John Hassall’s Reviews > Chess > Status Update

The prose is also good and paints a clear image giving a distinct impression of the different characters and the situation

The Austrian won the first game against czentovic but then maddened by his opponent’s slow pace fell back into his chess mania, made a mistaken move from another board he was imagining and then recomposed himself when the mc reminded him of his past and forfeit the game

now he only wishes to play one game to see if he was playing real chess in his cell and not merely under delirium

The Austrian then described how once he was fed up with simply repeating the 150 games he already knew by memory he began playing himself in his mind separating himself into a black mind and a white mind and how he fell into a kind of mania that took a heavy toll on him until he was let go by the gestapo during a psychotic episode

This puts him starkly at contrast to czentovic as he has no technical ability but can visualise the game perfectly while czentovic has no ability to visualize the game without the board in front of him but is a master in technical skill

During this time he stole a chess book from the hanging coat of someone that contained 150 chess championship games where he then learned all the positions and gained an appreciation for different grandmasters styles, the subtlety of the game, and the ability to visualize the game entirely in his head from looking at the notation.

The Austrian was taken in by the gestapo during the rise of the nazi party as he was involved in the movement of funds for and around the great monasteries and monarchy. The gestapo put him in total isolation with the only reprieve from the monotony being one hour of interrogation before he was returned to the same bland room. The description of the effect this sameness had on his mind is cool

Now the mysterious man is revealed to be from a prominent Austrian family and has great theoretical ability and recollection of past games but little to no practical knowledge of the game itself

Mcconners eagerness in all regards and his easily hurt ego that takes defeat on any scale as a challenge is awesome and now the mysterious stranger is lined up to play a 1 vs 1 chess match against czentovic

The world chess champion czentovic was apart from chess an otherwise intellectually dull child and the description of a mind who’s world is entirely concerned with the 64 black and white squares is interesting in how it could apply to any pursuit of greatness in a field and what it would be like to be ignorant of all things but chess or their particular pursuit