The Elegant Variation: The Previously Unexplained Chess-Writing Link ...

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May 16, 2012

The Previously Unexplained Chess-Writing Link ...

I've been a chess obsessive for years but it's only thanks to the great Charles Simic that I can begin to justify all the wasted hours ...

There’s something else in my past that I only recently realized contributed to my perseverance in writing poems, and that is my love of chess. I was taught the game in wartime Belgrade by a retired professor of astronomy when I was six years old and over the next few years became good enough to beat not just all the kids my age, but many of the grownups in the neighborhood. My first sleepless nights, I recall, were due to the games I lost and replayed in my head. Chess made me obsessive and tenacious. Already then, I could not forget each wrong move, each humiliating defeat. I adored games in which both sides are reduced to a few figures each and in which every single move is of momentous significance. Even today, when my opponent is a computer program (I call it “God”) that outwits me nine out of ten times, I’m not only in awe of its superior intelligence, but find my losses far more interesting to me than my infrequent wins. The kinds of poems I write—mostly short and requiring endless tinkering—often recall for me games of chess. They depend for their success on word and image being placed in proper order and their endings must have the inevitability and surprise of an elegantly executed checkmate.

Posted at 12:03 PM in Obsessions | Permalink

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I like this post on Western Chess. One thing (though I don't seek out books, fiction, on their chess telling abilities) is that when I see chess in fiction it almost always is represented in a way that I find annoying (or not researched, Bel Canto being one example of this). I disagree with thinking that what is basically now an efficient search algorithm (the computer) is 'smarter' than any one person, though it may appear that way. As a writer of prose (novels, though short ones) I don't know if chess is something I use... (I can see it for poetry only)... The opening theory of chess is something I find tedious so I've switched to the Fischer variation, as well as Shogi, a more interesting brother of Western Chess (this is all a dork digression).
Any prose writers out there find chess helpful?

Posted by: nelson | May 17, 2012 at 02:11 PM

No activity that is such a rich source of metaphors is wasting your time!

Posted by: Shelley | May 21, 2012 at 08:16 AM

Chess is the best martial art!

Posted by: Letteratura Operaomnia | May 27, 2012 at 03:13 AM

I've never played chess in my life, but I love this short story about two chess masters battling it out:
Exchange of Men, by Howard Nemerov and W.R. Johnson.

Posted by: sparrow | June 10, 2012 at 08:55 AM

The comments to this entry are closed.

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The Elegant Variation is "Fowler’s (1926, 1965) term for the inept writer’s overstrained efforts at freshness or vividness of expression. Prose guilty of elegant variation calls attention to itself and doesn’t permit its ideas to seem naturally clear. It typically seeks fancy new words for familiar things, and it scrambles for synonyms in order to avoid at all costs repeating a word, even though repetition might be the natural, normal thing to do: The audience had a certain bovine placidity, instead of The audience was as placid as cows. Elegant variation is often the rock, and a stereotype, a cliché, or a tired metaphor the hard place between which inexperienced or foolish writers come to grief. The familiar middle ground in treating these homely topics is almost always the safest. In untrained or unrestrained hands, a thesaurus can be dangerous."

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The Elegant Variation

A Literary Weblog.
A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog
"Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

May 16, 2012

The Previously Unexplained Chess-Writing Link ...

Comments

MY NOVEL

WORTHY READINGS

TEV DEFINED

RECOMMENDED

THIS GUN FOR HIRE:
Reviews & Criticism

SECOND LOOK

Categories

The Elegant Variation

A Literary Weblog. A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog "Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

May 16, 2012

The Previously Unexplained Chess-Writing Link ...

Comments

MY NOVEL

WORTHY READINGS

TEV DEFINED

RECOMMENDED

THIS GUN FOR HIRE: Reviews & Criticism

SECOND LOOK

Categories

A Literary Weblog.
A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog
"Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

THIS GUN FOR HIRE:
Reviews & Criticism