by Ann Hulbert
“almost killed him”: Josephine Schuyler, diary entry for July 2, 1934, in Talalay, Composition in Black and White, p. 58.
“she excels chiefly in her capacity”: Columbia University Child Development Institute report, June 15, 1934, in Schuyler Family Papers (hereafter SFP), Box 1, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Manuscripts, Archives, and Rare Books Division, New York Public Library.
Scores of her songs: No recordings exist, but John McLaughlin Williams revisited scores of some music she wrote between the ages of seven and nine. See “A Philippa Schuyler Moment,” August 2, 2011, http://www.overgrownpath.com/2011/08/philippa-schuyler-moment.html.
“make a better rule about whipping me”: J. Schuyler, Scrapbook, January 1, 1936, in Talalay, Composition in Black and White, p. 57.
“You nearly scared me to death”: J. Schuyler, Scrapbook, 1938, in SFP, Box 46.
“Jody, I want to do this”: Ibid.
“You can do anything if you try”: George Schuyler to Philippa Schuyler, 1938, in SFP, Box 22, Folder 3.
“Love was the thing that freed me”: Temple Black, Child Star, p. 63.
“I realize, darling”: J. Schuyler, Scrapbook, November 1936, in Talalay, Composition in Black and White, p. 53.
“If I just wanted to play games”: Scrapbook, 1938, in Talalay, Composition in Black and White, p. 85.
Assessing her “social relationships”: School report, May 1938, on Philippa Schuyler, Scrapbook, 1938, in SFP, Box 46.
“just the most delicious thing”: Talalay, Composition in Black and White, p. 89.
“If there’s any pushing done”: Joseph Mitchell, “Evening with a Gifted Child,” McSorley’s Wonderful Saloon (New York: Pantheon, 2001), p. 117.
“vicious barriers of prejudice”: Philippa Schuyler, “My Black and White World,” Sepia, June 1962, p. 13, clippings, in SFP, Box 69.
“of the weighty importance”: Philippa Duke Schuyler, Adventures in Black and White (New York: Robert Speller & Sons, 1960), p. ix.
“truly poetic, the expression of genuine feeling”: “Ganz Plays Works by Girl, 13, Boy, 14,” New York Times, April 8, 1945, in Talalay, Composition in Black and White, p. 102.
“the uncertainties, confusion, anger”: Schuyler, Adventures in Black and White, p. ix.
“I have to work now”: “Teen-age Prodigy,” Picture News, Sunday Magazine section of PM, July 21, 1946, Scrapbooks, 1946–1949, in SPF, Box 49.
“expertly written”: “Philippa Schuyler in Stadium Debut,” New York Times, July 14, 1946.
“She plays music, not Philippa Schuyler”: Virgil Thomson, “University Festival,” New York Herald Tribune, May 4, 1947. See also Talalay, Composition in Black and White, p. 108.
“Do you know how many blacks”: Talalay, Composition in Black and White, p. 84.
“She sits all day at the piano”: Josephine Schuyler to George Schuyler, March 27, 1948, ibid., pp. 110–11.
“Ten hours a day”: George Schuyler to Josephine Schuyler, July 25, 1949, ibid., p. 116.
“breaking under the strain”: P. Schuyler, “My Black and White World,” p. 13.
“STAYING. AM COMMITTED”: Philippa Schuyler to Josephine Schuyler, September 4, 1952, in Talalay, Composition in Black and White, p. 124.
“Do you realize what you are expecting”: Philippa Schuyler to Josephine Schuyler, July 1960, ibid., p. 204.
“the turmoils, threats, hazards”: Schuyler, Adventures in Black and White, pp. 299–300. Further quotations in this paragraph and the next are from the same source.
“We have tried to make you important”: Josephine Schuyler to Philippa Schuyler, n.d., SFP, Box 22, Folder 3.
PART III REBELS WITH CAUSES
Chapter 5. Bobby Fischer’s Battles
Where not otherwise indicated, biographical details are drawn from Frank Brady, Endgame: Bobby Fischer’s Remarkable Rise and Fall—from America’s Brightest Prodigy to the Edge of Madness (New York: Crown, 2011).
“Wanna have a game?”: Arnold Denker and Larry Parr, The Bobby Fischer I Knew and Other Stories (San Francisco: Hypermodern Press, 1995), p. 102.
“a football country, a baseball country”: Rene Chun, “Bobby Fischer’s Pathetic Endgame,” Atlantic, December 2002, p. 93.
I’ve Got a Secret: Brady, Endgame, p. 89.
the Quiz Kids on TV: Quiz Kids debuted on television in 1949 and aired for four years. A short-lived effort to revive it in 1956 featured William James Sidis’s cousin Clifton Fadiman as the moderator. See the introduction to Ruth Duskin Feldman, Whatever Happened to the Quiz Kids?: Perils and Profits of Growing Up Gifted (Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 1982).
