AOrlando Evening Star Orlando, Florida Monday, July 10, 1972 - Page 12
'Pass The Check, Mate' -- A 100 Proof Spoof, Star Satire, by Emmett Peter
On the very eve of the so-called world chess championship in Iceland, it can be revealed there is no such person as Bobby Fischer.
The “eccentric” young American chess master and all the circumstances of the challenge and match are figments of the imagination of an eccentric, reclusive American writer.
The practical jokester, Clifford Irving, accepted the challenge of creating a bogus person and foisting him on the world through carefully manipulated press releases.
TO GIVE “FISCHER” verisimilitude, Irving characterized him as a boorish, inarticulate New Yorker who had learned the game in a Greenwich Village chess den and then, in rude language, hurled challenges at the “acknowledged masters,” themselves having been invented as part of the hoax.
This in itself caused some difficulty. Who were to be the foreign masters? At first Irving decided on an inscrutable Chinese chess player with a Charlie Chan smile who always carried two books, the bylaws of the International Chess Federation and the poems of Ho Chi Minh, and who quoted unceasingly from both.
Every detail had been worked out including Kim Hsi-fong's nervous giggle and bad breath. But his nationality had to be changed when it was learned that the “chessmaster of Chunking province” had a name similar to one of the Chinese-American detectives on the TV program, Hawaii Five-O.
THE CHANGE suited Irving's purpose because, as it happened, the Soviet Union was grabbing more headlines than China at the time of the great chess championship buildup.
Accordingly the champion to be challenged by “Bobby” became a citizen of Russia. A day of deliberation and a night of tossing in bed was necessary before a credible name presented itself to Irving. What's more Bolshevik than Spassky? And of course the first name had to be Boris. As Russian as vodka and Volga River water — and perfect for a “heavy”.
The fictional chess adversaries began to take shape — but where was the match to be held? Obviously not in New York, where suspicious journalists would smell the red herring. It happened that Irving had come down with a mild case of the flu and was having chills when he thought of Iceland, a small country north of Scandinavia. ([And matter of FACT, an “Anti-American” underbelly is well documented since 1951. Reporters cite a 10% Soviet population in Iceland spreading Anti-American hubris. Icelandic government had secret agreement with U.S. Government forbidding blacks to serve at Keflavik NATO base. Fischer's mentor/guest Archie Waters reports being the ONLY black man at or anywhere near the Sports Arena during the match! Anti-Americanism is "why" Soviet Union chose the hostile racist haven for the match, to demoralize the American challenger, Bobby Fischer.])
TO CARRY OUT the fiction of a chess match in Reykjavik, the capital city, Irving called on a billionaire friend who owed him a favor. He raised the needed funds and sent his attractive, statuesque, German-born, Swiss citizen wife Edith, 35, to negotiate the purchase of Iceland, including all its electronic broadcast facilities.
So whatever “news” the world has been hearing from Iceland, or will receive about the “chess match” starting today, is precisely what Irving and his curvy, amiable wife and mother of two want the world to hear.
Recent news stories have it that Irving is under prison sentence for forging a biography of industrialist Howard Hughes. This, too, is a stunt to publicize Irving's forthcoming biography, “John and Martha: An American Hangup,” a work reportedly subsidized by the Bell System and ITT.
A TRUSTED AIDE to Irving has confided that the prankster's elaborate chess hoax is running into unforeseen financial difficulties. It seems that buying Iceland was one thing and running it is quite another. The country has a devastating annual deficit and Icelanders are pestering Irving for more welfare payments. (A group of clandestine Icelanders has been conniving for years to become the 51st American state and 39 of them are already demanding delegate seats at the Democratic National Convention in Miami Beach.)
However, when Iceland has served its nefarious purpose, Irving plans to offer it as a tax-deductible gift to the King of Denmark, with the suggestion that the country be incorporated into the Danish kingdom as a partner nation sharing the throne.
THE QUESTION, meanwhile is who will win the “chess match.” Irving's aide shrugged. “Cliff wants headlines so it'll be nip and tuck,” he said. “Only Irving knows how it'll come out — he and his smiling, svelte, stylish wife and mother of two, Edith.”
And what purpose is to be served by the chicanery? “Cliff doesn't care who gets rooked — he's just interested in the check, mate.” After making that deplorable pun the aide laughed raucously, disappeared through a side door of the bar and escaped into an alley.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Emmett Peter is usually one of our reliable writers and we've been a little worried about him during the heat wave. We feel compelled to point out that the foregoing is a 100-proof spoof with no word of truth in it.
'Pass The Check, Mate' -- A 100 Proof Spoof 10 Jul 1972, Mon Orlando Evening Star (Orlando, Florida) Newspapers.com
'Pass The Check, Mate' -- A 100 Proof Spoof 10 Jul 1972, Mon Orlando Evening Star (Orlando, Florida) Newspapers.com
