Accounts of significant chess experiences lightly salted with self-regard and sometimes peppered with platitude.
A former British Chess Champion (2004-2006) considers the connections between chess and life—and finds many.
Rowson (Chess for Zebras, 2005, etc.), who now plays only occasionally, delivers a narrative sometimes thickened with quotations and allusions, both from literary and intellectual figures (Aldous Huxley, Joseph Campbell, Emerson, Dylan Thomas) and from popular culture (The Velveteen Rabbit, The Wire, Groundhog Day). His text is a somewhat motley mix of memoir and self-help. We learn about his boyhood beginnings with chess and various games (good, bad, and ugly), his marriage and son, and his decision to return to school to get his doctorate. Rowson divides his chapters (more than 60) into subheadings that bear such titles as “Ceasing Hostilities,” “How to Give Praise,” “The Politics of Puppets and Muppets,” and “Race Is Not Black and White.” His advice ranges from trenchant to amusing—e.g., a wonderful section about applying chess strategy to changing an infant’s diapers. The author also offers bons mots (“chess players are like sniffer dogs”), some of which could appear in just about any self-help text (“We are more like glass tables than we typically imagine. Mostly we are solid, but we can and do crack up”). Along the way, Rowson deals with politics, religion, mistakes, artificial intelligence, and the traits that champions possess, among many other weighty matters. Perhaps the most affecting—and modest—moments are when he writes about accepting your status and about decline and death. “I am probably Scotland’s strongest-ever player, but with all due respect to fellow Scots, in chess terms that is a bit like being the highest mountain in Kansas,” he writes of his career. “I never threatened to be the very best British player, and I was never world class.”
Accounts of significant chess experiences lightly salted with self-regard and sometimes peppered with platitude.Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-63557-332-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.
A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.
“As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. In passing out, I died. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books (Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. Writing in a variety of modes—memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction—the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. “Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-25093-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.
A lightweight collection of self-help snippets from the bestselling author.
What makes a quote a quote? Does it have to be quoted by someone other than the original author? Apparently not, if we take Strayed’s collection of truisms as an example. The well-known memoirist (Wild), novelist (Torch), and radio-show host (“Dear Sugar”) pulls lines from her previous pages and delivers them one at a time in this small, gift-sized book. No excerpt exceeds one page in length, and some are only one line long. Strayed doesn’t reference the books she’s drawing from, so the quotes stand without context and are strung together without apparent attention to structure or narrative flow. Thus, we move back and forth from first-person tales from the Pacific Crest Trail to conversational tidbits to meditations on grief. Some are astoundingly simple, such as Strayed’s declaration that “Love is the feeling we have for those we care deeply about and hold in high regard.” Others call on the author’s unique observations—people who regret what they haven’t done, she writes, end up “mingy, addled, shrink-wrapped versions” of themselves—and offer a reward for wading through obvious advice like “Trust your gut.” Other quotes sound familiar—not necessarily because you’ve read Strayed’s other work, but likely due to the influence of other authors on her writing. When she writes about blooming into your own authenticity, for instance, one is immediately reminded of Anaïs Nin: "And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” Strayed’s true blossoming happens in her longer works; while this collection might brighten someone’s day—and is sure to sell plenty of copies during the holidays—it’s no substitute for the real thing.
These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-101-946909
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2015
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