Amazon Best Books of the Month, February 2011: There may be no one more qualified than Frank Brady to write the definitive biography of Bobby Fischer. Brady's Profile of a Prodigy (originally published in 1969) chronicled the chess icon's early years, a selection of 90 games, and (in later editions) his 1972 World Championship match with Boris Spassky. With Endgame, published two years after Fischer's death, Brady's on-and-off proximity to Fischer lends new depth to the latter's full and twisted life story. Though Fischer's pinnacle artistry on the chessboard may often be discussed in the same breath with his eventual paranoia and outspoken anti-Semitism, the particular turns and travels of his post-World Championship years (half his life) lend his story most of its vexing oddity: the niggling insistence on seemingly arbitrary conditions for his matches, the years on the lam after flagrantly disregarding U.S. economic sanctions, his incarceration in Japan, his eventual citizenship and quiet demise in Iceland. All told, Fischer's life was like none other, and told through the lens of Brady's personal familiarity and access to new source material, results in an utterly engaging read. --Jason Kirk
Guest Reviewer: Dick Cavett
Dick Cavett is the host of “The Dick Cavett Show”---which aired on ABC from 1968 to 1975 and on public television from 1977 to 1982---Dick Cavett is the author, most recently, of Talk Show: Confrontations, Pointed Commentary, and Off-Screen Secrets. The co-author of Cavett (1974) and Eye on Cavett (1983), he has also appeared on Broadway in Otherwise Engaged and Into the Woods, and as narrator in The Rocky Horror Show, and has made guest appearances in movies and on TV shows including Forrest Gump and The Simpsons. His column appears in the Opinionator blog on The New York Times website. Mr. Cavett lives in New York City and Montauk, N.Y.
Even if you don’t give a damn about chess, or Bobby Fischer, you’ll find yourself engrossed by Frank Brady‘s book about Fischer, which reads like a novel.
The facts of Bobby’s life (I knew him from several memorable appearances on “The Dick Cavett Show” on both sides of the Big Tournament) are presented in page-turner fashion. Poor Bobby was blessed and cursed by his genius, and his story has the arc of a Greek tragedy---with a grim touch of mad King Lear at the end.
The brain power and concentrated days and nights Bobby spent studying the game left much of him undeveloped, unable to join conversations on other subjects. Later in his life, unhappy with his limited knowledge of things beyond the chess board, he compensated with massive study---applying that same hard-butt dedication to other fields: politics, classics, religion, philosophy and more. He found a hide-away nook in a Reykjavic bookstore---barred from his homeland, Iceland had welcomed him back---where he read in marathon sessions. (After he was recognized, he never went back to his cozy cul de sac.)
In Brady’s telling the high drama of the Spassky match quickens the pulse; the contest that made America a chess-crazed land was seen by more people than the Superbowl. People skipped school and played sick in vast numbers, glued to watching Shelby Lyman explain what was happening. The fanaticism was worldwide. The match was seen as a Cold War event, with the time out of mind chess-ruling Russian bear vanquished.
Arguably the best known man on the planet at his triumphant peak, Bobby is later seen in this account riding buses in Los Angeles, able to pay his rent in a dump of an apartment only because his mother sent him her social-security checks. The details of all this are stranger than fiction, as is nearly everything in the life of this much-rewarded, much-tortured genius.
I liked him immensely, knowing only the tall, broad-shouldered, athletically strong and handsome six-foot-something articulate and yes, witty, youth that Bobby was before the evil times set in, with deranged anti-Semitic outbursts and other mental strangeness preceding his too early end at age 64.
I can’t ever forget the moment on the show when in amiable conversation I asked him what, in chess, corresponded to the thrill in another sort of event; like, say, hitting a homer in baseball. He said it was the moment when you “break the other guy’s ego.” There was a shocked murmur from the audience and the quote went around the world.
Frank Brady’s Endgame is one of those books that makes you want your dinner guests to go the hell home so you can get back to it.
Review
“One the year’s best biographies.” —Washington Post
"Mr. Brady's biography is well-written, studiously researched and filled with fascinating details. It imparts the love of chess and affection for 'Bobby' that the author clearly feels...Boris Spassky, after the losing the world championship title to Fischer, said: 'I think I understand him.' Perhaps one day the rest of us will too. Until then, we have Endgame to fill the void." —Wall Street Journal
“The freakishly talented, freakishly flawed Fischer played the game as if it were a blood sport…In ENDGAME Frank Brady tells the story of Fischer’s life with a dramatic flair and a sense of judiciousness.”
—The Boston Globe
"Brady's book is an impressive balancing act and a great accomplishment...What results is a chance for the reader to weigh up the evidence and come to his own conclusions -- or skip judgments completely and simply enjoy reading a rise-and-fall story that has more than a few affinities with Greek tragedy." —The New York Review of Books
“Presents Fischer’s story with an almost Olympian evenhandedness that ends up making it far more absorbing than any sensationalized account.”
