says

"Lawson’s Paul Morphy, the Pride and Sorrow of Chess, of which a new edition appeared fairly recently"

The crowd was always crying out for more. Never: "Enough already!" There was no end to it, they wouldn't 'Skip the light fandango', and in spite of him, in his quiet, modest way, trying masterfully to calm the crowds, it always ended with a crowd rendition of a 19th century version of:' A Whiter Shade of Paul'. So far ahead of 'His Time' was he.

Time. No time. Even tramps had time, to play checkers, he had mused, while he, on the other hand, had to accept bejewelled timepieces with one hand, and attend banquets and trophy presentations with the other, and, most of the time, have no time.

In no time at all, the continual invasion of his time, position and very mind, with mere chess problems and tiresome sundry awards, was resulting in a heartily executed pursuit of disenchantment for his overall position.

He had to accept all the diamond-encrusted chessmen and silver goblets, and was beginning to have time trouble, and disinclination for chess, even, for which he was secretly developing an aversion for, culminating in a pact with his mother not to play chess in pubs anymore, oddly, even at odds with himself, not disdainfully even.

<I kind of doubt Hanon Russell would sue himself>

From my own experience with him I'd wager that while he may not actually sue himself, he would most definitely threaten to.

-

<Calli>

<it is an obvious candidate for reissue.>

Maybe all the library pilferers banded toether as a powerful lobbying force preventing the republishing in order to preserve their investment.

-

<Eric Schiller>

While I must admit that I've never read a book by you (despite the fact that I like unusual openings that some of your books cover) or Mr. Keene (though I would like to read his Staunton bio) or Larry Pharr (though I've learned a few things from him via message boards) due to the reason that I just haven't gotten around to it, I can say I don't understand all this acrimony in the chess publishing field.

Russell and Winter don't like Keene and Schiller. Then Winter doesn't like Russell. On the chess messageboards all discussion of chess, particularly chess history, by people of superior intelligence, vast knowledge and wonderful credentiials seems to crumble so quickly into hissy fits, name calling and pathetic attempts at oneupmanship that one can't help but wonder if chess writers are dysfunctional by nature (please, no offense intended- I seldom see any postings by you - or Mr. Keene - on said messageboards).

Winter was best buddies with Hanon, but they had a nasty falling out. Perhaps Hanon pointed out some flaw in a Winter posting, that's an unforgivable offense to the man who delights in pointing out errors by others. Winter threatened to sue my publisher when I corrected an error he made about Koltanowski, a great chess raconteur who is under constant assault from the Winter crowd. Najdorf and Kolty were chess story-tellers, not historians, and their tales are read for entertainment, not as part of a scholarly project.

It would be a better world if people just offered constructive criticism and corrections without the bile, but that's not the way the world works. If Morphy were alive today, he'd probably be criticized for playing too many short games, and attacked on all sorts of political grounds, with gossip about his private life dominating the "newsgroups".

He also had to endure all the unbridled enthusiastic pandemonium, and swooning female admirers, at all his blindfold simul displays. Time after time. The additional burden of the natural ability to play chess better than anybody else in the recorded history of the planet, didn't help, of course...

..only adding to his load, to his cross to bear, and sadly, for all his adversaries, he would have to give every one of them the humiliating odds of the feared: 'one-hand-tied-behind-the-back' odds, adding, to his distaste, of him being led into a feeling of being saliently regretful, with a tinge of pity and embarrassment for his vanquished, but doting opponents.

Similarly, one company not carrying Schiller books is not blacklisting".

A good question! I suspect this "pro forma" practice is followed as a general policy to maintain an image of responsibility (since not everyone will be familiar with all the details of the situation).

(Another possibility: perhaps it's somewhat like a person sitting all alone in a room who sneezes and then says, "Excuse me": there's no need to say it, but the habit is deeply engrained.)

I guess a more legitimate possibility might be that it is done to prevent others from reprinting the excerpt. The whole publication itself is (presumably) under copyright protection, but the force of the explication might be, "hey, just in case you forgot the general copyright protection we enjoy, this specific excerpt has its own independent copyright protection that you should consider."

While this could be the case, I really suspect it is just habitual. Just like putting braille on gas pumps, etc. ("A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines..." [R. W. Emerson]

(Hey Waldo, watch what you say about divines there, buckeroo!)

(I would like to point out that when I quoted myself over on page 6 of the Shredder message board, which may be seen by clicking the *page specific* link

Shredder (Computer)

I did so only with permission. There are *good reasons* I haven't sued myself!)

Ah, habit, that mighty force in the human psyche! I suspect that if we could see a pie chart of the ACTUAL forces at work in human behavior, we would find that habit and temperament each have an enormous slice of the pie, with rationality assigned a tiny sliver.

But it is to be hoped that this will change as we evolve!

(: ♗ Bishop Berkeley ♗ :)

My favorite example from my teenage years:

Like most children of the post-Hitchcock era, I always lock the door when I take a shower, otherwise-empty-house or not!

(: ♗ Bishop Berkeley ♗ :)

(Silly as the practice may be, locking the door to the loo in an otherwise empty house is certainly preferable to leaving the door open in a full house!)

The same day he rewrote bits of his website, maintaining the untruth that we had claimed there had been only one Lasker v Tarrasch match, intensifying his personal attack on us and introducing a fresh charge, equally groundless: now, he added, we were also guilty of ‘sloppiness, poor editing’. To be accused of that by Schiller, of all people, is priceless.>

<My mother observed me engrossed in looking at Alain White's "Sam Loyd and His Chess Problems", and asked me why chess players all seem to have "problems".>

Now... there's a classic!

Thanks.

In my slow and tempo-wasting, pawn-grabbing foray, I believe I invited into the sacrosanct Morphy page the very type of desperado sequencing that has reduced the chess forums elsewhere to unreadable tripe.

Ah, more evidence for that oft-cited connection between genius and madness, I suppose!

(I read a story once, perhaps on one of these message boards, about someone who, as a young person, had seen a book on the shelf in a bookstore titled, "Winning with the Colle System". Though he had no idea what the Colle System was, or even that it had anything to do with Chess or any game, he decided, "Hey, I certainly want to win with the Colle System!!" So he bought the book, and then realized that he had to learn to play Chess first (which, as I recall, he did, and embraced it as a fond hobby: but I don't think he turned out to have much ability with the Colle System :P )

Perhaps you were the one who had this experience? (Oy, my faulty memory!)

(: ♗ Bishop Berkeley ♗ :)

<I'd like to recommend Frisco del Rosario's excellent book on Morphy, aimed at beginners. I don't know if every bit of analysis is computer checked, but Frisco does a great job of presenting the instructive points of the game and has an entertaining writing style. If you are a Morphy fan, you might still discover games you aren't familiar with.>

While I'm neither a beginner nor likely to be surprised anymore with an undiscovered Morphy game, I appreciate the heads-up on Frisco del Rosario whom I never heard of.