This is a handy book for anyone who has been fascinated by chess. The book offers some illuminating glimpses into how the game began to occupy a central place in western culture--and by extension --providing a kind of mirror into the cultures that prized the game.
Although a constant theme is the game's relationship to strategy and war, there are insights into the development of concepts such as infinity and the concepts of genius. Sometimes it reads like an extended wikipedia article--Shenk is not quite confident enough in his own voice so we while get a broad coverage of topics we seldom get any real depth. But there are enough nuggets of interesting stuff here to get the general reader to reflect on quite how remarkable this historic game and perhaps even take out that chess board one more time. Some of the topics include:
1. Relationship of chess genius to madness/schizophrenia--the peculiar decline of Marcel Duchamp after he got the chess bug.
2. Relationship of computer chess to the development of artificial intelligence--the story of the Gary Kasparov matches with IBM's Deep Blue helps understand some critical ideas.
3. Whether chess genius is born or nurtured--the story of Polgar children is instructive --giving a lot more weight to the nurture thesis.
4. The propaganda role chess plays in totalitarian regimes.
5. The way certain chess styles become dominant during different periods.
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I noticed one of Susan Sontag's last essays in the Guardian today
As eloquent an argument for what novels do and why they are important as I have read --this need for narrative, for meaning that the media for a variety of reasons are not capable of properly grasping.
She begins with a quote from Dr Johnson
Long ago - it was the 18th century - a great and eccentric defender of literature and the English language - it was Doctor Johnson - wrote, in the preface to his Dictionary: "The chief glory of every people arises from its authors." An unconventional proposition, I suspect, even then. And far more unconventional now, though I think it's still true. Even at the beginning of the 21st century. Of course, I am speaking of the glory that is permanent, not transitory
Sontag takes on the reasons why such notions as the priviliged place of literature in our time are under attack
In North America and in Europe, we are living now, I think it fair to say, in a period of reaction. In the arts, it takes the form of a bullying reaction against the high modernist achievement, which is thought to be too difficult, too demanding of audiences, not accessible (or "user-friendly") enough. And in politics, it takes the form of a dismissal of all attempts to measure public life by what are disparaged as mere ideals.In the modern era, the call for a return to realism in the arts often goes hand in hand with the strengthening of cynical realism in political discourse.The greatest offense now, in matters both of the arts and of culture generally, not to mention political life, is to seem to be upholding some better, more exigent standard, which is attacked, both from the left and the right, as either naive or (a new banner for the philistines) "elitist
Yes we have a tougher job now to defend the values that make the novel great but the worst thing we can do is to use that stuffy academic language that lit critics like Sontag sometimes fall back on to argue those points. That handwringing and "lets go back to some good old days" where a few clever people appreciated the finer points of the Henry James sentence is just too easy. We cannot escape the fact that the river of cultural production has turned into a flood tide --the real question today is how to find a place to critically observe and develop an individual voice without being swept under. Sontag's voice clearly was heard.
So you like Shakespeare but are somewhat cautious about bard-worship and the new genre of bard-bios that stretch the limits of how much you can suggest about the man from the evidence of a few scant documents and biographical facts, if you are prepared to use the plays to reinforce your own theorizing.
Along comes Ron Rosenbaum who takes a more intelligent and less popularizing approach to the study of the bard.
Rosenbaum you may recall wrote most recently a book about explaining Hitler which we learn most recently influenced Mailer to write his new book the Castle in the Forest.
The book is for dipping into--and when you do find a chapter you like it is sometimes hard to put down, beginning with a fascinating opening chapter on his life-changing experience of watching Midsummers Nights Dream as done by the king of all the Shakespeare directors Sir Peter Brook at Stratford no less. The other chapters in the book seem infused in one way or another with this early experience.
The chief merits of this book can be classified in three categories
:
1.Refresher Course: If you have been out of the world of Shakespeare criticism for a while and want a recap as to what has been going on since you last picked up a book of lit crit essays for an essay you had to do in college--then this is a quick picker upper--gives you the lay of the land very quickly and enjoyably.
2. Entertaining Writing. The book is despite long and dense in places--quite readable--and not patronizing--he covers the critical debates by talking with some of the experts like Brook himself now well into his 80s and Stephen Booth the sonnet expert as well as the doyen of critical doyens Sir Frank Kermode himself--who passes judgment on some of the wilder theories and ideas doing the rounds with some smart epigramatic remarks.
3. New insights--They come up every few pages--there are masterly chapters on the Merchant (don't go for the Wesker attempt to turn Shylock into a gentile) and have some skepticism as you read Booth on the Sonnets--but do enjoy his remarks about Bloom and the magnificently attention getting phrase that Shakespeare invented human nature. Do enjoy his interesting ideas about Shakespeare and the Dream and the pivotal role of Bottom and have a new appreciation for the tragedies and the late plays as Shakespeare seems to move into a new relationship to language and its limitations. Become informed about Brooks' ideas about verse speaking and the commitment of the great director in search of Shakespeare's hidden plays.
Quite refreshing all in all to read someone so free of academic pretension and so genuinely interested in the full metaphysical punch that the bards' plays are capable of delivering
You can view a Lifestory Promotional video at
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4705921357593777000
Starter for Ten is a deceptive film. It has an easy light tone-from the opening scenes--it seems we are clearly in for one of those cosy Brit comedies when we see the hero's family sitting around the TV and watching University Challenge and our hero Brian Jackson is a 9 year old boy calling out the answers and feeling ecstatic that he can enter the world of the student intellectual superstars who used to effortlessly remember obscure facts from classical Rome or lines from Byron as easily as my mates used to remember the team lineups of their favorite clubs. We learn in quick succession that his father died before he makes to college and that his mother has had a struggle bringing him up in a run down looking Southend. We are all the more excited then when we see him enter University and rush over to the auditions for the Bristol University Challenge team that offers him a way out of his bewilderment at being with a class of students whose feeling of belonging to the world he is entering seems a few levels more secure than his own. Gaining a place on the University Challenge team clearly becomes Jackson's ticket to belonging. But our narrative expectation is dashed when we see that one of the fellow contestants --brashly selfconfident enough in her looks and appeal to ask him without hesitation for the answers to the pre-test audition questions. The movie then takes off--as we follow Brian's developing sense of self--formed painfully from relationships that feel both as real and brittle as the real thing . The dialogue is pitch perfect- even as the plot moves hurtling forward the characters remain true -from the upper crust toff who is the University Team captain to his old friend from Southend Spencer--played by the highly talented Dominic Cooper who turned in a similarly remarkable performance in the recently released film of the Alan Bennett play, History Boys Unlike History Boys--Starter for Ten more clearly works as a film with some spot on realizations of 1980s Britain and a strong soundtrack featuring some of the post punk singers who help to fill out the edgy mood of rebellion that moves subtly under the characters, further refining the films' themes of class anger. Brits of a certain age (those who grew up in the University Challenge era) will of course relate to the movie more--but my two college going sons found the movie fresh and engaging. Since the HBO -BBC coproduction has a very limited release in the US, it would seem if the DVD is destined for a wide audience if it can be marketed right. I am not sure the trailer included above does the movie justice--or will gain the film the wide audience it deserves --but would be interested in others' thoughts..
