Word: chessboard
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...many urbane comedies of ideas, Behrman here wives farce with feeling. If his characters in earlier plays (Biography, Rain from Heaven) seemed not so much human beings as assorted points of view, in The Cold Wind they are often not so much human beings as pieces on a racial chessboard. And in the many places where Behrman commemorates traditional Jewish characters enacting standard roles his play is both warm and entertaining...
...greatness, Bobby himself agrees. A floppy, abrupt young gangle-shanks, he stumbles through the physical world of school and subways and summer vacations in a tangle of arms and legs not quite under control. But in the neatly ordered empire of the chessboard, he moves with vast precision. Swiftly he picks his way among the possibilities; haughtily he sidesteps the traps. Experts compare his aggressive, scientific style to that of Russia's famed Alekhine, his flair for combinations to the touch...
Away from the chessboard, Bobby barely tolerates the world around him. An indifferent sophomore at Brooklyn's Erasmus Hall High, he professes a certain interest in astronomy, prehistoric animals, hypnotism-"all that sort of stuff"-but admits to no urge toward higher education or any aspiration but more chess. To the annoyance of his sponsors at the Manhattan Chess Club, he has turned up his nose at the club tournament. Now that he is in the big time, Bobby can't be bothered. Winning the U.S. title makes him eligible for the interzonal finals this summer in Yugoslavia...
...guard bent over the chessboard, absorbed in the play, he was seized from behind. As he struggled, one of the nearby sun bathers snatched up an ax, sent it smashing into his skull. A moment later the carefully concealed knife of another laborer slammed twice into his stomach. Finally, someone gave the guard the coup de grace-with his own pistol...
...other moves on the world's multidimensional diplomatic chessboard, U.S. diplomacy last week...