An early champion of the SAT: Nicholas Lemann, The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1999), pp. 39–41.
What if this fiercely competitive young maverick: Harold C. Schonburg, “Russians Scored by Bobby Fischer,” New York Times, August 18, 1962.
dismissed school as a place for “weakies”: Ralph Ginzburg, “Portrait of a Genius as a Young Chess Master,” Harper’s, January 1962, p. 51.
“Stilted (paranoid) personality”: Regina Fischer’s FBI file, made available on August 11, 2010, in response to a FOIA request. This entry is dated June 22, 1943.
She followed him to the Soviet Union: Daniel Johnson, White King and Red Queen: How the Cold War Was Fought on the Chessboard (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2008), p. 118.
the evidence points strongly to Nemenyi: The most forceful version of the case for Nemenyi being Fischer’s father is made in Peter Nicholas and Clea Benson, “Life Is Not a Board Game,” Philadelphia Inquirer, February 8, 2003. See also Peter Nicholas, “Chasing the King of Chess,” Los Angeles Times, September 21, 2009.
“considered the subject to be mentally upset”: Nemenyi consulted the Family Service Association, December 1946, and then again, n.d., R. Fischer FBI file.
in a trailer “out west”: Brady, Endgame, p. 9.
warm home support for playful exploration: Benjamin S. Bloom, ed., Developing Talent in Young People (New York: Ballantine Books, 1985), p. 512.
“My mother has an anti-talent”: Brady, Endgame, p. 11.
“MOMMY I WANT TO COME HOME”: Ibid., p. 15.
in defense of a “colored family”: R. Fischer FBI file.
“antagonistic” and “argumentative”: All quotations in this paragraph are from R. Fischer FBI file.
more positional variations: Garry Kasparov, in Bobby Fischer Against the World (2011), directed by Liz Garbus, HBO.
“Thought that leads nowhere”: Stefan Zweig, The Royal Game and Other Stories, trans. Jill Sutcliffe (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1983), p. 8.
“my little chess miracle”: Brady, Endgame, p. 16.
“He crushed me”: Ibid, p. 18.
the notion of a “crystallizing experience”: Howard Gardner, Creating Minds: An Anatomy of Creativity Seen Through the Lives of Freud, Einstein, Picasso, Stravinsky, Eliot, Graham, and Gandhi (New York: Basic Books, 1993), p. 31, citing David Henry Feldman.
“shadowy, unhappy”: H. G. Wells, “Concerning Chess,” in Certain Personal Matters (London: Lawrence & Bullen, 1898), p. 213.
“I may get back after 3”: Brady, Endgame, p. 26.
Nemenyi stopped by on trips: Nicholas, “Chasing the King of Chess.”
he didn’t reveal his identity: David Edmonds and John Eidinow, Bobby Fischer Goes to War: How a Lone American Star Defeated the Soviet Chess Machine (New York; HarperPerennial, 2005), p. 321. The authors say Bobby was probably never told. According to Nicholas, “Chasing the King of Chess,” he learned who his real father was after Nemenyi’s death.
It’s polite to break your roll: Nicholas, “Chasing the King of Chess.”
“get up and walk around”: Brady, Endgame, p. 49.
“He had to come out ahead”: Harold C. Schonburg, “Fourteen-Year-Old ‘Mozart of Chess,’ ” New York Times, February 23, 1958.
a “special list”: R. Fischer
FBI file.
Teachers recalled his pockets bulging: Schonburg, “Fourteen-Year-Old ‘Mozart of Chess.’ ”
a postwar talent development formula: Bloom, Developing Talent in Young People, pp. 512–23.
“For four years I tried everything”: Johnson, White King and Red Queen, p. 120.
struggling to put decent meals on the table: Nicholas and Benson, “Life Is Not a Board Game.”
“I don’t know. I just go for it”: Brady, Endgame, p. 29.
“When I was eleven, I just got good”: Frank Brady, Portrait of a Prodigy: The Life and Times of Bobby Fischer (Philadelphia: David McKay, 1965), p. 8.
“They are out to win”: Samuel Reshevsky, “Chess Is Another Soviet Gambit,” New York Times, June 13, 1954, in Brady, Endgame, p. 31.
“indisputable proof of the superiority”: Edmonds and Eidinow, Bobby Fischer Goes to War, p. 33.
the number of registered chess players: Johnson, White King and Red Queen, p. 74.
“I dreamed about caressing her”: Edmonds and Eidinow, Bobby Fischer Goes to War, pp. 39–41.
