Bobby Fischer: Profile of a Prodigy

Rating:
Summary: Detailed bio, well organized, analyzed games.
Review: An excellent and very detailed biography, complete with strong insight into the unique personality of the greatest American chess player of the 20th Century. I found this book to be a quite interesting pleasure to read. The chapters on the 1972 World Championship Match were satisfying indeed. This book gives you a good background to the present ongoing Russian/Soviet domination of the game at it's highest levels. It makes you think of the pity inherent in Fischer not defending his hard earned title.

Rating:
Summary: For Fischer Games, look elsewhere
Review: As one of the reviews says, this can be a good book for some interested in the life of one of the most famous players of all the time. Although, even in that aspect, it is not entirely satisfying. My interest in Fisher is more in his games. And for his games, I would strongly advise the reader to look elsewhere. The notes and annotations are superficial and not at all helpful. The aim of the book may not be to improve your chess, but Fischer games deserve far better treatment than this one does. I was very disappointed.

Rating:
Summary: Bobby Fischer ¿ Profile of a Prodigy
Review: Brady's Profile of a Prodigy should be on the bookshelf of every chessplayer who has more than a passing interest in the game of kings. The carefully researched and thoroughly enthralling text hooked me, from Bobby's formative years as a child in Brooklyn, playing in a simul with Max Pavey to his dramatic triumph for the title of World Champion in Reykjavik, I was compelled to read on. Bobby Fischer: Profile of a Prodigy is filled with keen observations and telling anecdotes that combine to create an insightful framing of this stormy chess genius. In addition to the text of the biography, ninety of Fischer's games are reproduced with annotations. In brief, the definitive Fischer tome.

Rating:
Summary: Sanitized but engrossing nonetheless
Review: Eminently readable, but strangely unrevealing. Full of details about all sorts of Fischer tantrums, negotiations, etc., but somehow the real Fischer is absent. Noteworthy is Brady's refusal to write a single word about Fischer's sex life or lack thereof. Brady outlines his career from age six to the end of the World Championship match with Spassky in 1972. One gets the sense that Fischer was unconsciously a master of the psychology of intimidation, but gradually became more of a paranoid schizophrenic. As the book ends and Fischer has secured the world title, the reader can see he is about to leave the world of the sane. Also absent was any explanation, or quotes from Fischer on why he embraced the fundamentalist World Wide Church of God faith and dumped his nominal Jewish identity. I mean, does Fischer pray to a personal God? Does he actually believe in hell fire, etc.? Brady gives no hint. The details about Fischer's incredible work ethic and maniacal devotion to the game, however, help us to see how he became at the time the greatest chess player in the history of the game. Also good were the many glimpses of the chess players and personalities of the times, including Evans, Cramer, Edmunson, Reschevsky, Petrosian, Tal, Spassky, and others.

The other thing that Brady is mum on is Fischer's famous prejudices. Brady spares us Fischer's anti-Semitism, etc. There are almost no quotes of Fischer's famous stupidities. When Brady talks about the article in Harper's Magazine by Ralph Ginzburg in 1961 he says that "Bobby is depicted as a monster of egotism, scornful of everything outside himself and the game" who has a "hopeless vulgarity." But Brady quotes nary a word to show us what Fischer supposedly said. I guess the real problem with Brady's biography of Fischer ("profile") is that he was tiptoeing around Fischer's prejudices as though afraid to offend him, as though it was essential to stay in his good graces. Brady writes that when Fischer was displeased with anyone, he just cut them out of his life completely and ruthlessly. I think Brady was trying to write a true biography while staying within Fischer's good graces, an impossible task.

The guy who should write a Fischer biography is Grandmaster Larry Evans who knew him very well, who played at Fischer's level, and a man who was instrumental in helping Fischer achieve the success he did. Without the patience, understanding and guidance of Larry Evans it is likely that Fischer would have gone off the deep end long before he began, let alone finished, the historical match with Boris Spassky.

Rating:
Summary: Weak but worth the price
Review: Fischer was a genius, no question about that. This book is a good buy for the price: you get a (weak) biography of a great player, 8 pages of pictures, and 90 (poorly) annotated games for less than US$15.00! Altogether not a bad deal. However, I take issue with the author. Because he was a friend of Fischer's he did not want to ruin his relationship with him by revealing Fischer's odd character traits, as many other reviewers have noticed. Worst, the author wants you to believe Fischer was a good boy, the American self made sportsman who increased the popularity of the game while fighting for better playing conditions and higher appearance fees, which would ultimately benefit chess professionals as a whole. This might be true. However, it is also true that Fischer left chess players as a whole with an undeletable image: that of nerds, eccentrics and the like. All in all I think his contribution to the image of chess was negative, not positive. Upon reading the book it struck me that Spassky allowed himself to play that fatidic match in Iceland. Fischer did not show up at the date and time they had originally agreed. Spassky gave in to Fischer's absurd demands, falling pray to Fischer's psychological warfare. He should have walked away and kept his title, period. Since he did not the rest is history. At the end of the day the character of a World Champion is seem not when he wins a world championship match but rather when he loses it. Fischer, unlike Spassky, Karpov, and Kasparov never showed up to defend his title. This will be his sad legacy.