BOOK REVIEW by Carl Portman
Fifty shades of Ray
by Raymond D. Keene O.B.E. GM
Raymond D. Keene
Foreword by CJ de Mooi
Pages: 302
Published by: Hardinge Simpole
2021 Print on demand (Hardcover and softcover)
What is this book about?
The
official synopsis:
Inspired by both Daniel Defoe's 'A Journal
of the Plague Year' (1722) and 'The King', an anthology of the witty and
provocative chess columns of the Dutch Grandmaster, Jan Hein Donner, Ray Keene
here collects his thoughts and writings on the year 2020 - both in chess and
the wider world. His reflections include the impact of Covid-19 on the
popularity of chess, the remarkable influence of the Netflix series 'The
Queen's Gambit', the growing army of teenage Grandmasters, the online pivot of
chess competition and the emergence of chess entrepreneurs, such as World
Champion Magnus Carlsen and Grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura.
Like Donner, Ray uses chess as a metaphor
for observations on art, culture and civilization. Grandmaster Ray Keene OBE
has enjoyed a career which spans many aspects of chess, including numerous
victories in international competitions across five continents, organisation of
three world chess championships involving Garry Kasparov, creation of the first
ever world championship in any Mind Sport between a human and a computer (Dr
Marion Tinsley v Chinook in draughts, London 1992) and the world record
authorship of 204 books on Mind Sports, thinking and genius, with translations
into sixteen different languages.
Contents
·
Foreword
·
Fifty
chapters (essentially fifty articles)
·
First
Publication notes
·
About
the author
·
Principle
chess results of Raymond D. Keene, OBE
My thoughts and comments
I
am going to caveat this at once by saying that I know the author and consider
him a friend. This fact does not in any way compromise my own integrity or
ability to write this review objectively.
It is fair to say that Ray Keene is to
chess (in terms of personality) what ‘The Crafty Cockney’ was to darts. That is
to say, everyone has an opinion about him. However, this isn’t about the
author; it is about the book. Essentially these are the articles written by
Keene mostly in 2020 for ‘The Article’ which is an online platform to encourage
the healthy exchange of ideas, without abuse or extremism.
It is worth having a look for yourself,
here:
Some articles were also written for the
British Chess Magazine.
From the fifty chapters (Shades) I will
select just a couple that I enjoyed. Let me begin with Chapter 5 ‘The legacy of
Henry Thomas Buckle’ who won the first recorded tournament at
Simpson’s-in-the-Strand in 1849.
He was a historian who commented that ‘Men
and women range themselves into three classes or orders of intelligence; you
can tell the lowest class by their habit of always talking about persons; the
next by the fact that their habit is always to talk about things; the highest
by their preference for the discussion of ideas.’
Keene wrote about ‘Chess in the Year of the
Coronavirus’ comparing in a way to medieval pestilence. I chuckled when I read
that ‘The returning Knight discovers a blasted realm, villages deserted, so
called witches burned in pointless expiation, propitiatory self-flagellation ignored
by and unresponsive cosmos, and meanwhile, figuratively, the Devil is dancing
wildly on the beach.’ It sounded like a Saturday evening in Bicester, but there
you go.
It is this same chapter that contained my
favourite prose in the book. Keene’s description of the smoking habits of Hein
Donner had me literally belly laughing. In a tournament at Manchester Town Hall
in 1973, Donner as usual lit one new cigarette with the embers of the old one
and ‘a vast pile of half burnt cigarettes’ built up in the ashtray at the
board. Soon this ash increased so much that ‘it began to emit smoke itself,
then burst into flames. There was now literally fire on board. The two players
seemed transfixed, horrified and unable to react to this crisis.’ Luckily Mr.
Keene knew instinctively what to do and he explains what happened next in graphic
style.
I had to consult the dictionary several
times. Keene’s command and mastery of the English language is evident, and some
of the words he uses would be extremely fruitful on a Scrabble board. Some of
his musings are above my comprehension, but that it not the author’s fault it
is mine. I did not go to college or university – I began work at age 16 when I
left school – and I am still catching up decades later. I have though always
enjoyed words, so ‘bucolic, abstruse and inimical’ are a pleasure. We use so
little of our wonderful vocabulary in everyday life’ and I sometimes feel
disillusioned having to dumb-down language. This is a treat then.
