THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. Friday, August 16, 2019 |A
Life Is Better
In Chessland
All the Wrong Moves
By Sasha Chapin
(Doubleday, 217 pages, $24.95)BOOKSHELF| By Roger Lowenstein
I
n “The Luzhin Defense,” Vladimir Nabokov’s novel of
chess and madness, the protagonist forsakes ordinary
reality for the private universe of his interior chess-
board. The painter and sculptor Marcel Duchamp not only
forsook art for chess; he spent his honeymoon in a chess
club in Nice, France. His bride glued his pieces to the board
and obtained a divorce. Then there was Boris Spassky, the
Soviet champion who wryly remarked of his doomed
marriage: “We were like bishops of opposite color.”
Sasha Chapin has felt it all—the monomaniacal focus,
the addictive compulsion, the cresting and crashing of
emotion when life is lived on 64 squares. By age 29, Mr.
Chapin had forsaken leisurely afternoons and tender
embraces, survived on junk food, and endured humiliation
at the hands of over-tutored, pimpled and “ectomorphic”
children. He had tried to quit the game but couldn’t stay
away. “It just seems better out there in Chessland.”
“All the Wrong Moves” is
a briskly told coming-of-age
memoir and a kind of
confessional. “It’s tricky to
explain the appeal of chess
to someone who doesn’t
play,” Mr. Chapin says. Like
many amateurs,this reviewer
included, he is not an
especially good player, only a
stricken one. Chess fills him
with self-loathing, like some
“shameful and private disease,”
but also with rapture.
Mr. Chapin has a fine eye for
the game’s beauty and observes
in a typically insightful metaphor
that chess elevates one of the more
dismaying aspects of existence—violence—
into “symbolic ballet.” Since the game translates animal
aggression into pure thought, the author sees it as “the
most human thing you can do.” He quotes Bobby Fischer on
Paul Morphy, a 19th-century phenom; Morphy was, Fischer
said, “perhaps the most accurate player who ever lived.”
The operative word, Mr. Chapin notes, isaccurate. “This is
awordthatchessplayersuseoften....Itimplies that
there’s a truth to the game, and that a player’s goal is to
get as close to that truth as possible.”
Not that Mr. Chapin is preachy. He describes one
opponent as “a lower-rated player with an odd smell.” St.
Louis, where he goes to take chess lessons, is “humid,
boring and flat”; the pizza there is “a cracker, topped with
ketchup.” Much of the mockery is turned on himself. He
recalls that during his childhood in Canada “nobody liked
me,and...they were probably right not to like me. I was
an annoying and abrasive person.”
There is a bit of Holden Caulfield in that voice, and Mr.
Chapin is also on a voyage of self-discovery. “Anyway, like
most people,” he wryly begins, “I became obsessed with
chess after I ran away to Asia with a stripper I’d just met.”
In a flashback, he relates that he had taken to chess as a
youngster but dropped the game when he realized that
mastery was not to be his (and when his older brother
started beating him).
The next thing we know, Mr. Chapin is trying to launch
a career as a freelance writer and gets it in his head that
relocating to Thailand would allow him to write in solitude.
“Whether or not I believed this myself I’m not sure, but it
was obviously untrue,” he writes. His self-deprecation does
become annoying, but then, he warned us. On assignment
in Kathmandu he encounters chess hustlers in a “rubble-
strewn square” and suddenly the old flame is rekindled.When he returns home to Toronto, he meets Katherine,
an arts editor, of whom he writes: “The air hurriedly
rearranged itself when she entered the room.” This is a
charming way of saying that he fell hard. One senses that
Katherine is the first thing the adult Mr. Chapin has
encountered that he can’t hold at bay with sarcasm. For a
while, he lived two lives: “a public, romantic one with
Katherine” and a private, addictive one at the board. He
finds that when his girlfriend watches his matches, chess
no longer seems shameful. Yet still he feels he must choose
between the “two magnetic poles” of Katherine and Caissa,
the goddess of chess.
In the course of his entertaining odyssey, Mr. Chapin
offers a Zen-like secret to chess, and to living, and some
sharp observations on the game. He compares its ritual
openings to a well-trod path by which one enters an
“endless forest” yet ultimately finds oneself lost in a
confusing thicket. Chess, he says, is “a perfect information
game,” in which all information is available to both players;
some simply process it better. He rejects, as it applies to
chess, the thesis of Malcolm Gladwell’s “Outliers” (2008),
which asserted that success derives from 10,000 hours or
so of practice. Chess requires study, Mr. Chapin concedes,
but also raw talent. Starting young helps, too.
And he delivers a fine cameo of a chess genius. Mr.
