New York Times, New York, New York, Tuesday, September 16, 1958
Bobby Fischer, Chess Hero, Back To Realities of Brooklyn Home
International Master Finds He's Just an Unusual Boy of 15 in His Own City
By Emma Harrison
Bobby Fischer came home to Brooklyn yesterday, a hero abroad.
Here, he is a hero only among chess players. They know that to have gone at 15 years old to the Candidates Chess Tournament in Portoroz, Yugoslavia, as United States Champion and returned as an international grand master is remarkable.
Bobby flew in from Brussels yesterday morning to the delight and surprise of his mother, Mrs. Regina Fischer. She had began to doubt he had money to come from anywhere. Prize money as the fifth-place tournament winner made the difference, Bobby reported. He won his original fare on a television program.
With his mother, sister Joan, and a friend, Bobby arrived at his home at 560 Lincoln Place at 12:13 P.M. By 12:33 he was playing chess.
It took that long because he had to read his mail, stumble up three flights of stairs and unwrap a new chess set.
But he soon had Norman Monath, his opponent, beaten. Mr. Monath, a philosophical chap who is an editor at Simon & Shuster and is shepherding Bobby through a book, “Bobby Fischer's Chess,” has found that playing chess is the best way to communicate with Bobby. But this way is not uncomplicated.
While he answered phone calls, hauled out a souvenir scarf and greeted the cat he kept up his play and grudgingly talked.
“Abroad there is much more interest in chess,” he said. “Chess is considered an art; everybody knows about it.” (His showing qualifies him to play in the Challengers Tournament next year to see who will challenged the champion, Mikhail Botvinnik of Russia).
“I had to sign hundreds of autographs. Terrible.” he added.
And then, glancing at Mr. Monath's side of the chess board:
“I think you have an inferior position.”
And to his mother, trying on her new silk scarf:
“That's very Continental.”
“Say, do you know what my name is in Yugoslavia—‘Bow-bee Feesah.’”
Bobby said he learned a “few tricks” and would have to get started on his practice right away. The international players had told him they would beat him, he said. He named a few games he thought he should have lost. Pressed for detail, however, he recanted.
“I lost two games. I should have won all my games,” he said in international grand masterly tones.
