
The Queen’s Gambit
by Walter Tevis
It was the spring of 1983. On a long plane trip, Butler started
reading "The Queen’s Gambit." The author was Walter
Tevis, who had also written "The Man Who Fell to Earth"
and "The Hustler" (and who would later write "The
Color of Money"). Butler had read none of those books. Nor
had he seen the movies made from them. He just had a hunch.
Butler was never smarter than when, on impulse, he bought "Queen’s
Gambit" for plane reading. Because this is a novel that, very
simply, cannot be put down. The woman who would become Butler’s
first wife tried to make conversation; Butler shushed her. A meal
came; Butler pushed it aside. All he could do was read, straight
to the end --- weeping, cheering, punching the air.
Butler got off the plane and optioned the film rights to "Queen’s
Gambit," and was soon at work on the greatest script he will
probably ever undertake. Every young actress wanted to star in it,
a half dozen “hot” directors wanted to direct it. Then
the parade moved on. Butler couldn't afford to keep the option.
Walter Tevis died. His widow, needing money, sold the movie rights
to people who will never get the film made. The book went out of
print.
Two decades later, it's available again --- there is, at long last,
a paperback edition.
What's the fuss about? An eight-year-old orphan named Beth Harmon.
Who turns out to be the Mozart of chess. Which brings her joy (she
wins! people notice her!) and misery (she's alone and unloved and
incapable of asking for help). So she gets addicted to pills. She
drinks. She loses. And then, as 17-year-old Beth starts pulling
herself together, she must face the biggest challenge of all ---
a match with the world champion, a Russian of scary brilliance.
You think: This is thrilling? You think: chess? You think: Must
be an "arty" novel, full of interior scenes.
Wrong. All wrong. "The Queen’s Gambit" is "Rocky"
for smart people.
But here is the catch. Although this is a very adult book --- what
is more grown up than the realization that we cannot really succeed
in life, no matter how “gifted” we may be, if we are
alone and unloved? --- it is so artlessly written it seems almost
to have no style. This is the dream novel: 100% story.
Here, for example, is Beth, freshly orphaned, breaking through
her shyness to confront the silent giant of a custodian who spends
his days playing solitary chess in the orphanage’s furnace
room:
”Will you teach me?"
Mr. Shaibel said nothing, did not even register the question with
a movement of his head. Distant voices from above were singing "Bringing
in the Sheaves."
She waited for several minutes. Her voice almost broke with the
effort of her words, but she pushed them out, anyway: "I want
to learn to play chess."
Mr. Shaibel reached out a fat hand to one of the larger black pieces,
picked it up deftly by its head and set it down on a square at the
other side of the board. He brought the hand back and folded his
arms across his chest. He still did not look at Beth. "I don't
play strangers."
The flat voice had the effect of a slap in the face. Beth turned
and left, walking upstairs with the bad taste in her mouth.
"I'm not a stranger," she said to him two days later.
"I live here." Behind her head a small moth circled the
bare bulb, and its pale shadow crossed the board at regular intervals.
"You can teach me. I already know some of it, from watching."
"Girls don't play chess." Mr. Shaibel's voice was flat.
She steeled herself and took a step closer, pointing at, but not
touching, one of the cylindrical pieces that she had already labeled
a cannon in her imagination. "This one moves up and down or
back and forth. All the way, if there's space to move in.
Mr. Shaibel was silent for a while. Then he pointed at the one
with what looked like a slashed lemon on top. "And this one?"
Her heart leapt. "On the diagonals."
See? You don’t need to know anything about chess. Tevis was
a storyteller whose genius was to tell great stories; there's nothing
between you and the people.
Butler believes that you will care about Beth Harmon more than
any fictional character you've encountered in years and years. Butler
promises that you will grasp the wrench of loneliness --- and the
power of love --- as if this book were happening to you. And Butler
hopes, for the sake of your soul, that you too will weep, and cheer,
and, at the end, raise your fist like a fool for a little girl who
never existed and a game only wimps play.
--- by Jesse Kornbluth, for HeadButler.com
To order "The Queen’s Gambit" from Amazon.com,
click
here.
Copyright 2004 by Head Butler Inc.
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