Fischer, Yugoslavia, 1961.

Long before anyone knew that the earth beneath his feet would shake ever more violently with time, chess champion Bobby Fischer seemed like an eccentric winner–though definitely a winner. The paranoid accusations and erratic mood swings, however, weren’t merely gamesmanship or arrogance but harbingers of a serious mental illness that would eventually manifest itself in antisemitism and derangement. The opening of Brad Darrach’s 1971 Life profile, “Bobby Is a Ferocious Winner,” at a time when he was still considered combustible by nature rather than condemned by it:

“Angry voices rattles the door to Bobby Fischer’s hotel room as I raised my hand to knock. ‘Goddamnit, I’m sick of it!’ I heard Bobby shouting. ‘I’m sick of seeing people! I got to work, I got to rest! Why didn’t you ask me before you set up all those appointments? To hell with them!’ Then I heard the mild and dignified executive director of the U.S. Chess Federation addressing the man who may well be the greatest chess player in world history in a tone just slightly lower than a yell: ‘Bobby, ever since we came to Buenos Aires I’ve done nothing but take care of you, day and night. You ungrateful—-!’

It was 3 p.m., a bit early for Fischer to be up. Ten minutes later, finding the hall silent. I risked a knock and Fischer cracked the door. ‘Oh yeah, the guy from Life. Come on in.’ His smile was broad and boyish but his eyes were wary. Tall, wide and flat, with a head too small for his big body, he put me in mind of a pale transhuman sculpture by Henry Moore. I had seen him twice before but never so tired.

Just inside the door I stopped short. The room looked like a terminal moraine of bachelorhood. Bedclothes in tortured piles on the floor. Socks, underwear, bags, newspapers, magazines jumbled on the spare bed. Boxes stacked all over the couch, and on the floor between the beds a single graceful banana peel. The only clean place in the room was a small table by the window, where a set of handsome wooden chessmen had been set up for play. Serenely beautiful, an altar in the debris of battle.”