Chapin describes Magnus Carlsen, the world champion, in
an exhibition in Hamburg, Germany, against 70 would-be
rivals. “Looking cool and trim,” the champ strolls from
board to board, pausing a moment before touching a piece
and moving on to the next opponent. Meanwhile, his
adversaries laboriously study their positions. Mr. Carlsen
racks up 69 wins and a draw. How does he do it? Mr.
Chapin wonders. “Every time he looks at pieces on a board,
their positions are automatically compared with the
position of every piece in every game he’s ever played, and
the plethora of games he’s ever studied.” It is a feat of
memory beyond the author’s wildest hopes. “Becoming a
frog was probably more likely.” But, to judge from the
confident style of “All the Wrong Moves,” his first book,
Mr. Chapin does have a future as a writer.Mr. Lowenstein’s latest book is “America’s Bank: The Epic
Struggle to Create the Federal Reserve.”The author’s addiction to the game fills him
with self-loathing. But when his girlfriend starts
attending his matches, he’s no longer ashamed.My Cousin Paul Died a Hero
O
n Saturday four genera-
tions of my family and
hundreds of members
of the French public and polit-
ical class will honor an act of
courage that occurred 75
years ago.
It involved my first cousin,
U.S. Army Lt. Paul A. Swank,
whom I remember as a surro-
gate brother. I had just turned
12 in 1943 when Paul, who was
10 years older, gave me his pin
from training at Fort Belvoir,
Va. I still have it. It was the
last time I saw him.
Paul had enlisted as soon as
he could. He went from engi-
neer school to the discreet
care of “Wild Bill” Donovan’s
Office of Strategic Services,
the precursor of the Central
Intelligence Agency. He be-
came the leader of a 15-man
Operational Group, precursor
of Special Forces, that was
named Peg after his fiancée.
They parachuted into Ger-
man-occupied France to help
liberate the medieval spa
town of Alet-les-Bains, near
Carcassonne. Paul’s group
was based in a makeshift
camp of local resistance
fighters high in the moun-
tains above Alet. His first big
achievement was getting the
Communist and non-Commu-
nist resistance groups to co-
operate, especially on thetricky issue of dividing up the
precious arms the American
paratroopers had brought.
On Aug. 17, 1944, Paul’s
group was trying to stop a Ger-
man food convoy that, un-
known to them, was carrying
French hostages, including the
local curé. As the convoy ap-
proached, Paul sent his men up
the side of the mountain. Even
after he was mortally wounded,he continued to fire at the Ger-
mans. Eventually the hostages
were freed. His actions saved
dozens of lives at the cost of
his own.
After freeing Carcassonne,
the other members of Opera-
tion Peg helped blunt the Ger-
man plan to move forces north
to oppose the Allied advance
after D-Day.
Locals recovered Paul’s
body and found a note in his
pocket asking that he be bur-
ied wherever he might fall. Af-
ter a few temporary graves,
Paul was interred inside a
marble-topped limestone
tomb on the side of the N
highway.
I’ll be there Saturday, as
survivors like Guy Sarrazi,
then 14, have been virtually
every year since 1946.
Why bother? Apart from
Mr. Sarrazi and a few other lo-
cals, nobody here was around
during the war. Maybe their
parents or grandparents told
them stories, or they were
taken on school trips to me-
morials, but that is not thesame as living through it. Mr.
Sarrazi says that Paul “liber-
ated our town” and that acts
of courage, then common, “ap-
pear to be rarer and rarer.”
Tomorrow I’ll be listening
to this story of courage in the
conviction that it will still in-
spire people 75 years from
now. I’ll be standing with four
generations, both of my family
and of the French locals who
know that America will always
be with them to defend shared
values. I’ll be teaching my fam-
ily about its history.
The courage of Paul, his col-
leagues and the local French
Maquis resistance groups
transcended the requirements
of war. It was a character trait
that shone through as needed.
It had been demonstrated by
American troops before World
War II and has been since.
It is a lesson that instructs
us all.Ms. Jogerst is author of
“Paul Swank: Enduring Hero”
to be published Saturday by
Significance Press.By Barbara Ivy Jogerst
Elderly locals still
remember the young
man who fell saving
France from the Nazis.OPINION
American re-
ligious
schools have
gottenabad
deal for cen-
turies, but
they’ll finally get their day in
court next year. The Supreme
Court recently decided to hear
a case challenging Montana’s
anti-Catholic Blaine Amend-
ment in its next term. The high
court could unravel the antire-
ligious bias written into the
constitutions of Montana and
dozens of other states—and
improve the lives of millions of
children trapped in underper-
forming public schools.
The Blaine Amendments
were a response to Roman
Catholic, mostly Irish, immigra-
tion to the U.S. in the 19th cen-
tury. Rep. James G. Blaine, a
Republican from Maine, pushed
for a federal constitutional
amendment that would ban
public support for religious
schools. In 1875 Rutherford B.
