Robert offers a short review of "The Chess Artist" by J.C. Hallman:
I read J.C. Hallman's "The Chess Artist", a good book about the "otherness" of chess. At first, I thought he was just going to be retailing all the "eccentric chessplayer" myths known to humankind. Modern chess gave him fertile soil, though, like the Republic of Kalmykia, where the local autocrat, now president of FIDE, the international chess federation, built an entire "Chess City" to convert people to the cause of chess. I forgave him the Iowa Writers Program tendency to draw deep meaning from things best rendered sans import, and ultimately decided he was a good, if wordy, egg. It was a fun read.
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