![]() ![]() “It’s worse than wrong,” growled the outraged old bookseller, slapping the book down and extinguishing the game with a ruthless crack of his queen. ![]() “Why not?” asked the undergraduate, momentarily distracted from his doom. “It’s a great novel,” said the undergraduate, still studying the board in stubborn hope. In due course, the board was a bomb site, the undergraduate was facing what would likely be the only guaranteed mating of his life, and the old emeritus was so upset that his self-possession was slipping just a bit. He kept the game going – the defenestration proceeded apace – but, in the kind of fillip of humiliation in which senior academics once specialized, he also kept turning the pages. That crusty emeritus spotted the title – Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse – snatched it up and began reading. These were invariably college undergraduates, and one of these unfortunates, prior to his defenestration, set his battered paperback on the side of the board. Once upon a time, in the ratty, bustling, pre-Bank of America days of Harvard Square, a wonderfully reserved old Harvard emeritus and former Bonn bookseller used to spend some of his afternoons holding down a public chessboard against all comers. ![]()
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