Former chess champion Bobby Fischer dies in Iceland
REYKJAVIK, Iceland — Bobby Fischer, the reclusive chess genius who became a Cold War icon by dethroning the Soviet world champion in 1972 and later renounced his American citizenship, has died. He was 64. Fisher died in a Reykjavik hospital on Thursday, his spokesman, Gardar Sverrisson, said today. There was no immediate word on cause of death. Born in Chicago and raised in Brooklyn, N.Y., Fischer was wanted in the United States for playing a 1992 rematch against Boris Spassky in Yugoslavia in defiance of international sanctions. In 2005, he moved to Iceland, a chess-mad nation and site of his greatest triumph.
It was 1972, during the height of the Cold War. The Russians were the Bad Guys, the Evil Empire…and the reason the Doomsday Clock was inching inexorably towards midnight. We feared them and they feared us, so it stood to reason that a chess match could become war by other means between the US and the USSR. The prospect of nuclear conflict was too horrible to seriously entertain, so in 1972 a series of chess matches became a serviceable substitute.
I was 12 years olf and I LOVED chess. I read books, I pored over the moves of old matches, and I could have rattled off the name of just about every Grandmaster. The game fascinated me, especially since I could play the game sitting on my butt (I was rather lazy at that age). The world championhip series between Boris Spassky and Bobby Fischer was one that I followed with fascination. At that point in time, I wanted nothing more than to be Bobby Fischer. In retrospect, I’m thanking my lucky stars that I wasn’t.
Fischer beat Spassky, and in the highly-charged atmosphere of the Cold War became a national hero- something he was completely unprepared for. A brilliant and highly eccentric personality under the best of circumstances, Fischer was ill-prepared to deal with fame and all of it’s demands. Over the remaining 36 years of his life, Fischer gradually became arguably the single wierdest human being on the face of the planet. It’s too bad, really, because Fischer could have had and done so much more with his gift. In the end, he became persona non grata to his own government as well as the purveyor of some of the wildest conspiracy theories ever. He became a recluse, the subject of a movie based on his reclusiveness, and eventually moved to Iceland, the site of his greatest triumph and a country in which he was revered.
It’s a moving tale, but I can’t imagine that this is how Fischer saw his story playing out. I’m saddened because I can still remember how I lived through his matches against Spassky in 1972. It’s just to bad that 1972 was the apex of his career, and that the next 36 years would play out as they did. He didn’t have to die estranged from his homeland, and yet he died believing that the American government was out to destroy him. In the end, the government merely ignored him. How sad.
