Memo to The Gods: Never Come Back

The return of Bobby Fischer, the biggest comeback since Napoleon sailed a single-masted flat-bottom out of Elba (on his way, mind you, to Waterloo), has been widely noted but quite misunderstood. After 20 years of self-imposed seclusion, the greatest chess player of his time returns to life by way of a rematch with Boris Spassky (the man from whom he took the world championship in 1972) in, of all places, Yugoslavia. The picture flashed around the world is that of Fischer spitting on a U.S. government order charging him with violating the U.N. embargo on Yugoslavia. The papers are full of...

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