next, frank brady examines the life of chess master turned international fugitive bobby fischer. mr. brady recounts his reclusive miss come his issues with the united states government and his reemergence later in life as a man who championed conspiracy theories and suffered from paranoia. frank brady recalls the life of bobby fischer at barnes and noble booksellers in new york city. this is about 45 minutes. >> i would like to start off -- this is not a reading this evening. it's just simply talk and then

we will have q&a. but i would like to start off if i may to read something from the book to set the mood, and i will set the scene was in the 1960's when bobby fischer was going to go to argentina to martelle ploch the to play in a big international tournament. so, here we go. a week before he left for argentina, bobby and the author of this book had dinner at the cedar tavern in greenwich village hanging out with artists and abstract expressionists in one of bodies favorite eating places. the night we were there, jackson pollock and franz kline were having a conversation of the our come and andy warhol and john cage dined at a nearby table. not that bobby noticed. he just liked the food the restaurant served. it was a shepherd's pie kind of

place, and the anonymity that came from sitting among the people who preferred gawking at art celebrities rather than taking note at chess prodigies. we slid into the third booth from the bar and ordered bottles of beer, brown for bobby and heineken for me. the waitress didn't question bodies age even though he had just turned 17 and wasn't legally old enough to drink in new york state. 18, as you remember, some of your old enough to remember, was the limit at that time. but he looked like he was 18. bobby new this election without looking at the menu. he tackled an enormous slab of roast prime rib which he consumed in a matter of minutes. if he was -- if he were a heavyweight boxer is enjoying his last meal before the big fight. he just received and he didn't

like it and so forth. during a lull when the conversation -- lulls were typical and spending time of bobby, he didn't talk much and wasn't embarrassed by long silences -- i asked bobby, how are you going to prepare for this tournament? i've always wanted to know how you did it. he seemed unusually chipper and became interested in my interest. here, i will show you, he said smiling. he then slid out of his side of the booth and slid into line next come he retrieved from his coat his battered pocket chess set, all the little piece is lined up in their respective spots ready to go to war. i don't know if you ever seen one of those, but they are hardly larger than an index card. as he talked, he looked at me and the pocket said at least to add first and spat out a scholarly treatise on his method of preparation. he said first of all, i will get all the games i can find all of the players but i am only going to really prepare for braunstein

the others i'm not worried about. he then showed me the progression of his one and only game with braunstein, a draw from yugoslavia two years earlier. he took me through each move and discouraging braun's team choice -- braunstein's choice, one awarding the next. the variety of choices bobby worked through was dazzling and overwhelming. in the course of his rapid analysis coming to discuss the ramifications of certain variations and tactics, which each would be advisable or not. it was like watching a movie with a voice over narration but with one great difference, he was manipulating the pieces and speaking so rapidly that it was difficult to connect the moves with his commentary. i just couldn't follow the tumbling ideas behind the real phantom attacks and the assaults. he said, you couldn't play

their. i didn't think of this. was he kidding? the slots on bobby's pockets were so warm and enlarged from thousands of games and the little half-inch pieces almost fell into the slots can esthetically at his will and all of the images were bordoff i might say. then he went on and discussed braun's to -- braunstein's style. he asked me did you read braunstein's bouck? i said no, isn't it in russian? and he looked and a lady and amazed that i didn't know the language. well, learned he said, it's a fantastic book. and he will play against the i'm sure. setting the pieces in seconds again, almost without looking. he said he's hard to prepare for because he can play any kind of game, position or tactical or

any kind of opening. he then began to show me from memory game after game, it looks like dozens focusing on the openings that braunstein had played against bobby's favorite variations. multiple outcomes leaped from his mind. but he didn't just confine himself to braunstein's efforts. he also took on a tour of games experiment in the 1920's as well as others that have been played just weeks before and games that he had gleaned from a russian newspaper. all the time bobby we'd all the possibilities and suggest alternatives, selected the best discriminated, decided. it was a history lesson and a chest tutorial. but mainly, it was an amazing feat of memory. his eyes slightly glazed were now fixed on the pockets at which he gently held open in his left hand talking to himself,

