PW: How did you make the transition from a dispute between two philosophers (in Wittgenstein's Poker) to Bobby Fischer Goes to War?
John Eidinow: David, who is a BBC producer, was doing a radio program on the history of the world chess championships from 1886 to 2001, and in the course of that, he covered the 1972 showdown between Fischer and Spassky. When he and I talked about it, we could immediately feel Poker-like resonances.
David Edmonds: They did have various structural elements in common, even though the Wittgenstein-Popper incident only lasted 10 minutes, while the chess match spread out over two months. In each clash, one of the protagonists was an eccentric genius, to put it mildly—Wittgenstein and Fischer—and the other, while clearly a genius as well, was seen as more normal.
PW: One of the hurdles you faced was that the games are so famous, people think they already know the story.
DE: There were dozens of books that came out within a year of the match, almost all of them chess books, but insofar as they tell the story, they tell it from the American perspective. You get a rounded perspective on Bobby Fischer, but very little on Boris Spassky. Almost nothing was known about how the Soviets prepared for the match.
JE: Almost all those books David mentioned see Spassky as a good guy, but still inevitably a product of the mighty and much-feared Soviet chess machine. That could not have been further from the truth; he was a very un-Soviet figure, and there was a huge effort by the chess apparatchiks behind the scenes to manage him. Although it was the high point of détente in diplomatic terms, for the rest of the world the Cold War was still going on, and the game was thrust into that mold—High Noon with the American star riding out to fight the Soviet chess machine. The real story was more like John le Carré.
PW: Bobby Fischer's anger at acquaintances who speak to the media about him is well known. Did you encounter any resistance from potential interviewees?
DE: Fischer is now in contact with very few people, so it wasn't really a problem. One of the people who gave us a great deal of time was an Icelandic policeman, his bodyguard in Reykjavik, who is still in occasional contact with him but had no problem giving us extensive interviews. Fischer's become more reclusive as the years go by, certainly, but even back in 1972, he had very few close friends, though many acquaintances spoke fondly of him and still do. To this day, very few people have a bad word to say about him. They call him odd or eccentric, or describe him as a kid who never grew up.
PW: Were you expecting anything like what you found in the FBI files?
DE: We had no idea what to expect. First, we tried to get Bobby Fischer's files, but of course we couldn't because he's still alive. Then we discovered more about his mother, so we asked if there was a file on her. It might have taken as long as a year before it landed in our mailbox with a thump. It's the size of two large telephone books and absolutely full of extraordinary detail, 25 years of surveillance, starting before Bobby became famous.
JE: It gives us quite a lot on Bobby himself, as well as the chance to check the version of young Bobby in newspaper and magazine articles against what the FBI found out about him. And since he inevitably came up in the agents' dealings with those around the family, how he was seen by those who saw him day-to-day.
PW: How good are your chess games?
DE: I gave up competition chess over 20 years ago, but I played quite seriously as a junior player until I was about 17 or 18.
PW: So the chess analysis is pretty much David's doing?
JE: My role was to read it as a nonchess player and see if I could understand it. Could I visualize it, see what was going on, on the board, and enjoy the account?
DE: To have John say, "I don't understand that, what does that mean?" was absolutely essential. We never designed this to be a book for chess players. We hope, of course, they'll read it, but the aim was for nonplayers to enjoy the book as well.