I cannot finish without mentioning Chapter
30 which is entitled ‘A modest proposal: let them eat cake’ in which the author
talks about chess in prisons. Heck, I even get a mention for my own work in
this area. He muses about his ideas for reducing recidivism, and they don’t tally
with anything I have ever worked on – yet his tongue in cheek solution is quite
brilliant in its conception and might just work! You will have to read this for
yourself but it involves feeding prisoners great helpings of
‘cholesterol-forming, high calorie cream cakes.’ Why? Well, I cannot give the
game away here, can I?
Suffice to say it is an idea of such
cunning that I have arrived at the ineluctable conclusion that it just might
work. I cannot wait to share his idea (if not the cake) with prisoners on my
next prison visits.
Chess games
There are plenty of games contained within
the pages of the book, some world famous. These include Alekhine, Capablanca,
Lasker, Fischer, Spassky, Carlsen, Miles, Petrosian, Keene himself and many
more. Let it not be forgotten that the author actually beat the mighty Botvinnik
(at Hastings), and is the only Englishman to do so alongside C.H.O.D. Alexander
and Sir George Thomas. He knows his way around a chessboard.
I do think it is worth seeing how that game
ended. Here is the position (below) with Botvinnik, as Black to play.
Here, Botvinnik selected 34…Rxe2??
This is a massive blunder from a world-class
player, but can you see why?
White played 35.Qg4+ picking up a rook and
Botvinnik ‘gasped’ raised his hand to his forehead and resigned.’
Other chapters, including the wonderfully
titled ‘Bats, balls and rabbits’ and ‘What the thunder said’ weave aspects of
life and other people into the world of chess. There is also a chapter asking
‘Why are women better at memory sports than men but (still) not at chess?’
There are some issues that I would like to
point out. The page numbers in the ‘contents’ do not correlate to the actual
page numbers from Chapter 36 onward.
Also, this first edition contained a number of typos
which I identified and communicated to a grateful author. These typos have now
been eliminated, so the second edition, already available (it is print on
demand so any typos can be corrected immediately) should be happily typo free.
These are facts. Now for my opinions.
I read a rather embittered review on Amazon
where someone commented that the book was pseudo-intellectual waffle. That is
their inalienable right but hold on a moment. It is true that the book is
weighty, intellectually speaking but also engaging, and I found it to be
thought-provoking, which I am sure is precisely what the author has in mind
when he writes the material. It is a chess cri de cœur at a time when
people were confined to barracks as a result of some terrible Pandemic.
I note that the esteemed Dutch Grandmaster
Jan Timman has written a piece about the book in the magazine ‘New in Chess’
(2021#5) and in his opinion he enjoyed it saying about Keene ‘he has a great
knack of putting a lively perspective on events.’
I do have one personal opinion that I do
feel bound to mention. I just cannot bring myself to embrace the cover. I get
it. It’s grey (fifty shades) but it seems too basic for a man of Ray Keene’s
standing in my view. It just looks it was put together in haste, and it does
not jump off the shelf. I am sorry, but there we are. Luckily, we would do well
not to judge a book by its cover.
Does the book achieve its aim?
Well, what is the aim of the book?
You would have to ask the author. It is a collection of fifty columns written
for ‘The Article’ and British Chess Magazine and in that respect, it stands on
its own for what it is.
One does not have to agree with an author
on every point. The idea is to listen to someone else’s views and add them to
your own ‘thought pool’ and see what happens. There is an old saying. What
is written without effort is generally read without pleasure. I can sense
the joy that Keene had in writing these columns, and he obviously invested a
tremendous amount of effort and time into producing them. I for one am pleased
that he published this, and I would go as far as to say that I would like to
see a book II when he has another fifty to share with us, perhaps with a
different cover!
I will close with the words of Omar
Khayyam, which are mentioned in the book:
‘Tis all a chequer
board of nights and days
Where Destiny with men
for pieces plays.’
Who is the author?
Raymond Keene OBE Chess Grandmaster, author,
organiser and chess columnist (and certainly much more!).