totally unaware of my presence or that he was in a restaurant. his intensity seemed even greater than when he was pleading in the tournament. his fingers spread by in a blur and his face showed the slightest of smiles as if he were in a reverie. he whispered barely audibly. now, if he plays that, i can block his bishop. and then, raising his voice so low that some of the customers stared he won't play that. i began to weep quietly, aware that in that time suspended moment i was in the presence of genius. [applause] >> okay. some of the things we are going

to do here is i will talk, we will have a q&a. there is a microphone over here from c-span. c-span is filming this for a future broadcast, and if you have a question, don't yell it out, but the microphone man will come over so it gets picked up on the tv or the camera, okay? i was attempting to do a number of things when i began to read this biography of bobby fischer. and let me tell you, those of you who are here who do not know how to play chess at all or are poor players you can read this book without knowing it. okay? this isn't a chess book. it's a biography. and of course, it's of great interest i would hope to the chess players, but you don't necessarily have to know the game very well in order to enjoy it. i had written a number of other biographies, as was said, and from orson wells and aristotle,

i approached bobby's life in the same way, as a biographer. you get a sort of microscopic look at his life, and i attempted to leave no fact behind. i mean, that's the way i approach all of my books. i want -- i want to know everything. every trivial fact, okay? i may not use it, but it gives me confidence that i know my subject, and i may use it somewhere along the line. and, you know, there was no library on visited, there was no archive or no research that was not examined on my part. and in addition to approaching this as a biographer or a researcher, i was also an official witness to and a participant in body's career. i was the director of one of the

first tournament he ever played as a child in the park in new jersey at the old monterey hotel that doesn't exist any more right on the boardwalk, and bobby was, i don't know, ten doherty 11, whatever he was, and his mother was with him and i didn't talk to bobby at that time, but i noticed him, and he was a magnet for people because he was so tiny, she was the youngest person playing in the tournament in devotee gathered around and watched him, and i noted that he was going to become what he became, but i knowed how serious he was. he really took his time and concentrated and was great. we also played, bobby and i played in some of the same tournaments together over the years. we never met in an official tournament game. by the way, we were light years away in terms of -- he was in

ability, okay? but we did play perhaps hundreds of speed games over the years. gold asked me who won -- don't ask me who one. but he was an incredible speed player by the way, and was very interesting to watch him play serbia chess. it was like basketball, neighborhood or a playground basketball. you know, a lot of trash talk. what? you played against me? how dare you! that kind of stuff. you're a cockroach, on an elephant, elephant steps on cockroach, that kind of stuff. sap, boom, through the piece down. and he was the absolutely most incredible speed player in the world as it turned out. so i was there, i was also the arbiter of the u.s. championship, where he won all of his games without losses,

without controls. it had never been done before. and it's not been done since. it may never be done again, and i was right there at his board during the entire time. so i had an opportunity to study him and observe him, and i talk about that in the book of course. i also defended bobby when he got into a big contretemps with imagined bobby was forfeited and i stood up for him and went to bat for him in print. it turned out to be a lawsuit with fischer serving him and because of my constant championing him i ended up losing my job at the magazine i founded. so we bounded -- bonded. actually the match took two months, but i was in iceland for three months. i came early and left late, and

during the time he won the world championship. so, and i also looked at this book, this biography through the eyes of a friend. i was his friend. we had falling as out? falling out, whenever we had. we had arguments. [laughter] and there were times, many years where we didn't speak. and so that was -- played did feel he was a friend. we dined together, we plead chess together of course, he came to my house and read chess magazines, he swiped a lot of those magazines i might say. we went to parties together, i taught him how to play billiards. we were friends. so that was my focus, study

bobby fischer as a biographer, as an official chess arbiter, as a director, as a player and as a friend. i can tell you -- and i go through this in the book -- bobby had an extremely competitive personality. no matter what he did, not only chess. i mean, he was a good swimmer for instance, and going through high school and grammar school and camp in the summer he would swim, and bobby would be -- when they had races, bobby would be in the water before everybody was in a mid-dive. he was fast and wanted to win. when he got older in the teams and when he went up in his twenties when he went up in the catskills he would play tennis and would beat everybody at

