Bobby Fischer: The Final Years - A Review

Bobby Fischer: The Final Years. A Personal Memoir by Gardar Sverrisson (Ugla Publishing, Reykjavik 2019)

   The poignant, slightly out-of-focus photograph heading this review shows Bobby Fischer with his mother, Regina (one assumes this was taken by Fischer's sister Joan, but we don't know for certain). We are so used to seeing Fischer as the stereotyped caricature of the "paranoid, anti-Semitic, lunatic chess genius" of later years that seeing this image of simple familial affection comes as a bit of a shock. We've forgotten that he was also a person. This book seeks to redress this perception.

   Well, he was young then, people will say; he went crazy later, they will say, especially when he stopped playing chess after the phenomenal run of crushing victories which took him to the very top. 

   Everybody has their own interpretation of Fischer's behaviour and there is no shortage of self-appointed experts to share their amateur diagnoses of the condition of his mental health at various stages of his life. It's certainly true that he had some problems, but everyone does - it's called being human.

   This book will make you see Fischer in a different way. It doesn't seek to excuse, or explain away, Bobby Fischer as a public icon. Sverrisson's book does show you what every other book about Fischer doesn't: a complex, often difficult man, who was frequently his own worst enemy. There are many times in the book when Fischer, speaking to his close friend Sverrisson about an episode from his past, will freely admit that he was "so stupid back then".

   This won't be an in-depth review but I will try to give an impression of what I think the book sets out to do. Gardar Sverrisson was one of the Icelandic citizens who worked hard to free Fischer from his imprisonment in Japan (and likely extradition back to the US) to face charges for the terrible crime of playing chess in Yugoslavia.

   It could be argued that the second Fischer-Spassky match gave the Serbian regime a semblance of legitimacy. The Yugoslav War, and the destruction of Yugoslavia by Allied Forces, is not a subject that is appropriate for discussion here: I will limit myself to the personal opinion that the impression given is that bombing civilians is acceptable, but playing chess is not. As Sverrisson points out, a lot of American journalists were accredited to report on the match in 1992, although none of them were charged with breaking UN sanctions.

   There are many revelations in the book. For example, Fischer went to see Elvis Presley play in Las Vegas in 1973 - it seems Elvis wanted to announce that Fischer was at the concert and have the spotlight turned onto him. One can imagine Fischer's horror at such a suggestion, so he asked Elvis not to do it; Elvis agreed. 

   Fischer also very much wanted to play Karpov in 1975, and this book shows how much he wanted this match. It's well-known that Fischer wanted a long match so he could play himself back into the game, but it's often forgotten that it was mainly because he believed that this type of match was the best way to determine the best player: in short matches, as we're seeing today, one loss can make all the difference. This almost happened to Magnus Carlsen when he lost the 8th match game against Sergey Karjakin in 2016; if Carlsen hadn't won one game in the last remaining four, then we would have had a very strong grandmaster as the world champion, but not the very best player in the world.

   Fischer was very close to his mother and his sister, Joan, and was naturally upset about not being able to be with his mother as she was dying, and not being allowed to attend the funeral of either his mother in 1997 or Joan in 1998. (Joan died suddenly of a cerebral haemorrhage, aged only 60.)

   The US government had limited his entire world to Iceland: the book reveals that Fischer's name was on the arrest list of 400 airports, which meant that international travel after his arrival in Iceland in 2005 was out of the question. (Incidentally, another revelation of the memoir is that Fischer had a long-standing fear of flying.) This comes across as spectacularly vindictive for someone whose main "crime" was playing a chess match. The US government also put huge pressure on the Swiss bank UBS to close his account with them. It goes without saying that UBS complied with this "request".

   Nevertheless, Fischer was very fortunate in the people he had around him towards the end: his girlfriend, and later wife, Miyoko Watai, was devoted to Bobby; Sverrisson and his family were also very close to Fischer, and they did everything they could for him even after his death.

   The story of how they arranged Fischer's funeral in secret, and how they ensured that Fischer's body would not be subjected to ghoulish curiosity, is both moving and horrifying. Sverrisson writes:

    "To my horror, I became increasingly aware that a growing number of people did not by any means consider it to be Bobby's private affair where he was buried and how his funeral was conducted." (p.217)

   The behaviour of many people - from so-called friends, to his former brother-in-law, to some of the doctors at the hospital where Fischer died - does not inspire a lot of confidence in human nature. Sverrisson spoke to a funeral director who was an old friend and in whom he had complete trust - this man arranged for Fischer's body to be removed from the hospital morgue to a more secure (Sverrisson describes it as "more trustworthy") morgue, because

   "In less than 24 hours, [after Fischer's death] several doctors had accessed information about Bobby, knew where his body was stored, and even divulged when it had been retrieved...  Some had been in contact with persons outside the hospital and funnelled information to them, first the results of the blood tests and now the details of the body's removal from the morgue." (pp.213-14)

   Even in death, Fischer wasn't free from the vultures. I am glad that Fischer had a friend such as Gardar Sverrisson, who was as faithful to him in death as he was in life. 

   The funeral was arranged quietly and in secrecy - Fischer had said he didn't want to become a tourist attraction in Reykjavik, so a little church about sixty kilometres outside of the capital became Fischer's final resting place. Only Miyoko, Sverrisson and his family attended the funeral, as Fischer requested. He was given a Catholic burial - Fischer had expressed his admiration for the Catholic Church to Sverrisson a number of times, although he never formally converted. 

On the snowy morning of 21st January 2008, Bobby Fischer was laid to rest in the cemetery of Laugardaelir Church - peace at last for the restless and nomadic King of chess.