A definition of art that I like

Bobby Fischer died in Iceland. Deeply troubled for perhaps his entire life, a kind of Freudian wreck out of Dostoevsky - a Jew-hating loner with a Jewish mother - another chess master was talking about playing him and said this - which I thought was so beautiful:

“'It was one of his brilliant counterattacks,' recalled Mr. Byrne...'He was playing Black, and he made a deep sacrifice, so deep that I did not understand it. It was a very profound combination, very beautiful.'

"Mr. Byrne ended up resigning the game while he was still materially ahead. The result was so unusual that it confounded grandmasters analyzing the games for spectators."

It comes from somewhere, that ability to elicit appreciation at such a level.

He was paranoid, afraid of the Russians openly in a way that many of us in the Cold War would have loved to have been, accusing them of attempting to get him - individually - not one of x million souls in the Chicago area or the Boston area or whatever, but him, one individual on a plane. That idea that ANY individual might matter in the face of hydrogen bombs, seems to me, a small act of necessary assertion. But it was probably also a slow but quickening seeping of madness. It seems from the outside anyway...

Regardless, the semester ended today basically. I took home a bag of papers to grade - I was so tired I didn't bother going out tonight. I thought about it, and then I thought, "what's the point really?"

I finished a book I'd dawdled on, read at another and listened to the Magnetic Fields album - which I like a lot on the first listen. We'll see how it holds up...