other than that, he wanted to win at everything he did. >> and he would then rattle off all of the moves. he had memorized the 10,000 moves. that's just one of his memory feats. i would tell many, many others stories, and i do in the book actually. about how good he was. and he had a total focus on

chess. many people, as he was growing, and even when he got older, bobby is an idiot servant, he talks about how to achieve success. it takes like 10,000 hours, that's like 1,000 hours a year for ten years. bobby spent probably more than that. although gladwell disputes that. he would spend six or seven hours a day. he didn't know anything else. have you ever talked to an musician? nothing against them. but they know music. psychiatrist, they know the of mind, interpretation of dreams, all kinds of things, but many of them don't know about art or literature or music or life even.

you know, they know how to analyze you and tell you what to do. and i'm not putting down any, i see at least one psychologist in the audience. so yeah he spent the greater portion of his life studying chess. so what he became the champion of the world. that was sort of interesting. and so that's part of what i do in the book. i try to approach and confront some of these misconceptions about him. by the time when he was 20s and he won the world championship until he died three years ago, just almost exactly three years ago, he studied constantly all kinds of books. and this is not a defense of bobby. i'm going to get to the bad parts of bobby. i wanted to let you know he was

a veer racial leader, and he could be talk about the causes of israeli and the war. he had become an intellectual. because he stopped studying chess and started studying all of the other things. it was very interesting. my specific approach in the book was to show very specifically how bobby came good. if you read this book, will you become good? i don't know about that. but possibly it will help. it may inspire you. so that's good. you are not going to learn the specific openings because there are no openings here, there are no diagrams and games here. but it may inspire you to become good like he did. if i wanted to show that, and i think i have. the hours of practice, how he did it, how he analyze it had, so forth.

i also showed the difficulties he had. he came from a poor family. his mother was i wouldn't say a vagrant, but he was -- when bobby was born, she was homeless. and they had to live in a hospice. then they lived in a trailer and finally moved to manhattan, and finally to brooklyn in a small little, you know, walkup apartment for $56 a month. he never had any government support like the soviets did. i mean, you know, soviets got their country retreated, they got salaries, they could do anything that they wanted. they could spend all of their time playing and studying chess. bobby didn't get that. he got zilch in terms of any support. and that em bittered him, by the way, a lot. so i go into that. and then, of course, i talk about his fall from grace. and why did he refuse $10

million that he actually had from his attorney for sponsorship of products and for, you know, entries into tournaments and appearance fees. he just put it down and he went off into the nether of the cd section of los angeles and lived there for two years as a recluse. he disappeared. he would not give an interview, he couldn't do anything. the other question is why did he become anti-semitic, he was a jew. his mother was jewish, completely. the father, the pa -- paternity is up for grabs. it would have been one of two. we are not positive, but both of them were jewish. when she married the next time, she married someone who was jewish again. i mean he denied that he ever

received training, and yet, i have found evidence that he really did have a bar mitzvah, although he never had a briss. which is sort of unusual. why did that happen? well, you'll have to read the book. [laughter] >> and, you know, we'll get into it. i do get into it, and i offer speculation. you never know what's in someone's heart, you know, when you are writing a biography, how can you take someone's life and cram it inside, you know, the panels of -- panels of -- pages of a book. it's difficult to do. anywhere, it's there, and i discuss it. and it was rotten, he became anti-america, and i became ballistic, i didn't want anything to do with him overall of this. and think i started to think, maybe he's like vogner, maybe if

you are jewish, i'm not listening. vogner, i'm not buying his albums or a volkswagen, it's possible that's your point of view. it's okay. i started thinking vogner, gogan, he was a terrible person, frank sinatra, listen to the music, he was a rotten son of a [bleep] [laughter] >> so can we indeed accept the art and divorce the man? can we honor the art and want it accomplished and divorce the man? if we can do that, then, indeed, i started to think. it took me a philosophical confrontation, almost an external connotation -- confrontation with myself. should i write the book?

