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Now I'm not sure I like this line of reasoning because it means that I, who have spent countless hours in public parks, chess clubs and my library at home fighting for my (king's) life, would be stark raving mad by now. I suspect that I am not. I like to tell myself that I am in pretty sane company. The game certainly has its pantheon of upstanding citizens. While ambassador to France, Benjamin Franklin preferred to eschew the Paris opera for chess at the Café de la Régence. (Excellent choice.) Napoleon played, although to judge by one of his games, a diagrammed and illustrated copy of which hangs in my office, he was a far better general. Nabokov was a fine player and renowned composer of chess problems. And the sanest man I know, Natan Sharansky, is a chess master who once played Garry Kasparov to a draw and defeats me with distressing ease.
But then there is Fischer, the fearsome counterexample, now pathetically sheltered in Iceland, the only place that appreciates his genius enough to take pity on his madness. So, Mama, should you let your baby grow up to be a chess champion? Tough question. In his novel The Defense, Nabokov, who loved the game as much as I do, has the hero, the chess master Luzhin, go mad when he is struck by the realization of the "full horror and abysmal depths of chess."
A bit melodramatic, perhaps. It won't happen to your boy playing blitz in Washington Square Park.
I think.