A couple of months ago I reviewed
the new book Bobby Fischer Goes to War for the
Spectator. The book is about Fischer’s chaotic but
ultimately triumphant 1972 world championship match against Soviet
titleholder Boris Spassky. Its title, however, might well apply to
Fischer’s life since 1972. For thirty-odd years, the greatest
chessplayer who ever lived has been at war with an array of forces
imagined and real, ranging from publishers to churches to
California cops to the U.S. government.
On Tuesday, Fischer was arrested in Tokyo’s Narita Airport after
trying to leave Japan on an American passport that had been
cancelled in December 2003. This action was, one must say,
thoroughly typical. In 1992, Fischer willfully violated United
Nations sanctions against Yugoslavia by playing (and winning) a
match in the Montenegrin resort of Sveti Stefan against Spassky.
Since then he has been a fugitive from American law.
But what kind of fugitive makes frequent trips between foreign
countries when he knows he could be subject to arrest at any
moment? Didn’t Fischer know that Japan has perhaps the most
stringent foreign residency controls in the developed world, not to
mention a mutually binding extradition treaty with the U.S.?
The carelessness is typical, and is just one of the many
symptoms of the abominably poor adaptation to reality that Fischer
has displayed since well before 1972. With comically predictable
timing, he has already advanced the claim of torture that every
student of Fischerian history knew was coming. On his website —
which is just as obsessive, foul, and disorganized as you might
expect — he claims to have been “viciously attacked brutalized
seriously injured and very nearly killed” by the authorities.
If the Japanese did handle Fischer so roughly, it is curious
that — within hours of his arrest — he should have been given
World Wide Web access in order to broadcast details of the abuse to
the world.
THE GUARDIAN TALKS OF the arrest as the end
of “[t]he US government’s 12-year pursuit of Fischer,” and the
Washington Post spoke of a “hunt” and a
“cat-and-mouse game.”
But information about Fischer’s whereabouts has been available
for a long time to even the most casual follower of chess. If the
United States had been serious about keeping tabs on the ex-champ
to account for his 1992 felony, they had a good opportunity to
start doing so in 1997, when he successfully applied in person for
an American passport at the U.S. Embassy in Bern. Switzerland was
not then a U.N. member, so Fischer could not have been detained on
the American arrest warrant. But for six years he traveled around
the world without impediment on that passport. If there was indeed
a “hunt” for Fischer, it wasn’t very careful or vigorous.
Even without a valid passport, he was entitled to return to the
United
States to face the federal charges against him, but this obviously
wasn’t his intention last week. Fischer writes of himself in the
third person, “Bobby Fischer does not wish to return to the
Jew-controlled USA where he faces a kangaroo court and 10 years in
Federal prison and a likely early demise or worse on trumped
political charges. Nor does he wish to remain in a hostile brutal
and corrupt U.S.-controlled Japan.”
Probably he meant to make his way back to Manila, where he makes
occasional radio appearances full of bilious, Tourettic
anti-Semitism. He is rumored to have a child there, and his
Filipino friends include Eugenio Torre, the dean of chess in that
country.
Fischer may never see the Philippines again. The dangling
question is why his passport was suddenly revoked last year after
he was allowed to swan about the world with it for so long. The
U.S. State Department hasn’t said yet whether it will make a
request to have Fischer extradited, but it’s hard to see why it
would have withdrawn the passport if it didn’t mean to try him. He
is seeking an “immediate offer of political asylum from a friendly
third country,” but he’d have to get there first.
THE SENTIMENT IN THE chess world is in favor of having Fischer
brought home for trial, in the expectation that he will finally be
treated for his mental illness. It’s hard to know how realistic
this is. Fischer is lucid: Although he entertains conspiratorial
delusions, it seems improbable that he would meet the legal
requirements for an exculpatory finding of insanity.
But it is also hard to imagine him cooperating with his own
defense. That he will sooner or later try to fire any lawyer
assigned to him, or hired by him, is a safe bet. It will be
interesting to see how a judge reacts to the inevitable badgering,
hectoring, and vituperation Fischer can be expected to display in
court.
The sad truth is that at 61, Fischer is right to question his
own ability to survive a long stretch in prison. Most people with
impairments like his don’t live so long in the first place, and
they certainly don’t do well in jail. You can call him
schizophrenic, or “bipolar,” or whatever you like. Clearly some
description of the sort is valid, whether or not these are
illnesses or mere personality types.
Ten years is merely the maximum American penalty for his
violation of
U.N. sanctions, and a good defense lawyer would emphasize the
absurdity of imprisoning a man for having aided and abetted a
long-defeated regime in a country that, technically, no longer
exists. Playing chess, after all, isn’t quite the same thing as
smuggling yellowcake.
Spassky returned to Russia right after the Yugoslav match and
was punished only with temporary travel restrictions. But Fischer
has arguably committed at least one additional felony under U.S.
law by attempting to travel with an invalid American passport.
THE AMERICAN GOVERNMENT WOULD probably not help its reputation
abroad by treating Fischer more harshly than Russia treated
Spassky. His name is known wherever chess is played, and he would
be regarded widely as a political prisoner. And, indeed, there
would be at least an ounce of truth in the description.
I don’t have much sympathy for Fischer, though it is worth
remembering that there is no record of him having harmed anyone but
himself. It is unfortunate that he remains the face of American
chess thirty years after he refused to defend the world
championship. His reappearance in the headlines will only make
matters worse, and ensure that he remains the favorite topic of
conversation amongst chessplayers.
Like some haggard ghost, he haunts even the World Chess
Federation lists: In theory he still holds a 2780 Elo rating, branded with an “i” for
“inactive.” If his active status were revived he’d be, technically,
rated ten points higher than the present world champion, Vladimir
Kramnik.
We presume, when we regard a mentally “sick” man, that there
must be really a decent person underneath all the maladjustment,
delusions, and torment. Some chess fans seem to expect that
coercive psychological treatment will reveal a “real” Fischer no
one has ever seen — a Fischer who plays great chess for art’s
sake, without quarreling or cosseting. The best one can really hope
for is that the ugly legal process will be gotten over with as
quickly as possible, and he will be allowed to resume his sordid
life of angry solitude somewhere — out of sight, but for lovers of
chess, never quite out of mind.
