Chess Match (35)
By:
January 16, 2013
“I sought devices to enable me mechanically to abide my waking hours…. By sheer visualization under my eyelids I constructed chess-boards and played both sides of long games through to checkmate. But when I had become expert at this visualized game of memory the exercise palled on me. Exercise it was, for there could be no real contest when the same player played both sides. I tried, and tried vainly, to split my personality into two personalities and to pit one against the other. But ever I remained the one player, with no planned ruse or strategy on one side that the other side did not immediately apprehend.” — Jack London, The Star Rover (1915)
Thirty-fifth in an occasional series.