The Who2 Blog
Obituary First Lines: Bobby Fischer
Chess champ Bobby Fischer has died in his adopted home country of Iceland. Here are the opening lines from selected obituaries:
"Bobby Fischer, the eccentric genius and high school dropout who became the only US world chess champion, has died in self-imposed isolation..." - The Financial Times
"Bobby Fischer, the iconoclastic genius who was one of the greatest chess players the world has ever seen..." - The San Francisco Chronicle
"Bobby Fischer, who died a melancholy exile's death Friday at age 64, was that most perplexing of human characters -- a protean genius and a repellent man." - The Los Angeles Times
"'They constantly use the words eccentric, eccentric, eccentric, weird. I am boring. I am boring.'" - The Ottawa Citizen
"There may be only three human activities in which miraculous accomplishment is possible before adulthood: mathematics, music and chess." - The New York Times
"On the day after Bobby Fischer's death it was clear that Icelanders felt they had lost a friend." - The Iceland Review
1 comment
Can't say RIP for the man who was probably to chess what Ty Cobb was to baseball-- for a time, the best there was.But also a miserable, tortured human being.We can't help who impacts our lives, and when those that did pass on, I guess it's reasonable to reflect.I had a lot of fun that summer of '72; a lot of Americans did. It opened a new world to many of us, and it loomed large as a bloodless Cold War victory until it was surpassed by the "Miracle On Ice" in 1980.I thought the tone of "Searching For Bobby Fischer", a really nice movie, hit it about right-- Fischer after 1972 was so despicable, but so clearly mentally ill, that it was just....sad.