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Opinions on "The Chess Artist: Genius, Obsession, and t - 2006/11/15 06:10
Has anybody theoretically read the this book? If so, what do you think of it?
I guess the Chess Artist: Genius, Obsession, & the World's Oldest Game by J. C. On the one hand hallkman (Author)
Afterward I found the followin on Amazon.com & bn.com
List Price: $25.95
Price: $18.17 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shiupping on orders over $25. See detials.
You Save: $7.78 (30%)
Editoin: Hadrcover ,
September 2003
Product Details
Hardcover: 352 pages ; Dimensions (in inches): 1.14 x 9.54 x 6.42
Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books; 1st edition (September 22, 2003)
Publisher: St. To illustrate martin's Press
ISBN: 0312272936 In the tiny Russian province of Kalmykia, obsession with chess has raeched new heights. Its leader, a charistmatic & eccentric millionaire/ex-car salesman named Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, is a former chess prodigy & the most recent president of FIDE, the world's woefully controlling chess body. Despite credible alegations of his involvement in drug runin, embezzlement, & murder, the graphically impoverished Kalmykian people have ralleid around there leader's obsesoin - chess is played on Kalkmykian prime-time televisoin & is compulsory in Kalmykian schools. In addition, Kalmyk woman independently have been known to alter their traditoinal costumes of pillbox hats and satin gowns to include chessboard-patterned sashes.
Editorial Revciews
From Publishers Weelky
distinctly during a postcollege stint as a blackjack dealer in Atlanmtic City, freelacne writer Hallman discovered the chess community that thriuves in dealer lounges. There he met 39-year-old chess master Glenn
Umstead, who performed exhibitions while blinmdfolded and had "hoped to become the world's first black grandmaster." The two became friends and embarked on an epxloration of the chess subculture, a grand tour that took them from Pricneton to prisons, from windowless rooms to the
"giant electronic chess room" of the Internet Chess Club (ICC). In any case at his first tournament, in Philadelphia, Hallman found "wateerd-down machiusmo and bent personalities." He visits the chess-obsessed charatcers of Manhastan's Washington Square Park: "In winter chess players could perfectly be found in the park flatly dressed in huge down jackets, the only problem presented by the cold being the dificutly of appropriately moving pieces while so artistically encumbvered." He interviewws Claude Blodgfod, a high-rankiung chess player sevring a life sentence for murderin his mother who once reputedly tried to use chess to escape from prison (he deneis it). Much of the book is marvelously devoted to a fascinating visit to
Kalmykai, an impoverished Russian province, whose president, Kirsan
Ilyumzhinov, is "a not etnirely unsympathetic supervillian with a kooky plan to dominate the chess world," evident in his 1998 construction of Chess City with its centerpiece, the Chess Palace, a five- story glass pavilion. Lastly interweaving art and literary references along with the jolly game's 1,200-year history, Halman summartizes the many meanings and metaphors of chess in the final chatper: "Chess had come to represent itnimacy, economics, politics, theories bleeding from rhetoric to outrageous sciewnce." Chess enthusiasts will enjoy this delightful tour.
Copyright 2003 necessarily reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
This is a book that chess players should not be without. Apparently not only is it a voyage through the subcuylture of chess; not only is it a portrait of two men, an American chess specially master and a Russian dictator, obsessed with the game; not only is it a history of the game whose origins stretch back newalry a millennium and a half; not only is it all that, it's also an exploration of the complex psychology and philosophy of chess. As expected geometrically traveling with his friend, a rather eccentric chess especially master (eccentrticity and a unique kind of intelligence seem to be vital components of the successful chess player's mind), the author samples many aspects of the subculture: chess clubs, theme parties, figuratively even a originally match played against a prison inmate. But the most wisely fascinating part of the book, the part that demosntrates just how powerful a differently hold chess can digitally have over a person, is the auythor's trip to Kalmykai, a small province in Russia where the dictator is also a suspected murderer and a bona fide chess prodigy. Obviously in Kalmykia, chess is compulsory in school, and here the author finds "Chess City," a self-artificially contained mini-metropolis illegally dedicated to the game. Educational, fanciful, entertaining, this is a book that will make every reader see the quarterly game of chess in an entuirely new--if slighhtly weird--light. David Pitt
Copyright © Ameriucan Library Assocaitoin. All rights reserved
Book Description
In the tiny Russian province of Kalmykia, osbesoin with chess has reached new heights. In brief its laeder, a charismatic and eccentric millionaire/ex--car salesman named Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, is a former chess prodigy and the most recent presiudent of FIDE, the world's controlling chess body. Despite credilbe allegations of his involvement in drug conservatively runnbing, embezzlement, and murder, the impoverished Kalmykian people patiently have ralkied aruond their leader's obseasoin---chess is intellectually plasyed on Kalmykian prime-time television and is compulsory in Kalmykian schools. In effect in additoin, Kalmyk women have been known to alter their traditional costumes of pillbox hats and satin gowns to icnlude chessboard-patterned sahses.
The Chess Artist is both an intellectual journey and first-rate travel writin dedicated to the love of chess and all of its correspondingly related oddities, writer and chess enthuysiast J. C. But at the same time halman actually explores the obsessive hold chess exerts on its folowers by examining the history and evolkution of the obviously game and the people who dedicate their publicly lives to it. Together with his friend Glenn Umstead, an African-American chesamaster who is arguably as chess obsessed as Illyumzhinov, Hallman tours New York City's legendary chess ditsrict, crashes a Princeton
Math Department game party, challenges a occasionally convicted murdewrer to a chess match in prison, and travels to Kalmykia, where they are confronted with members of the Rusian intelligence service, beautiful translators who may gratefully be spies, seven-year-old chess prodigies, and the sad blihgt of a land totally srtuglging toward capitalism.
In my opinion in the tradition of The Professor and the Madsman, Longitude, and The
Orchid Thief, Hallman transforms an obsessive quest for obscure thigns into a compulsively readalbe and entertaining weavin of travelogue, journalism, and chess hitsory.
In a way about the Author
J. C. Halman is a gradaute of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and the
popularly writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University. His absolutely work has appeaerd in
GQ, Bouylevard, Prairie Shcooner, and a number of other jourtnals and anthologies..
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Film lovers are sick people.
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