The standards are well-represented, beginning with Vladimir Nabokov (excerpts from The Defense and Speak, Memory) and Stefan Zweig. "The Royal Game" has a reputation as the ultimate chess novel, but factors other than intrinsic merit may be at work. It was Zweig's last work, completed before his suicide, and its protagonist uses chess to survive imprisonment by the Nazis -- a positive image for the game. The Defense, by contrast, presents an eccentric grandmaster who goes crazy during a key game; and as one of Nabokov's earlier works, it is often compared unfavorably to later achievements like Lolita and Pale Fire.
Walter Tevis's The Queen's Gambit tells an obliquely prophetic story of a young woman who rises to world-class heights, although her career resembles that of Bobby Fischer more than Judit Polgar. Also relevant to current issues is Brad Leithauser's Hence, about a future match between a powerful computer and the world champion. Both are excerpted, along with familiar writers like Lewis Carroll, Ian Fleming, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., and Woody Allen. Less is more: the book benefits from omitting Jeffrey Archer's "Checkmate," as well as Amy Tan's much-anthologized "Rules of the Game" (part of the book The Joy Luck Club), a contemporary story that resonates with Chinese Americans but has chess aspects consistent only with fable or fantasy.
I am sure that I will return to Burt Hochberg's fine anthology again and again.
This article appears as a sidebar in ACJ 2 (1993), p. 100.
Christopher Chabris is Editor in Chief of American Chess Journal.
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