Word: chess
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...book is an interesting profile of what he calls the new American corporate elite, a series of case studies designed to illustrate exactly just what type of person runs the companies thatrun your life. Maccoby's answer--that American companies are presided over by a passel of hyperactive, hypercool chess players who are only in the business world for the thrill of the sport--may sound a bit farfetched, but his research and analysis are intriguing enough, and his writing breezy enough, to carry his more dubious conclusions. And, if when you finish you still don't quite believe that...
...Montreux Palace hotel, where he and his wife Vera occupied apartments for the past 18 years, Nabokov wrote, composed chess problems and pondered the secrets of entomology -often while seated on garden benches. Out of his deep knowledge of language and literature, he designed a fictive looking-glass world whose seriousness was lightened by ingenious wordplay and metaphors. He was a sturdy, athletic figure who in summer could be seen chasing butterflies in Alpine meadows...
...traveling show of mechanical marvels. His treasures included an automated trumpet player, a device called the panharmonicon that could duplicate the sound of a 40-piece orchestra (playing Beethoven) and an elaborate diorama showing the burning of Moscow. But Maelzel's star attraction was a hoax: a chess automaton nicknamed the Turk that took on all comers-and was every bit as talented as the human player cleverly concealed within it. That role was filled by William Schlumberger, an Alsatian hunchback who, until hitching up with Maelzel, was the second best chess player...
...Novelist Thomas Gavin, 36, reopens this long-closed case with a single question: What if Schlumberger did not die when the newspapers claimed but lived on in obscurity, composing a private journal of his bizarre life? If such a document existed, it might tell something worth hearing about a chess genius who mysteriously elected to spend twelve years playing inferior opponents while anonymously stuffed in an airless, sweltering box. Gavin asserts that such a document did exist and that Kingkill is based on it. With this single shading of fact into fiction, the performance begins...
...Kingkill has more on its mind than special effects. The two main characters, Schlumberger and Maelzel, lock themselves in a struggle as tense and potentially humiliating as a championship chess match. Maelzel tempts the malformed Schlumberger into his machinery by using Louise Rouault, the wife of a mechanic-assistant, as bait. Eventually, Louise disappears but Schlumberger remains. The Turk frees him from the fear of losing a match publicly and gives him the power to expose Maelzel at any time. For his part, Maelzel exploits Schlumberger's gift for his own profit and dreams of a truly automated player...