i had gotten many offers. should i write the book? i think i can pretty -- i can split it. honor his accomplishment while degrade his horrible and obscene comments about jews and about america. so this book is not a memoir of myself in any way shape, or form. i'm practically invisible, otherwise than the piece that i read you when i met with him in the cedar tavern. i'm hardly in the book. this is bobby's story, it's bobby's life. it's a great odyssey of what he went through, truly a rags to riches story in many ways. and he ended up, you know, before he died as a multibillionaire. it has shakespearean over tones

and it's truly the stuff of greek legend. so that's about all i have to say. and let's have a q & a. [applause] [applause] >> remember wait until the microphone comes around. >> hi, how are you, stuart? >> good. good. at the end his life, where he did get his money? >> well, in 1992, he played -- he violated sanctions that the u.s. had against serbia. he played in montenegro. it was a $5 billion match, he won $5.3 million and he lived on that. >> wasn't most of it -- dr. brady. >> how are you?

>> i'm great. wasn't that most by the serbian banker? >> no, absolutely not. there was $1 million in television rights that bobby never got. by the $3.5 million, definitely he got it in cash. his sister flew to belgrade, stayed at the intercontinental hotel, took a train to switzerland and deposited. so he was -- he had his money. >> wasn't the u.s. government trying to take the money? >> yes, and they still are. bobby -- yeah -- bobby, first of all, violated the sanctions. so he should be fined at least $250,000. of course, he dead now. on top of that, he stopped paying taxes in 1977. he was so anti-american, so i don't know how much -- you know, he wasn't making a heck of a lot during the 20 years in the

wilderness nears in l.a. he had some royalties on his books. it wasn't a lot. he still had to pay taxes on that. they are trying to get a lot of this money. who knows, they may still do it. it's up for grabs in the icelandic courts. >> wait, here's the microphone. >> i wondered if he made a run and where did his money go? >> he didn't make a will. and the money still exists. now he spent it over the -- since 1992, he died in 2008. so, you know, he had those expenses. he bought a house for his girlfriend. he bought a condo in raichvic. supposedly there's $2 million of the $3.5 million left.

>> did he believe the things that he said? or was he just being provocative? and did he have friends in high school? when he was in high school? >> were you in high school with him? >> no, no. >> you are much too young. but there was somebody here who supposedly went to high school with bobby, are you still here. whoever you are. no. in any event. >> i met him in the resident over a summer course there. >> thank you. thank you. hi, frank. >> actually, i met him at a resident in '56, he used to walk around the campus and a copy of the russian chess journal. >> you went to -- >> i went to brooklyn. i took a summer court nearby. >> okay. we'll forgive you. i'm sorry. did he believe the things that

he -- yeah, i believed he did. and, you know, at the end of his life -- >> [inaudible comment] >> he came out with what'lled like a terrible statement, i'm not just a chess genius, i'm a genius in all things. he believed himself to be that. that was the whole point with bobby, even when he was younger, whatever he said, it was. he just, you know, he believed it. and you either accepted it or not. and sometimes he was, you know, it seemed very irrational, and autre, but that's the way it was. yes, so rebelieved it. he wasn't just being an actor. yes? >> hi. i'm sorry. i got the mike. hi, frank. this is just a chess question. you said they played speed chess as a game. >> yeah. >> did bobby ever play

blindfolded in >> chess? >> yeah, he rared played blindfolded chess. he did. i know on a trip in key west to cuba when he played as a young man, they played blindfolded chess, over what does it take six hours? but during that time he played some blindfold games. his opponent kept not remembering the game. so, yeah. but to bobby, you know, in a sense he was always played blindfolded. he was going over games in his mind. so yeah. >> what made him anti-american? >> there was a tour that -- a story -- a series of storied that appeared in "life" magazine about bobby. and the writer, who's now dead, brad dara, wrote these stories

with a contract from bobby that he would not write a book about him. a year and a half or two years after the match was over in '72, dara came out with a book. so bobby sued him in court for i think it was believe or it not, $100 million. and bobby always had problems with lawyers. he decided to handle the case himself. and so the brief was scribbling, you know, on a yellow paper. that kind of thing. eventually, it was thrown out of court. and bobby claimed that there was no justice in the american jurisprudence system. therefore, at that point, he said i'm not going to pay taxes anymore. i don't believe in america. it's a corrupt government. there's some questions in the front here.

