Playful Life: Memoirs of Czech-American Chess Grandmaster Lubomír Kaválk Co-Authored By Jan Novák

Novák is signed as a co-author under the book, but perhaps the term editor would be more appropriate. Kaválek sent him already written parts of his own biography, and Novák continued to work on them.

Kaválek was not only a chess player, but also a journalist – he studied journalism in Prague and wrote for several domestic periodicals, after which he emigrated after 1968, worked for the Voice of America and until 2010 contributed regular chess columns to the newspaper Washington Post and the web Huffpost.com. His trust in the literary contribution of Novák, a native of Cologne, who also fled to the USA after the occupation of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact troops, must therefore have been unshakable.

However, he decided on a creative collaboration and made a lucky choice: the book is comprehensive, but informative and straightforward, which corresponds to Novák’s style and, apparently, to Kaválk’s nature. Knowing the complete difference in their styles, Novák could be compared to Orhan Pamuk: at the level of the sentences, both of them are sometimes sloppy, but the direction of the narrative can soon be forgotten and the whole holds together perfectly.

Kaválk’s and Novák’s joint work began in 2015 and has almost 500 pages, but it is still not finished. Nevertheless, the memoirs contain all the turning points, including the peak “hour” of Kaválk’s life and the chess game as such: match for the 1972 World Champion in Reykjavík. At the time, the Czechoslovak émigré, who was recently born here, first worked as a journalist, but he began to help the later winner Bobby Fischer as a second-in-command. They sat together over interrupted games, went bowling, and after Fischer’s win over Boris Spassky, Kaválek interviewed him for the first time.

The victory of the American Grandmaster over the Soviet one was then interpreted as the free West overcoming communism. But when you take a closer look at the actors, the contours blur: the unreliable Fischer believed in conspiracy theories. Although he himself was of Jewish origin, he presented himself as an anti-Semite. Although Boris Spassky had a Soviet flag on the table, he was at odds with the Kremlin and it was only thanks to his benevolence that the match took place at all.

Lubomír Kaválek had all this firsthand. His testimony in the book is more than a behind-the-scenes look at a top chess match, it also reminds us of the strong political positions in the era of the bipolar world.

Kaválek continued to be close to Bobby Fischer, but unfortunately he lost the necessary distance. When, three years later, the American refused to participate in the next championship against Anatoly Karpov, because the challenger and the chess federation did not meet his 64 conditions, Kaválek stood up for Fischer. “He insisted on his absolutist demands. He was right about them, but he tried to force them with an ultimatum,” he writes in the book.

Unfortunately, the reader will no longer learn from it how among these allegedly justified requirements was, for example, the rule that no one may be present in the hall with a head covering. Yes, Fischer became an obviously psychotic personality, and it may have been difficult for his friend Kaválk to admit it.

Kaválek is also done with other matters once or twice. “My grandmother died in July 1964. My grandmother was an excellent seamstress and sewed old suits for me, and suddenly I had to find a tailor because I needed a new suit for the national team,” he writes. Yes, this is how a grandson copes with the death of his grandmother. The quote is not taken out of context: the young man really continues his search for a suitable tailor, saying that “fortunately, he inherited 2,500 crowns from his grandmother”.

Even with his father’s emigration and his early youth spent partly in children’s homes, Kaválek doesn’t get along very well. It just happened, time is running out and the next move needs to be made.

Cover of the book Playful Life. | Photo: Argo publishing house

Lubomír Kaválek was a two-time champion of Czechoslovakia and later a three-time champion of the USA. He briefly entered the top ten of the world’s best players. But because he emigrated, he should have been forgotten at home.

This is clearly illustrated by the mention of the publication Zahrajte si shachy s grandmasters, published in 1975 by two of his peers, Vlastimil Hort and Vlastimil Jansa. Kavalek states in his memoirs that page 31 of this pamphlet had to be reprinted at the last minute because his name appeared there.

Only by looking at the book itself will all the period absurdity emerge: Jansa and Hort have collected 230 of their own games with different opponents, which they discuss at a key moment. Both opponents, the date and place of the match are always listed, only for the game on page 31 the names are suddenly missing, only white plays with black – because one of the actors was the emigrant Kaválek, a person whose name should have been deleted.

Thanks to the work of Jan Novák, that is not happening. The writer’s renaissance-wide creative personality is not afraid to look for strong stories in the field of sports as well. Jan Novák understands this, which is why he played a successful game on this chessboard as well.