—Laura Miller, Salon.com
"Brady is in a unique position to write about Fischer...he had access to new materials, including files from the FBI and the K.G.B. (which identified Fischer as a threat to Soviet chess hegemony in the mid-1980s); the personal archives of Fischer's mother, Regina, and his mentor and coach Jack Collins; and even an autobiographical essay written by the teenage Fischer. The wealth of material allows Brady to describe many rich moments and details."
—New York Times Book Review
"Brady seems unusually well qualified to capture Fischer’s many facets and contradictions…ENDGAME is a rapt, intimate book, greatly helped by Brady’s acquaintance with Fischer…he sees the person behind the bluster…he also makes use of unusually good source material…fascinating."
—New York Times
“Even if you don’t give a damn about chess, or Bobby Fischer, you’ll find yourself engrossed …has the arc of a Greek tragedy --with a grim touch of mad King Learat the end…ENDGAME is one of those books that makes you want your dinner guests to go the hell home so you can get back to it.”
—Dick Cavett
"Recommended not just for chess enthusiasts but for anyone interested in the compelling compelling life of a complex, enigmatic, American icon." —Library Journal
"Brady masters Endgame." —Vanity Fair
"Insightful…Brady is uniquely qualified to write this…The book should appeal to a broad audience, from hard-core chess fans to casual players to those who are simply interested in what is a compelling personal story."
—Booklist
“Engrossing…The Mozart of the chessboard is inseparable from the monster of paranoid egotism in this fascinating biography…Brady gives us a tragic narrative of a life that became a chess game.”
—Publishers Weekly (Pick of the Week/Starred Review)
“The teenage prodigy, the eccentric champion, the irascible anti-Semite, the genius, the pathetic paranoid—these and other Bobby Fischers strut and fret their hour upon celebrity’s stage….Informed, thorough, sympathetic and surpassingly sad.”
—Kirkus Reviews
"ENDGAME is rich in detail and insight. It is sympathetic and human, but not at all naive. I admire Brady's resolve, and I consider this book essential reading in the effort to understand Bobby Fischer and his place in our world."
—David Shenk, author of THE GENIUS IN ALL OF US and THE IMMORTAL GAME
"The definitive portrait of the greatest—and most disturbed—chess genius of all time.”
—Paul Hoffman, author of THE MAN WHO LOVED ONLY NUMBERS and KING’S GAMBIT
“Bobby Fischer began life as a lonely prodigy and ended it as a hate-spewing enigma, and in between became America's greatest chess player, a man renowned both for his unmatched brilliance and social clumsiness. In ENDGAME, Frank Brady masterfully chronicles the full breadth of Fischer's life, producing a narrative driven by staggering detail and profound insight into the psyche of a troubled genius.”
—Wayne Coffey, New York Times bestselling author of THE BOYS OF WINTER
“You don’t have to know the game of chess to be mesmerized by the dizzying and ultimately dark journey of the world’s most heralded player. Frank Brady has researched and detailed Bobby Fischer’s every move—on and off the chessboard—for an incisive and objective account of a man whose genius was matched by his eccentricities. This is a riveting look at a tarnished American icon.”
—Pat H. Broeske, New York Times bestselling co-author of HOWARD HUGHES: THE UNTOLD STORY
"I've wondered about the weird and fascinating life of Bobby Fischer since I was a teen-aged New York Times copyboy sent out to the lobby to keep Fischer’s mother from pestering editors and reporters. Finally, after 50 years, I've finally gotten the weird and fascinating biography I've been waiting for. Bravo, Brady."
—Robert Lipsyte, author of AN ACCIDENTAL SPORTSWRITER
“A definitive and finely detailed chronicle of one of the most fascinating and eccentric Americans of the 20th century, written by one of the few men with the expertise, knowledge and writing ability to pull it off in a manner deserving of the subject.”
—Michael Weinreb, author of THE KINGS OF NEW YORK
“Fischer is America’s greatest antihero. This fascinating biography is filled with hope, Cold War intrigue, the fulfillment of genius, and an explosive fall from grace that is both deeply moving and, ultimately, profoundly sad.”
—Jeremy Silman, author of THE AMATEUR’S MIND
"I have been following Bobby Fischer my whole life, but I learned something new on nearly every page of this wonderful book. Frank Brady is the perfect biographer for Bobby Fischer, and ENDGAME tells the full and fair story of Fischer's astonishing rise and heartbreaking fall."
—Christopher Chabris, author of THE INVISIBLE GORILLA
About the Author
FRANK BRADY is internationally recognized as the person most knowledgeable about the life and career of Bobby Fischer. Brady is the author of numerous critically acclaimed biographies, including Citizen Welles; Onassis: An Extravagant Life; and Bobby Fischer: Profile of a Prodigy (the first edition of which appeared in the mid-1960’s and focuses on the young Bobby). Until recently, Brady was the Chairman of the Communications Department at St. John’s University, and he remains a full professor there. He is also the President of the Marshall Chess Club and was the founding editor of Chess Life.
