All of which isn't to imply that this book was not for me, nor is it for chess aficionados only, it really isn't. It's partly a biographical memoir, partly a meditation on the psychology and experience of playing chess, and partly philosophical reflections and ruminations on how his life and chess through rubbing up against each other, have transformed his view of himself, life and reality in general.
There are few small fry subject matters here, yet it paradoxically remains easily relatable and applicable nonetheless. This is largely Rowson, who is a very able communicator of ideas, and is willing to be both clear and straightforwardly honest about his own experience, relative strengths and failings. Not simply as a chess player, but as a human being. All of this running counter to the clichéd notions of chess players as aloof, nerdy, unearthly beings, whose lives operate on an entirely different level to the rest of us. We'll, they sort of do, yet they don't.
On one level what The Moves That Matter demonstrates is how chess players have sensitivities, feelings, psychological hang ups, lack self esteem and confidence, as much as the rest of us. They have just systematically developed their one love and their expertise in the game of chess, to a mastery of it's strategy.
One thing I found most notable is how Rowson describes the state of contemporary chess competition, with widespread use of computers in the analysis and development of a chess players strategy. Since a computer programme Deep Blue beat the then world champion Gary Kasparov in 1997, the advance in the use of them in the world of chess has been inexorable. It has, in some ways, changed the game of chess. Becoming less about two players pitting their own mental capabilities and failings against that of their opponent, and more about the relative strengths of their chess programmes.
Rowson has a plenty to comment on, with regard to the benefits and dangers of algorithms, that are now such a pertinent part of all our lives. His decision to move away from the chess world and to develop another style of life all together, was a mixture of recognising his limitations, his age, his weariness with the peripatetic world of chess, the single minded devotion it requires and unease at where the world of international chess was heading.
All of which explains, to a degree, why he took a different tack, into the world of social and cultural philosophy. Applying his single minded devotion to that. Rowson either out grew chess or chess out grew him
In a few short chapters towards the end of the book he probes into the nature of beauty, as he saw it through the playing of chess. These were, for me. the most thought provoking sections of the entire book. Even though I found it difficult to comprehend, how any sense of inherent or transcendent beauty might be found within a game of chess. I can see, theoretically at least, that in the absorption of the moment and the delicate intricacy of the moves, a sense for their beauty might arise. Though I have few things to correlate my own experience with the beauty of a game of chess, even though I am sure this state might exists for some.
Jonathan Rowson is currently a co-founder and director of Perspectiva, a publisher and a community thinkers and practitioners researching the current Meta Crisis, and the role interactions of systems, soul and society could play in finding solutions to that. Having first come across him through this work, I found The Moves That Matter instructive in understanding how and why this particular interest has blossomed in him.
CARROT REVIEW - 5/8
The Moves That Matter, by Jonathan Rowson
Published by Bloomsbury Publishing. 2019.
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