Hayes told Blaine that the Re-
publican Party had “been losing
strength in Ohio for several
years by emigration of Republi-
can farmers.” Hayes, who
served nonconsecutive terms
as Ohio’s governor, explained
that “in their place have come
Catholic foreigners....We
shall crowd them on the school
and other state issues.” While
Blaine’s effort failed in the Sen-
ate, a majority of states
amended their constitutions to
incorporate his idea.
Even so, Catholic schools
saw tremendous growth from
the 1880s through the 1960s.
Consign James Blaine to Memory Lane
Enrollment has shrunk since
then, but 3.8 million students
still attend religious schools in
the U.S. Catholic schools serve
close to two million students,
more than 900,000 in urban
areas. They survived the 20th
century by adapting to the
largely black and Hispanic
communities that replaced the
Irish, Italian and Polish Catho-
lics in urban parishes.
Countless inner-city fami-
lies—religious or not—have
seen Catholic schools as the
only viable alternative to fail-
ing public schools, especially
before charter schools became
an option. Eventually the
wealthy began to provide
Catholic-school scholarships to
poor students. In New York
City, three private organiza-
tions provide $35 million a
year in scholarships for Catho-
lic and non-Catholic private
schools. The Children’s Schol-
arship Fund, which has affili-
ates across the country, has
distributed $789 million over
the past two decades.
The research and advocacy
group Ed Choice estimates that
close to 275,000 students were
awarded tuition-tax-credit
scholarships for private schools
in the most recent school year.
It’s an impressive number, but
still less than 5% of the five
million private-school children
in the country. A large need re-
mains, particularly in poor ar-
eas. Tuition tax credits are a
cost-effective way of meeting
it. Ed Choice reports the Mon-
tana tax credit program caps
eligible scholarships at 50% ofstatewide per pupil spending
and requires organizations to
limit the average scholarship to
30% of statewide per pupil
spending.
InEspinoza v. Montana De-
partment of Revenue, the court
will decide whether the Blaine
Amendment can be used to
ban tuition-tax-credit pro-
grams from using philan-
thropic dollars to help stu-
dents attend religious schools.A state trial judge held that
the tax credit didn’t violate the
Montana Constitution because
it didn’t “involve the expendi-
ture of money that the state
has in its treasury.” The Mon-
tana Supreme Court reversed
that decision, and the issue is
now before the U.S. Supreme
Court. If the high court invali-
dates this ban while also tak-
ing on the anti-immigrant big-
otry at the heart of the Blaine
Amendments, other states
won’t be able to hide behind
the law to deny support to reli-
gious schools.
Opponents argue that tu-
ition tax credits could em-
power “ultraorthodox” or
“fundamentalist” religious
schools that provide subpar
secular education. Nearly all
schools, public or private,must be licensed by the state
and follow general curricular
guidelines. Moreover, tuition
tax credits fund scholarships
awarded by private nonprofits
that typically perform due dili-
gence in terms of academic
standards. A combination of
light oversight by the state ed-
ucation department and re-
search on the part of partici-
pating scholarship programs
should be enough.
Despite the dark history of
the Blaine Amendment, the
U.S. generally accepts and ac-
commodates communities
with a range of religious belief
and fervor. But the undercur-
rent of bigotry has never gone
away. In the past Catholics
were accused of disloyalty in
the same way that observant
Muslims and Hasidic Jews are
today. Yet Catholics dug in and
built a sustainable education
system. Today, given how the
public sector has crowded out
much of civil society, replicat-
ing the success of Catholic
schools will be much harder
for newer immigrants.
The U.S. becomes stronger
when it bends to accommodate
new religious groups rather
than treating them as less than
full Americans. Their ability to
use schools of their religion as
their children engage the
larger American culture should
be their right. Laws named for
a 19th-century nativist bigot
should not stand in the way.Mr. Domanico is director of
education policy at the Man-
hattan Institute.The Supreme Court
may finally undo the
legacy of 19th-century
anti-Catholic bigotry.HOUSES OF
WORSHIP
By Ray
Domanico
The Justice
Department
is investigat-
ing how a
former Brit-
ish intelli-
gence agent,
Christopher
Steele, came
to exert so
much influ-
ence over the
Federal Bureau of Investiga-
tion’s erroneous Trump-Rus-
sia collusion narrative. Let’s
hope the department is also
investigating an even more
influential man who had even
less business manipulating
the government: Glenn Simp-
son, the head of opposition-
research firm Fusion GPS.
That’s a pressing question
in light of new documents
from high-ranking Justice of-
ficial Bruce Ohr, obtained re-
cently by Judicial Watch. The
papers include, among other
things, a dozen official FBI
interviews (known as 302s)
of Mr. Ohr that date from
just after the 2016 election
through May 2017. The docu-
ments suggest Mr. Simpson
was the real puppet master
of the collusion drama.
Most of the FBI’s debriefs
of Mr. Ohr center on infor-
mation about or from Mr.
