The Luzhin Defense

"The Luzhin Defense is far and away the best novel written about chess players. It deals with chess and madness, which is an intriguing topic, because it’s often said that chess grandmasters have a propensity to insanity. Statistically, it’s probably not true, but, nonetheless, people think about Fischer , they think about [Wilhelm] Steinitz, the first undisputed world champion who went insane, and there were others as well, such as [Paul] Morphy and [Akiba] Rubinstein. The great mystery to me, which this book touches on, is that it’s often said that these people are driven mad by chess, when actually it might have been the other way around – chess was the only thing that kept them from going off the deep end. It’s when they get away from chess, or try to break away from it, that their characters disintegrate. Fischer’s lunacy, if that’s what it was, broke out in full force when he abandoned playing the game. Within chess he was sublimely rational. They are often people who can be slightly awkward outside chess, but in chess are completely balanced. Yes, he’s unpopular with other boys as a child. He’s mocked and teased, he’s physically uncoordinated, he doesn’t seem to have any particular aptitude. He’s an only child, and his mother brings back a chess set. Suddenly, it’s like a switch has been turned on in his head, and the rest of world is dark. There’s this flash of light and all he can see is chess. For Luzhin, chess is much more vivid than life itself. He’s perfectly at home there. The tragedy is that his fiancée, who is never named, thinks that he’s this wonderful person and if only she can get him away from his wicked, evil game he’ll be fine. But of course he can’t see any meaning in life outside chess. There’s a terrifying end to the book, when he throws himself out of the window of his hotel room and is falling towards the ground, and the floor below is tiled with black and white squares. It seems like a wonderful release – he is going into a familiar world and it’s welcoming him. He certainly played chess. I don’t know how strong he was. I think he composed chess problems, which is a whole realm of chess closer to pure mathematics than playing chess is. He was of course Russian, though an émigré. He certainly understood the attraction of chess very well, which is why his book is so good. He’s also, of course, a fantastic writer. This is one of his earlier novels, he wrote his more famous ones later, but it’s a marvellous book, immensely powerful. There’s a very wonderful passage in the book, showing that there are problems with chess itself for the human brain . Luzhin is playing a game in a world championship match and he’s lighting a cigarette – those were the days when you were still allowed to smoke during games – and while he’s contemplating the move he leaves the match lit and burns himself by mistake. Nabokov writes: “The pain immediately passed, but in the fiery gap he had seen something unbearably awesome, the full horror of the abysmal depths of chess.” Which is true because the variations are unfathomable. The computer has done a great deal, but it hasn’t solved it, and probably never will. So you think that you’re battling another person, but there is actually something much more powerful that you’re battling, which is chess itself. And chess itself, it seems, will always win."