>> good evening. i just want to thank you for delivering to us the second book. i have the first one that you wrote. many the themes you are saying right now, when he was playing speed chess. he was saying, i want to crush you. i enjoy your book. i found it very interesting. thank you for, you know, the second part of it. chess world needed the second part. >> thank you, thank you, thank you. let's get one over here. then we'll come back to you. >> yeah, were there ever any clinical, mental issues that were attributed to him given his statements that he made? >> no psychiatrist that i know ever said anything along that line. and i interviewed a number of psychiatrists that knew him. the latest being dr. magnum

goolesson who was with him. the doctor said, and i'll give awe -- i'll give you a quote. you find it in the book. he said he was disturb, he was paranoid, but he was not schizophrenic, and he was not psychotic. he's by the way an m.d., and he was the director of the largest mental institution in iceland. very reputable man. he said he came from a bad childhood and he was mixed up. he had paranoid tendencies, as most of us do to some extent. >> why is it called "end game"? >> it's his end of the life and the end of his game. i wanted to show that. thank you very much.

thank you. any more? yes, back to this man, the brooklyn tech trader. >> i'm curious, do you have an opinion as to how well he would have gone in his prime against consparos? >> you know, how would dempsey has done against tyson. >> that's not a question. [laughter] >> that's a kind -- it's a very difficult thing to compare. things that cannot really be compared. however, i think bobby fischer was the greatest chess player that ever lived. there maybe others coming down the line japanese-american playing nokamora just won one the strongest chess tournaments ever played just a few days ago. he may surprise what fischer did. but up until now, fischer, i came, was the strongest player. now fischer was away from the game for 20 years. if fischer had not been aware

from the game for 20 years, and then played him, i would say fischer would win. he, of course, would deny that. [laughter] yes, back there. >> hi, professor brady. >> oh my god. a former student. oh joy. wait a minute. your name will come to me. don't tell me your name. >> i'm not. but i'm dating -- >> it was a long time ago. >> i'm dating myself because i'm calling you professor brady. >> that's right. i have my doctorate. >> lilian bourke. >> that's it. very good. i was on the phone with my dad the other night. i was mentioning that i was going to attend your book signing. he actually played with bobby fischer at the manhattan chess club.

so i was asking me about him, and he said that at times bobby would play 15 people at one time. >> absolutely. >> and he was always ten steps ahead of everyone. no one really won against him. but he did mention that his mother had a lot of influence on him. and i just wanted to know if you can elaborate on that. do you think that really compelled him to say the things he said later on in him? >> his mother was a great influence on him. and in many ways, she helped his career, she was like a professional press agent, almost. there was not a newspaper magazine or anything else in this city that she didn't go to to try to get press for bobby. she encouraged him. did they have fights? of course. just like we all probably have had with our parents when we are 16 years old. so yeah, they had fights.

but that's another misconception that i try to straighten out. they loved each other. they were in contact all of the years. he wanted her to come back. she went and got her doctorate in hematology, and medical degree in later years. wanted her to come back to the united states, because he missed her. when he was on his death bed, he asked for a photograph of her. they loved each other. and she was a professional protester, but she was a left professional protester. but sort of as i say, the pawn doesn't stray too far from the queen. he became a protester, but sort of on the other side, anti-americanism and so on and so on. so she had a great influence on him. and she was both mother and father to him, because she was a single mother.

