Word: darrach
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Does anyone in fact really care any more? Brad Darrach surely does, and so will the readers of his fast, funny account of the Great Airport Caper and other misadventures of the Brooklyn bad boy. Darrach, who became Fischer's confidant while covering his matches for LIFE, offers many new and intriguing facts about the "Chess Match of the Century." At one point in the hectic go, no-go negotiations, Darrach reports that despite diplomatic requests from such noted peacemakers as Henry Kissinger ("In short," Kissinger said later, "I told Fischer to get his butt over to Iceland"), Bobby...
...some surprises. Though often pictured as the witty, urbane sportsman going against the Brooklyn brat, Boris was himself a spoiled chess darling. Depressed, out of shape, drinking too much and beset with marital problems in the months before the match, he was "less interested in winning the title," says Darrach, "than in pulling himself out of the worst emotional hole he had ever been...
...Darrach paints all his characters with rich strokes. Almost too rich, in fact. He describes one U.S. chess official as a "Huckleberry Babbitt," a man whose "pink scalp looks like a ham in mourning." Such vivid excesses might be well placed in a short treatment. But served in book-length bunches, the cumulative effect is a bit like overdosing on chocolate fudge...
...Darrach. Yet the central figure of this livery book comes through loud, clear and not a little screechy. Though Fischer is a kind of walking Rorschach test open to all manner of interpretations, most of them bad, Darrach grants him his due. As he notes, many of the seemingly outlandish demands Bobby has made over the years have not only been justified but have since been adopted as rules for tournament play. Al though he recently resigned his world title because chess officials rejected additional demands, Fischer has more than made good his own bold promise:"I'm gonna...
Still, upon hearing of the book's publication, Fischer reportedly told his law yers to "get Darrach." Bobby, who for years shunned women in favor of his trusty chess board and Bible, will probably be most annoyed by a pair of revelations. First, that during off moments in Reykjavik he frequently took to the mineral baths with a pair of adoring young lovelies in bikinis. And second, that for six months thereafter, while secluded in a California compound run by the Worldwide Church of God, he not only dated but, at his request, was introduced to "vivacious" girls with...