“fighting spirit”: Garry Kasparov, “The Bobby Fischer Defense,” New York Review of Books, March 10, 2011.
“Mr. Nigro, when is the food coming?”: Brady, Endgame, p. 36.
playing blindfold chess: John W. Collins, My Seven Chess Prodigies (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1974), pp. 38–39.
“ability to look”: Kasparov, “The Bobby Fischer Defense.”
surpassed Morphy’s legendary win: A month before his thirteenth birthday, Paul Morphy played against the Hungarian master János Jakab Löwenthal, who had recently won a match against Charles Stanley, considered the U.S. champion. See “János Jakab Löwenthal,” Paul Morphy, n.d., http://www.edochess.ca/batgirl/Lowenthal.html.
“Mozart of Chess”: Schonburg, “Fourteen-Year-Old ‘Mozart of Chess.’ ”
“They shoulda made me a Grand Master”: “Master Bobby,” Time, March 28, 1958.
worry about his obsessiveness: Regina contacted Jewish Family Services in 1957 with concerns about her son and “described him as temperamental, unable to get along with others, without friends his age and without interest other than chess. She requested the assistance of the Service but again refused guidance, insisting she wanted to work things out her own way.” R. Fischer FBI file.
“lives in terror of him”: Edmonds and Eidinow, Bobby Fischer Goes to War, p. 318.
“perhaps the most accurate”: Ibid., p. 77.
division of chess greats: Reuben Fine, The Psychology of the Chess Player (New York: Ishi Press, 2009), pp. 66–67. First published as “Psychoanalytic Observations on Chess and Chess Masters,” Psychoanalysis 4, no. 3 (1956): 7–77.
“Lucky,” he seethed: Reuben Fine, Bobby Fischer’s Conquest of the World’s Chess Championship: The Psychology and Tactics of the Title Match (New York: David McKay, 1973), p. 24.
“professional protester”: Brady, Endgame, p. 88.
A fellow participant: Roy Hoppe and Eric Hicks, “Fischer’s Dominance of Scholastic Chess,” n.d., http://bobbyfischer.net/bobby36.html.
“Yes, sometimes I did cry”: Gay Talese, “Another Child Prodigy Stirs Chess World,” New York Times, June 23, 1957.
the Soviets’ “determined effort”: Fine, The Psychology of the Chess Player, pp. 63–64.
“ahead of any plans”: Brady, Profile of a Prodigy, p. 7.
“Some of what he did”: Nicholas and Benson, “Life Is Not a Board Game.”
“not one word from the Government”: Schonburg, “Fourteen-Year-Old ‘Mozart of Chess.’ ”
Government money hadn’t been available: Nigel Cliff, Moscow Nights: The Van Cliburn Story—How One Man and His Piano Transformed the Cold War (New York: HarperCollins, 2016), p. 108.
“a boy, not a young man”: Ibid., p. 152.
“play against the best”: “Bobby Fischer a Hit in Soviet Chess, Though He Made First Move Too Fast,” New York Times, June 29, 1958.
“We have to throw him out”: Ibid.
Morphy’s “genial disposition”: “The Achilles of American Chess,” Chess Monthly 1, no. 12 (December 1857): 384.
“I’m fed up with these Russian pigs”: Johnson, White King and Red Queen, p. 121.
“I don’t like Russian hospitality”: Bobby Fischer to Jack Collins, July 1958, in Brady, Endgame, p. 94.
“laconic as the hero”: Paul Underwood, “Yugoslavs Lionize Fischer, U.S. Chess Prodigy,” New York Times, September 11, 1958.
“That’s very Continental”: Emma Harrison, “Bobby Fischer, Chess Hero, Back to Realities of Brooklyn Home,” New York Times, September 16, 1958.
To Bobby’s fury, she picketed: Brady, Profile of a Prodigy, p. 36. See also “Chess Protest Is Over,” New York Times, October 12, 1960.
“It sounds terrible to leave a 16-year-old”: Ben Quinn and Alan Hamilton, “Bobby Fischer, Chess Genius, Heartless Son,” Times (London), January 28, 2008.
“Chess and me”: Andrew Anthony, “Bobby Fischer: From Prodigy to Pariah,” Guardian, May 14, 2011.
“began to weep quietly”: Brady, Endgame, p. 129.
the image of an “uncouth kid”: Ginzburg, “Portrait of a Genius as a Young Chess Master,” p. 53.
“unintellectual, lopsidedly developed”: Johnson, White King and Red Queen, p. 154.
