Cover Story / Chess in Popular Culture
Chess has also experienced an explosion in the last few years in magazine culture (the term “chess” has a full page devoted to it in the AP Style Guide). The most common offender is probably the news, features and literary veteran The New Yorker, a Zeitgeist of culture which has issued 97 references to chess just since the beginning of the decade (one more than they had in all of the 1900s). This includes profiles of Ugandan talent Phiona Mutesi, a fictional piece entitled “Fischer vs. Spassky,” and an in- depth look at the preternatural talents of Magnus Carlsen. The references creep into an array of other works, including poetry pieces, financial articles and book reviews. The New Yorker’s obsession
with chess goes back into the previous decade as well. Another 145 references blanket the 2000s, including a feature article on Pandolfini (2001) and a trio of lengthy articles in a 12-month period beginning at the end of 2005. The chess program Hydra, FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, and Kasparov’s political exploits are covered meticulously in nearly 30,000 words of detail. Not only was chess more
dormant in the 20th century issues of The New Yorker (due not just to fewer features but also to many fewer analogous references), but the portrayal of the game varied wildly. The recent articles are about younger, socially assimilated, topical individuals with lives outside the world of chess. Compare with the magazine’s first foray into chess as the
subject of a short feature article—a March 22, 1927 story unambigu ously titled “Nuts” by E.B. White (of journalism school mainstay Strunk and White fame). The writer uses half of his few words describing the physical torment that the chess players experience and the similar exhaustion it gives to the specta tors. He seems to be experiencing pain just covering the local chess tournament, and never gets around to discussing any of the players (Jose Capablanca and Alexander Alekhine would have been good fodder, while Frank Marshall played if he needed an American angle).
“There is more truth than poetry in the statement that chess
drives a man crazy,” White wrote. “After five or six weeks of play, the men will all be literally on the verge of a breakdown from the intense concentration.” We are inclined to take him at his words— that he meant “literally” instead of “figuratively” (he did co-author the seminal style guide of the English language), but this shows how far chess players have come in their depiction. Another typical example comes from the issue dated March 27, 1943 with a bewildering explanation of “Fairy Chess.” The author is beguiled at what we current ly call “chess composition” and instead of the artistry of the help-mate or self- mate, he can hardly hide the unworthiness of the endeavor. After telling non chess players to skip the story entirely, he admits to whispering about the sanity of those who create chess puzzles. Reading them over, he and the magazine staff “laughed our head (sic) off.” More recent treatises by The New Yorker have clearly changed this view. Now, the game is interesting not laborious. The chess mind is fascinating not elusive. The chess master is engaging not reclusive. A newer Condé Nast publication
is also getting in on the act. Wired magazine has run a handful of chess stories just this year, including an in- depth portrait of Susan Polgar’s university coaching and a story on hackers who targeted an ad -
vanced chess-computing record that dealt with the expansion of the famous “eight-queens problem.” Like Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s biopic The Social Network, the articles hint at the same career lineage—nerds whose brains eventually lead to great financial success, which is cool in the end. Contrast with Andrew Bujalski’s award-winning movie Computer Chess, which premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival and is also about chess programming but is set in the 1980s. The period piece still relies on a dated vision of chess players. The actors have thick glasses and disheveled appear ances. At one point a young man and a young woman share a couch; searching for a pleasantry, all that he can think to say is, “Do you like sports?” Crickets.
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