okay. couple more questions. couple more. we have time, sir? two more questions. >> it must have been a really unique experience for you as a biographer to revisit a subject that you had written about so many years earlier. i can't imagine when you are "profiles of a prodigy" you must have developed a bond with bobby. i'm wondering how that's affected you over the years. you touched upon it to a certain degree how it's affected you as you saw him change and degenerate over the years. and what you feel ultimately was your relationship with bobby? >> well, as bobby changed, i changed, relationship changed, when i wrote the first book, i didn't have a doctorate. i sort of learned -- you know,

the think about -- sounds like i'm boasting. the thing about getting a phd, you learn how to research. if you don't, heaven forbid, i went ahead and learned something. i wrote many other books between the first and this one. about nine or ten other books. so i changed and as i told you, or as i mentioned, i felt very badly about his anti-american statements and his 9/11 statements and so forth. i just -- i was horrified. and -- but i had to take a couple of years to get over that. when i did, i said i should tell this story. there's nobody better in the world that can tell bobby fischer's story than me. and so that part was -- obligation on my part in a sense to tell that story, and i think i told it accurate and honest

appraisal of his life. we got here. we got here. sorry. >> did he train physically? like an athlete would before matches? >> absolutely. he swam, he played tennis, he lifted weights, he was a very physical person. and, you know, he -- his walk if you saw him, it was like a tennis player. he would swagger like, you know, because he was so used to this kind of stuff playing basketball. he was on athlete. he was a true athlete, and he kept that up pretty much all of his life. during the bewilderness years, there were times when he didn't do anything. he was also a walker. he walks miles and miles and miles, he walked my legs off. he would think nothing of walking from the upper west side down to the lower east side and back again many the court of an

evening. you know, miles and miles and miles. he loved it. and he was a fast walker. it was practically if you were next to him, there was a wind because he walked so quickly. he was in terrific shape pretty much all of his -- and he really trained before each match. so i think that's about it. unless someone has one anxious question that they want to ask. nick? yes? >> i'm wondering if you had any romantic relationships, was he ever married or? >> he was not married until he was in prison and then the woman that he was living with in japan came quite honestly in a gambit to get him out of prison so he became -- you know, he would be looked upon maybe as a japanese citizen. but he wasn't married to a

japanese woman. they got married in prison, towards the end of his life. he did have -- he was in love with a 17-year-old girl when he was 49 years old. nothing ever consummated. however, he was in love with him. you know, there were occasional romantic trysts in his life. i go into that in the book. well, thank you very much. [applause] [applause] >> frank brady discussing the life of bobby fischer. for this and other show, go to booktv.org. you are watching book tv on c-span2. 48 hours of nonfiction authors and books. every weekend. >> we're here talking with ralph reed about his latest book "the confirmation" tell us what this

is about. >> this is a fictional act of a knock-down, drag out, mother of all supreme court confirmation battles. it involves the nomination of really the 5th conservative on the court. kind of ultimately moving the court in a conservative direction and that nomination goes to a democratic senate. so you can imagine it's a pretty pitched battle. when i actually wrote it, which was in late '08, and early '09, it was the first hispanic supreme court justice ever nominateed. then obama stole my thunder and nominated sotomayor. so i changed it to the second hispanic. >> and what lead you you -- howe you inspired to write this? >> i've been in involved in every -- not every but just

about every -- supreme court confirmation battle since '87, i was in the coalition for thetop -- for the thomas nomination really happened. a lot of it happened, some of the dialogue or the meetings either happened during the robert or alito nominations. and i decided to fictionalize it. because i think the confirmation process has become broken. i think what used to be advise and consent is now search and destroy. i think it tends to be one sided. i think it's unfortunate. i wanted to show it in a way that was accessible to the average reader. that's why i chose to do it with fiction. >> where do you see the actual court going? >> well, it depends on what happens in 2012, and it depends on who else retires. i think the general,

conventional wisdom, which i tend to subscribe to, you have a forty that's decided 4-4 with justice kennedy. sandra day o'connor used to be the swing vote. she's been replaced with alito. kennedy is the swing vote. unless and until kennedy retires is and replaced either by obama or a republican, it's likely to stay that we. >> -- that way. >> you haven't had any recent decisions that have been a surprise? >> i think there are always surprises. because i think there are people like scalia and thomas who while conservative tend to be free speech and first amendment oriented. sometimes on privacy issues and things like that, they may go in

a more -- for lack of a better term libertarian as the other direction. i tend to think, as i said, it's a 4-4 court with a swing vote. we've go