CORRESPONDENCE CHESS AND LOVEMAKING.
CORRESPONDENCE CHESS AND LOVEMAKING. I posted a few days ago that my first reaction to Judith Thurman’s opinion that “A monthlong game of Scrabble…is about as appealing as a monthlong sex act” was that people have always enjoyed playing correspondence chess even though it can take much longer than a month. Shortly thereafter in the January 23 Times Literary Supplement I came across the following quote from Bernard-Henri Levy about games of correspondence chess: “‘I loved them in the same way I believe [Marcel] Duchamp conceived of them: less as a competition than a joint invention or production; a labor of the mind, with questions, answers, thwarted passion, twists, light that is either shared or concealed, virtuosity, deception.’”