Steele—itself a major breach
of FBI protocol. The bureau
fired Mr. Steele as a source
in autumn 2016, when it be-
came clear he was blabbing
about the FBI investigation
to the press. The FBI none-
theless continued to use Mr.
Ohr as a back door to its dis-
credited source. The 302s re-
late the numerous times and
ways Mr. Steele contacted
Fusion, the ‘Collusion’ Puppeteer
Mr. Ohr with information—
although many of the details
of the conversations remain
redacted.
More eye-popping in the
302s is the ease with which
Mr. Simpson landed meet-
ings with powerful officials,
for no apparent purpose
other than to peddle unveri-
fied accusations against the
Trump team. This isn’t a for-
mer intelligence officer or
government official, or even
someone with specialized
knowledge of Russia. Mr.
Simpson is a private citi-zen—and one who Mr. Ohr
and the FBIknewwas pro-
viding information to Hillary
Clinton’s team (as Mr. Ohr
acknowledges in his initial
302). Yet when Mr. Simpson
called, officials across Wash-
ington hopped to, swallowing
the claims that would be-
come the basis of a false
hysteria.
We already knew Mr.
Simpson’s relationship with
Mr. Ohr began well before the
July 2016 launch of the FBI
investigation. We knew Mr.
Simpson used his many press
connections to get the collu-
sion story out. And we know
from former FBI counsel
James Baker’s House testi-
mony the FBI was aware in
2016 that “Simpson was going
around Washington” givingMr. Steele’s dossier “to a lot
of different people and trying
to elevate its profile.”
Now we have specifics.
Thanks to the 302s, we have
Mr. Ohr on Nov. 22, 2016, re-
porting that Mr. Simpson had
been “talking to [then-Assis-
tant Secretary] Victoria Nu-
land at the U.S. State Depart-
ment.” We have Mr. Ohr
several weeks later relaying
that he met Mr. Simpson for
breakfast on Dec. 10, where
Mr. Simpson turned over a
“thumb drive,” which was
“entered into evidence.” At
that meeting Mr. Simpson
also informed Mr. Ohr—who
in turn informed the FBI—
that Trump lawyer Michael
Cohen was “the go-between”
who connected “Russia and
the Trump campaign,” that a
Russian was funneling money
“to the National Rifle Associ-
ation,” that there was “com-
munication” between the
Trump campaign and a Rus-
sian bank, and plenty more.
Bob Mueller found none of
this in his report.
We have Mr. Ohr explain-
ing he received more infor-
mation from Mr. Simpson on
Jan. 20, 2017, the day Presi-
dent Trump was inaugurated.
We separately have him of-
fering in early December
2016 to “provide his wife’s
research” for Fusion GPS “to
the FBI.” The FBI later that
month gladly took possession
of the “totality of the work
Nellie Ohr conducted for
Simpson,” and entered it
“into evidence.” Put another
way, a great deal more of the
anti-Trump Simpson file be-
yond just the dossier made
its way to the FBI. Thesewhispers of Mr. Simpson’s
helped provoke a counterin-
telligence investigation into a
sitting president, a special
counsel and a media frenzy—
for more than two years.
Then consider that Mr.
Simpson is the progenitor of
the dossier as well. Mr.
Steele wrote it because Mr.
Simpson hired him to do so,
on behalf of the Clinton cam-
paign and Democratic Na-
tional Committee. Why Mr.
Steele? In Senate testimony,
Mr. Simpson casually marked
it down to their having pre-
viously “worked together.”
Then again, if the goal all
along was to push opposition
research to senior officials, it
seems just as likely Mr.
Steele was chosen because of
his existing high-level con-
tacts—with the Ohrs, with
Obama State Department em-
ployee Jonathan Winer, and
with FBI agents.
The former FBI leader-
ship—Director James Comey,
Deputy Director Andrew Mc-
Cabe, counterespionage chief
Peter Strzok—continue to in-
sist the bureau did nothing
wrong. But given the humili-
ating truth that there was
no Russia collusion, the
FBI’s actions can be de-
scribed in only one of two
ways. At worst, its leader-
ship willfully acted against
the Trump administration on
information it knew was bo-
gus. At best, its leadership
was so standardless and in-
ept as to allow a paid politi-
cal operative to lead it
around by the nose. In ei-
ther case, there’s no excuse
or justification.
Write to [email protected].Bruce Ohr’s 302s, just
released to the public,
show Glenn Simpson
pulling the strings.POTOMAC
WATCH
By Kimberley
A. Strassel
Coming in BOOKS this weekend
Franz Boas and his disciples • Philosophy and the English
language • The Book of Job reconsidered • Robert E. Lee
and Stonewall Jackson • Lithium as drug of choice • How
action shapes thought • Sam Sacks on Téa Obreht • & more