During Christmas of 2003, I received an intriguing gift: a newly released book titled The Chess Artist: Genius, Obsession, and the World’s Oldest Game by J.C. Hallman.
The book -- a travelogue about Hallman’s chess-centric adventures with friend and chess master, Glenn Umstead -- exhilarated me. As a self-described chess fiend, I devoured the tome in five days. For chess enthusiasts, The Chess Artist is not unlike crack cocaine for narcotics enthusiasts: completely addictive.
Hallman’s recollections of traveling to Kalmykia, Russia, headquarters of the World Chess Federation, and interviewing the eccentric (and, some would say, felonious) president, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, are at the heart of The Chess Artist. Ilyumzhinov’s idea of chess as religion piqued Hallman’s interest, and the book elaborates on that idea through the lens of Hallman and Umstead’s intrepid -- and often hilarious -- escapades.
In 2006, Hallman published his second book, The Devil Is a Gentleman. While The Chess Artist takes an in-depth look at people who play chess religiously, The Devil Is a Gentleman examines those who practice certain fringe religions ... religiously.
After his second published volume, Hallman has established himself as an eminent chess historian and religious commentator. Since chess and religion (especially of the Christian flavor) are two popular topics around Thinklings, I thought I’d seek out Hallman for an interview. Thankfully, Hallman graciously consented:
You're a seasoned author now with two published books to your credit, and, undoubtedly, a growing fan base. (I even saw a guy once on the Internet Chess Club with a unique handle, something like: JCHallmanFan.) How has your life changed since the release of your first book, The Chess Artist, in 2003?
Hallman: Funny that you should mention JCHallmanFan. Glenn, the central character from The Chess Artist, brought that guy to my attention a while back. I dropped JCHallmanFan a note of thanks, and we had a nice correspondence. Nice guy.
As I describe in the book, Glenn and I were both working as casino dealers when the events of The Chess Artist began. There was something wildly speculative to the idea that we would drop everything to play chess in prison, or rush off to Russia and interview the president of a tiny empire. I think the best kind of writing comes from uncertainty like that--where you just throw yourself in without knowing whether it will work at all. Since that book, things have gotten a little easier for me (I've moved into teaching instead of dealing, for example), but I still try to find ways to get back to that original energy.
Do you still keep in touch with Glenn? What's your relationship with him like these days?
Hallman: Glenn and I are still friends, and our relationship is still just as cantankerous and fun as I hope it came across in the book. We don't live in the same town anymore, but sometimes he sends me his results from tournaments. This August, Chess Life is going to print an excerpt from the book that wound up on the cutting room floor--Glenn describing a strong game he played against a grandmaster. It made a nice scene, but I had to cut it. Glenn is still a casino dealer.
When you and Glenn traveled to Chess City in Kalmykia, you were investigating Kirsan Ilyumzhinov's notion of chess as a religion. In hindsight, what was the final analysis of that inquiry? Has Ilyumzhinov succeeded in his attempt to make Chess City into a Mecca of sorts?
Hallman: I don't think Ilyumzhinov succeeded--at least not in the sense of making Chess City a Mecca. It's a hub of chess activity, sure, but that was achieved more by fiat or decree than by collective will. So the vision has fallen a little short--and I'm sure we're all glad about that. Nevertheless chess is (and was long before Ilyumzhinov stumbled along) a discipline that for some takes on a kind of religious dimension. Not in that they believe in chess gods or any such nonsense, but in that for some it is a somewhat ritualized activity that offers shape, structure, and meaning.
Both of your published books -- The Chess Artist and The Devil Is a Gentleman -- have a religious theme to them. What's your concept of religion in the world? Did you grow up in a religious environment?
Hallman: I started out Catholic but rejected it very early. Like when I was ten. As to my conception of religion in the world, it's something I articulated more in the second book, in which I explored a variety of religious movements, taking along with me the thinking of William James as a kind of guiding spirit. What I came up with, in terms of the big picture of religion, is that consciousness, human consciousness, comes with a significant attendant cosmological curiosity. That is, when we become conscious as people, we begin to get curious about big questions: why am I here, what is the nature of the universe, and so forth. All this is another way of saying that the side effect of sentience is a god-shaped hole in our psyches. Now that's Sartre (I think), but what James might add to it is that failing to satisfy that curiosity can result in a kind of profound sadness, even the tendency to reject life. So people are hardwired to find some set of answers that satisfies that cosmological curiosity. Fills the god-shaped hole. Very often that set of answers is God, but it can just as well be science's version of creation, the Big Bang (which some string theorists describe as quaint, it's so out of date), or organized Atheism, or Christianity, or Satanism, or chess, or literature, or whatever else satisfies you in terms of your personal quandary about the basic questions and mysteries of life. This is basically what we mean when we turn religion into an adverb and note that someone pursues whatever they pursue "religiously."
