Mostly He Won: Kubrick, Bobby Fischer, and the Attractions of Chess

The 1972 world championship chess match between Bobby Fischer of the United States and Boris Spassky of the Soviet Union was an event of international importance—and a media bonanza. Fischer himself was a singular character study, and the circumstances of the match in Iceland led to bizarre complications.

The New Yorker writer Jeremy Bernstein came to Reykjavik to report on these affairs—but via a circuitous route that featured William Shawn, the New Yorker’s editor; Arthur C. Clarke, the renowned writer of science fiction; Stanley Kubrick, the famed filmmaker; and Playboy magazine.

Out of this heady mix, Bernstein fashions a tale of large personalities involved in an intense, brainy competition.

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For nearly three decades Jeremy Bernstein was a staff writer for the New Yorker. Many of his pieces were prizewinners, and his book Einstein was nominated for the National Book Award. Mr. Bernstein, a theoretical physicist, has also written Portrait of an Enigma; Hitler’s Uranium Club; Three Degrees Above Zero; Cranks, Quarks, and the Cosmos; The Merely Personal; and The Dawning of the Raj. He lives in New York City and Aspen, Colorado.