Who2 Editorial Blog
Notes and Commentary from the Editors
Saturday, January 19, 2008
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
Posted by Mr. Holznagel at 8:05 AM 
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1 Comments:
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.
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