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There was an interesting memoir published in the Portland Daily Sun by Telly Halkias on Oct. 5, entitled “Still Searching for Bobby Fischer”.
http://www.portlanddailysun.me/index...-bobby-fischer
He recounts the well-known history of the match and then says:
Overnight, chess left the realm of nerds and became cool. Despite our other emerging interests, my friends and I were sucked into that vortex. Chess kept us off the sandlot, much to our parents' bewilderment.
We held epic matches, and neighborhood tourneys sprung with each passing day of the two-month Fischer-Spassky marathon. The guys flipped coins for the honor of being Fischer. We used official clocks to time our moves and documented every game in classical and algebraic notation. When we ran out of permutations of the rivalry in Iceland, we would play by labeling ourselves after historic grandmasters: Morphy, Botvinnik, Capablanca, Smyslov and Vidmar, to name a few.
Following Fischer's triumph, we continued for the next few summers. Some players moved away and we recruited replacements. Chess was everywhere — print, radio and TV — and Fischer had become a Cold War Caesar who dared to cross the Rubicon and conquer the Soviet bear.
He talks of the succeeding years, ending with Fischer’s death and finishes with:
But in the summer of 1972, none of that mattered. My friends and I were schoolboys who were thrilled to add a champion of the mind to our Pantheon. And Fischer, as the poet Wallace Stevens would put it, was only a figure half-seen, or seen for a moment: a phantom so veiled in his own torment that a turn of his shoulder and quickly — too quickly — he was gone.
http://www.portlanddailysun.me/index...-bobby-fischer
He recounts the well-known history of the match and then says:
Overnight, chess left the realm of nerds and became cool. Despite our other emerging interests, my friends and I were sucked into that vortex. Chess kept us off the sandlot, much to our parents' bewilderment.
We held epic matches, and neighborhood tourneys sprung with each passing day of the two-month Fischer-Spassky marathon. The guys flipped coins for the honor of being Fischer. We used official clocks to time our moves and documented every game in classical and algebraic notation. When we ran out of permutations of the rivalry in Iceland, we would play by labeling ourselves after historic grandmasters: Morphy, Botvinnik, Capablanca, Smyslov and Vidmar, to name a few.
Following Fischer's triumph, we continued for the next few summers. Some players moved away and we recruited replacements. Chess was everywhere — print, radio and TV — and Fischer had become a Cold War Caesar who dared to cross the Rubicon and conquer the Soviet bear.
He talks of the succeeding years, ending with Fischer’s death and finishes with:
But in the summer of 1972, none of that mattered. My friends and I were schoolboys who were thrilled to add a champion of the mind to our Pantheon. And Fischer, as the poet Wallace Stevens would put it, was only a figure half-seen, or seen for a moment: a phantom so veiled in his own torment that a turn of his shoulder and quickly — too quickly — he was gone.