Looks at Books / Pawn Structure Chess
SpiritualPursuits orWorldly Success? A chess novel that is full of ideas
By MARK N. TAYLOR S
ome years ago I exchanged extensive correspondence with Howard Goldowsky about chess fiction in which he, loving both good chess and good literature, lamented that the two could hardly be found together. I might have
formulated Goldowsky’s Rule: If a narrative features good chess, it is bad literature; if it is good literature, it has bad chess. Goldowsky himself disproved the rule when he assembled the remarkable chess fiction anthology Masters of Technique. The novel Lisa is not great literature, but it is great chess.
This coming-of-age story is plotted on the trope of a talented but unsure teenage acolyte, Lisa, under the hard tutelage of an aged guru, a resurrected GM Igor Ivanov. The student does not surpass the master in the end, nor does she win the big championship after fac- ing down her nemesis (as in the film Searching for Bobby Fischer); rather, her expanded capacity for living is her gain.
GM Jesse Kraai’s first novel is full of ideas within a thick cloud of factual detail, accurately and lovingly recreating the world chess denizens know so well: what chess is all about, what burns at its core, how it matters or fails to matter, how lives fulfill or fail to fulfill its sig- nificance, and what living amounts to for those devoted to chess’s intangible beauty. The scholastic tournaments are all described with the familiarity of an insider. They rank among the most accu- rate depictions in literature. This novel is too hermetic to have much appeal to those whom Lisa calls the “chessless,” but it is an engaging read for any adult within the chess world.
Kraai is only the third grandmaster to have published a chess novel (Andy Soltis and Alexander Kotov are the others). That alone makes this self-published novel interesting. Nonetheless, having read too much amateur work, I felt trepidation when I took up the book. The first chapter seemed to confirm my fears: uneconomical style, overwrought similes, assumed sympathy for a protagonist yet to be developed. Worse, the early chapters oozed with scatological imagery. The rest of the novel, however, more than made up for the initial weaknesses. There are actually two narrative arcs to the novel: one con- cerning the characters, and another tracing the growth of the author as novelist. By the end, most of the initial stylistic faults have disappeared. What stays with the reader are the meditations about chess and an appreciation for the remarkable quality of the lives of its devotees.
Lisa - A Chess Novel by Jesse Kraai. 234 pages
(Zugzwang Press, 2013). $11.95 from
uscfsales.com (catalog number B0077OB ).
The descriptions and analysis of the games are very much those of a grandmaster, which is both a strength and a weakness. The analysis is sound and delivered with diagrams and figurine algebraic notation. But instead of an accessible literary description, such as Martin Amis’s sketch of a Nimzo-Larsen game in his novel Money, Kraai draws on quasi-mystical dream imagery to complement his grandmasterly analysis. To his credit, however, this forms a consistent extension of his weighty revelation of the soul of chess.
14 February 2014 | Chess Life
Ivan Ivanov’s character is the best drawn, a kind of monument to the expat Russian Jewish GM in the new world. Lisa’s char- acter elicits less sympathy—unless at some point you or your daughter went through similar behavioral and emotional turmoil. Kraai brings together Ivanov’s Soviet upbringing, his self-discipline to push past pain, his vulnerability to alcohol, and a toughness to lead a peripatetic life devoted to chess that disdains “the lower world” where souls chase mere wealth. Ivanov embodies the sort of madman Duchamp envisioned that artists are supposed to be but generally are not. Through Ivanov, Lisa comes to appreciate the severe beauty of spiritual pursuits against the banality of worldly success. Kraai plugs us into the spiritual current of a life deep in chess to take the measure of its strength.
Behind the theme is the implied question:
should one sacrifice a chance at success to pursue chess? The pat but open ending of Lisa indicates a willingness to compro- mise. Lisa still has her failings, but chess has become a material means to reconcile herself with the world. Meanwhile Ivanov has swum away out of Lisa’s life. Unsatisfying, perhaps, but this message is clear: there is a difference between buying into “the lower world” unaware of any other world, and deciding to reengage after having known the higher world.
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