe I got that from the book itself - not sure.]
Hi,
just read the book and reviewed it (on my friend's blog): https://chess-brabo.blogspot.be/2018/01/the-rise-fall-of-david-bronstein.html
Interesting to see you also thought that the style of the book indeed copies Sosonko's experience with Bronstein.
Great review
Yves Surmont
Nice, thoughtful post. Glad I found it after the disturbing experience of reading Sosonko's tasteless effort. While it is less mawkish than usual, it is a harbinger of the psychic self-absorption that blooms in his book on Korchnoi.
Any of our narcissistic champions have skewed personalities that may be put in a good or bad light (much of which has to do with marketing, fawning admiration, enmities or the search for an angle by journalists political or otherwise).
Sosonko might be so lucky that nobody decides to shine the spotlight on him, postmortem.
Satis dictum, if I may coin a phrase.