Since the very core of our conscious existence has a "God shaped hole," people will fill that hole with some sort of ritualistic belief system, correct? In that way, even atheism becomes a faith?
Hallman: Well, faith and religion are different things, both pretty tricky to define. And "ritualistic" is tricky, too: some religions (like Protestant Christianity) at least endeavor to shy away from ritual, and even secular government has ritual in the form of ceremonies, graduations, inaugurations, and whatnot. For my money, the simplest definition is that consciousness comes with curiosity, and however you address that curiosity, even if to reject it, is your religion. It's not terribly concrete, I admit, but at least it's inclusive in ways that many definitions are not.
Does humanity need religion then (or religious experience) to scratch the curiosity-itch?
Hallman: It's not so much that humanity "needs" religion, as that having a religion can't be avoided, as I'm defining it. This is Jamesian in that if you accept that definition you're well on your way to celebrating the world's basic variety. And that's good. Religions, now, whatever they are, suffer from exclusivity--believe this, they say, or you're damned (Christians) or you're ignorant (Atheists). But if you define religion as the satisfaction of basic curiosities, then compassion for a religion you don't share becomes possible. Pluralism can be celebrated rather than just tolerated. Incidentally, I think this explains why it's possible to find sympathy for both Glenn, the chess player in The Chess Artist, and for many of the people in The Devil is a Gentleman. The link between the two books is, I hope, something fundamentally human.
What is it about chess, above all other games, that elevates it to the status of a religion among its devotees? Does Glenn concede that chess is a religion for him?
Hallman: I think Glenn would allow that chess, for him, is a discipline, and perhaps even has something monastic to it, but I think he'd shy away from doing what Ilyumzhinov did, and labeling it a religion. The only thing that truly distinguishes chess from other games (except checkers) is that it has no luck component. But this might answer the question. Because it has no luck, a game of chess is a naked expression of self. You project yourself into a game, and thus the stakes on the outcome are very high. So chess becomes unforgivingly introspective in a way other games are not, and I wouldn't be surprised at all if this alone helped explain why the attraction to it can sometimes slip into the fanatical.
Interestingly, the chess/religion connection has a new addition in literature: Michael Chabon's recently-released novel The Yiddish Policemen's Union. I'm about halfway through it, so I can't spoil it for anyone, but it's already the best chess-related murder mystery I've come across. The victim, we learn in the first line of the book, goes by "Emanuel Lasker" (a name of a former chess world champion), and, we soon learn, was both a chess and spiritual prodigy. Great book.
In The Chess Artist you mentioned that, initially, you were not drawn to chess; the notion of a game that had no element of chance didn't sit too well with you.
Hallman: Yes, it didn't seem properly "play-like" to me at first, which was a notion that Johan Huizinga's seminal study of play in culture, Homo Ludens, disabused me of pretty quickly. It turns out play is serious business, and that many games can trace their roots to religious rites or rituals. It's something I considered again in The Devil is a Gentleman, in looking at the history of wrestling--which, incidentally, is sometimes called "body chess."
Tell me about The Devil Is a Gentleman. What's the central theme? How did you come up with the title?
Hallman: It's kind of a revisitation of the basic thinking of William James in The Varieties of Religious Experience. I go to a bunch of modern religious movements (Druids, Satanists, Atheists, Christian Wrestlers, etc.), experience whatever rites or observances they might have, and attempt to divine from them the lingering effects of James's thought today. It includes a good deal of biographical material on James. The title is simply one of the catchier chapter titles, a quote that has been attributed to Shelley, Shakespeare, G.K. Chesterton, and others. James used it once, and I latched onto that.
How did you approach that with your subjects? Did you tell them you were a writer from the start?
Hallman: In most cases, I simply called them up, told them I was a writer, and asked if I could visit. Generally, this caused no problems at all. Indeed, some saw me as an opportunity (in a couple cases, divinely-sent) to spread their word. There was one exception: Scientology. Scientology has a long history of antagonism toward those who write about them, so I doubted they would be cooperative. My solution was to just join. I went out to L.A., took an introductory class, dabbled in their therapy (auditing), and attended the L. Ron Hubbard Birthday Celebration.
Which of the groups surprised you the most, and why?
Hallman: The UFO group I visited surprised me a little ... they all just seemed like normal people. I guess I expected them to be weirder. Of course all religions look pretty weird if the beliefs are antithetical to your own, but I didn't quite anticipate that then. I was surprised a bit by Wicca, too. It was less literal, and more intellectual, than I thought it would be when I started.
So what are you working on next?
Hallman: I might be trying to collect some stories, some old, some new. We'll see. But I did recently sell another book, this about modern utopian movements. This is another theme I come back to a lot. Ilyumzhinov's "Chess City" is certainly a failed utopia of a kind. But this time around, I'm making sure the movements are strictly secular. Who knows what it means, but it's the secular movements that seem to have the hardest time getting off the ground.
