Bobby Fischer was probably the greatest chess player of all time, but his games and those of his worthy opponents were beyond those of most mortals. To the general public, his main contribution was to have popularised chess for generations of people around the world by the sheer force of his volcanic personality. Like Albert Einstein, he singlehandedly made what looked like a dull, nerdy game sexy.
Fischer, who died on Thursday, fits perfectly the stereotypical image of a lone genius constantly struggling on the verge of mental instability. His paranoia was legendary. It was probably what drove his virulent anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism, though he grew up in Brooklyn and his mother was Jewish. From interviews during the last years of his life, it was clear he also despised Japan, Australia, Britain and their people. And he never liked the Russians, ever since he played and beat Boris Spassky in a cold war chess showdown in Reykjavik, in 1972, accusing the then world champion's entourage of strategists of trying to cheat.
Oh, and he also thought women were intellectually inferior, having boasted on a number of occasions throughout his life that he could give up a knight and still beat the best female grandmaster. He was, in other words, not so much a racist than a misanthrope and a misogynist.
But despite his serious shortcomings, Bobby Fischer represented a side of America that the rest of the world rarely sees these days, yet is admirable in many respects. He was a rugged individualist who relied on the power of his own personality and intellect to succeed; a man who was beholden to no one or the powers-that-be; a rebel who thumbed his nose at his government and took on the world. This distinct and admirable individualism is all but stifled and lost in contemporary America, under the conformism driven by fears of terrorism, greedy capitalism and rampant evangelism.
Fischer's death should remind us of this lost image of the individual. His eccentricities were peculiar to him and offensive to many people, but his genius was universal, just like the game he championed.
