Chess Story

by Stefan Zweig

He travelled from town to town, always staying in the cheapest hotels, he played in the lowliest clubs (as long as they paid his fee), he let his photo be used in soap commercials and even, without heeding the derision of his rivals, who knew full well that he couldn't string three written sentences together correctly, sold his name for use as the author of “A Philosophy of Chess,” which had in reality been penned by a young Galician student at the behest of an enterprising publishing house. As is the case with all those of a tenacious nature, he lacked any sense of the ridiculous; since winning the world championship he took himself for the most important man in the world, and the awareness that he had beaten all those bright, intellectual, brilliant orators and writers at their own game and, above all, the palpable fact that he earned more than they did, transformed his erstwhile diffidence into a cold pride, displayed for the most part crassly and in public.