Chess Story (Zweig)

"I think it better to conclude in good time and in erect bearing a life in which intellectual labour meant the purest joy and personal freedom the highest good on Earth."

These are the words Stefan Zweig left to explain the double suicide of himself and his wife in 1942. With the rise of Nazism, Zweig fled Austria but could not escape the fear that there was a brute, ignorant force mowing down much of the groundwork laid for the intellect during the late 19th and early 20th century. Unfortunately, though his words were a direct comment on the Nazi threat they have not ceased to be relevant as we see the Market constantly diminishing the role of such "intellectual labor" in society. A perfect example of this is the lack of Zweig in most, if not all, American bookstores. Like Mishima, when they do have him at all it is usually only one book, though he wrote many. Also, never once in all the literature classes I took throughout college did I even hear his name mentioned which is even more disappointing.

Chess Story is the first Zweig I've read after only having heard about him accidentally, as well as recently, but despite its short length it is incredibly salient both in prose and in its concepts. Simply enough, the narrator finds himself on board a cruise bound for Buenos Aires along with an unimaginative man-child who, as it turns out, is the reigning world Chess champion. The developments are deceptively simple, I suppose much like any number of openings for chess (if you want to carry out that metaphor), but his prose carries each character quite strikingly. From Czentovic, the artless Chess whiz, to Dr. B, an escaped prisoner of the Gestapo who learned Chess abstractly and purely by accident. This is very much a novella which does not look as good in synopsis as it does in its entirety, so I won't do it the injustice of boiling everything down to broad strokes, when it already stands so well on its own. Its a thoroughly good book.

The question of why Zweig is so completely unacknowledged in America is an odd one to me. Most of the authors who I begrudge the obscurity of are also difficult, myopic reads, but Zweig is clear, less demented, and very readable for anyone who actually enjoys books...and yet he goes unread. The one silver lining is the press company itself--the New York Review Books--which also put out an English edition of Ernst Junger's book The Glass Bees (which I've seen, along with Chess Story, on many Best Literature of the 20th Century lists). Thankfully there is at least a few small presses still taking chances on good books that don't already have a dollar sign attached to them here. Pushkin Press is another one of the good ones.

Gotta end on a positive jam.