“colossal egotism”: See Ginzburg, “Portrait of a Genius as a Young Chess Master,” for the quotations in this and the next paragraph.
he accused the Soviets: “There really was a conspiracy against him, although it was not quite as extensive as he supposed,” Johnson writes. “What is not clear is whether Fischer could have won the tournament without the combine.” Johnson, White King and Red Queen, pp. 124–26. “The Russians do not need to cheat or fix anything; the odds will do it for them,” concludes Brady, Profile of a Prodigy, p. 72. “Chess watchers seem to agree that it was likely the Soviets had colluded, on some level, at Curacao,” according to Brady, Endgame, p. 148.
“Finally the U.S.A. produces”: Brady, Profile of a Prodigy, p. 99.
“He is still very young”: Ibid., p. 100.
“an awful lot of prestige”: Brady, Endgame, pp. 183–84.
“the free world against”: Johnson, White King and Red Queen, p. 180.
a master of mind games: Fischer claimed his delays and ultimatums weren’t that. “I don’t believe in psychology. I believe in good moves,” he said. Edmonds and Eidinow, Bobby Fischer Goes to War, p. 136. Perhaps they were ploys designed to goad himself, not to put Spassky on edge, but they had that effect.
not that the match was a policy priority: Louis Menand, “Game Theory: Spassky vs. Fischer Revisited,” New Yorker, March 1, 2004.
Spassky, to his regime’s displeasure: Edmonds and Eidinow, Bobby Fischer Goes to War, p. 290.
“taken on his own”: Ibid., p. 288. For Bobby’s demands, see pp. 237–38.
“a propagandist for the free world”: Ibid., p. 270.
But Bobby proved immediately effective: Ann Hulbert, “Chess Goes to School: How, and Why, the Game Caught on Among Young Americans,” Slate, May 2, 2007.
“the object is to crush”: Fred Waitzkin, Searching for Bobby Fischer: The Father of a Prodigy Observes the World of Chess (New York: Penguin, 1993), p. 15.
“a gift for democratizing”: Ibid., pp. 12–13.
In the USSR, Spassky’s loss elicited: Edmonds and Eidinow, Bobby Fischer Goes to War, p. 291.
“Nobody is going to make a nickel”: Brady, Endgame, pp. 209–10.
He demanded rule changes: Fischer proposed that the first player who won ten games be named the victor of the match. There would be no limit to the total number of games, and draws would not count. The reigning champion would keep his title if the score reached 9–9. See Brady, Endgame, pp. 217–18.
a streamlined, hierarchical enterprise: To be sure, the Soviet system wasn’t as well oiled in reality as it was in theory: Spassky was surrounded by hapless advisers in Reykjavík.
A Nation at Risk: The report was issued in April 1983 by the National Commission on Excellence in Education, formed by Secretary of Education Terrel H. Bell.
“chess parents” nursed proto-prodigy dreams: Waitzkin, Searching for Bobby Fischer, p. 161.
studies correlating chess programs: See, for example, “Benefits,” Gardener Chess, n.d., https://gardinerchess.com.au/benefits/.
the neural plasticity that also makes: Tom Vanderbilt, “Learning Chess at 40,” Nautilus, May 5, 2016.
“effortful training”: See, for example, K. Anders Ericsson, Roy W. Roring, and Kiruthiga Nandagopal, “Giftedness and Evidence for Reproducibly Superior Performance: An Account Based on the Expert Performance Framework,” High Ability Studies 18, no. 1 (June 2007): 41; see also K. Anders Ericsson and Neil Chamess, “Expert Performance: Its Structure and Acquisition,” American Psychologist 49, no. 8 (August 1994): 738. “In summary,” they write, “deliberate practice is an effortful activity motivated by the goal of improving performance.”
“a strong memory, concentration, imagination”: Ginzburg, “Portrait of a Genius as a Young Chess Master,” p. 50.
tested with random positions: Philip E. Ross, “The Expert Mind,” Scientific American, July 24, 2006.
don’t transfer seamlessly: Fernand Gobet and Guillermo Campbell, “Educational Benefits of Chess: A Critical Review,” in Tim Redman, ed., Chess and Education: Selected Essays From the Koltanowski Conference (Dallas: Chess Program at the University of Texas at Dallas, 2006).
“the greatest natural player”: Schonburg, “Russians Scored by Bobby Fischer.”
yet another corroboration: Brooke N. Macnamara, David Z. Hambrick, and Frederick L. Oswald, “Deliberate Practice and Performance in Music, Games, Sports, Education, and Professions: A Meta-Analysis,” Psychological Science 25, no. 8 (2014).
“The ability to put in those hours”: Kasparov, “The Bobby Fischer Defense.”
“Remember,” her letter went on: Regina Fischer to Bobby Fischer, June 26, 1974, in Brady, Endgame, p. 215.
Chapter 6. The Programmers