Friday, February 06, 2015

Lurid and gratuitous


Good Lord yes. And young men left their curtains open when they were in bed with the light on, since they weren't up to anything they shouldn't have been and nobody was looking besides.

Anyway the slogan (for which Norman Rockwell was not responsible) comes from the website of
Kenneth T Zemsky. Mr Zemsky has a novel out, which we assume is as wholesome as the ones Mom used to bake.


He emails:

I have often bemoaned the failure to sustain chess’s grip on the public fancy that existed during the Fischer-Spassky frenzy. So a few years ago in my modest way I decided to do something about it: I began to write Knight to King 4: The Fischer-Kasparov Match (K2K4). The book will be now released in a few weeks and I am asking you to consider helping get the word out.

Just like a John Grisham novel does not delve into the minutiae of legal principles, K2K4 is not a chess text. It is simply a human interest story about two chess geniuses whose lives overlapped but who never competed against each other. K2K4 presents a scenario where the two did play, while trying to re-create the excitement of Fischer-Spassky.


Buy Now, as the website tells us. Buy now, before the tide of formulaic filth sweeps us away completely.

4 comments:

Jonathan B said...

Surely "sustaining a grip on the public’s fancy" is the sort of thing that books you a slot on the Sex Offenders Register.

David R said...

Tell you what: one of you lot buy it; review it; and let us know the verdict - a new Stefan Zweig, or not? Not, I'd bet. Meanwhile...does the lad have his hand in a box of tissues?

ejh said...

Maybe ask Michael Hoffmann to do it.

Anonymous said...

It was Kirsan's fantasy that they should meet and why he scrapped the existing World Championship format.

His idea was that the World Champion should be the survivor of a massive knock out, but with Fischer, Karpov and Kasparov seeded to the semi final stage.

In the event, Fischer and Kasparov were having nothing to do with it and Anand had to face Karpov directly after winning through the rest of the knock out field.

RdC