Bobby Fischer's Ironic Request
Privacy isn't what it used to be. In fact, I fear the word will someday be extirpated from our lexicons as subversive.
The latest challenge is the Amazon bargain-priced version of its electronic reader, Kindle, which will feature ads on its home page.
The private book reader of yesterday has been transformed magically by the corporate wand into a targeted consumer.
I can't imagine Bobby Fischer - incidentally, a voracious reader who haunted bookstores and libraries - surviving our world-in-the-making.
He treasured privacy and furtively guarded his own from the chess players, businessmen and media types continuously on the "search for Bobby Fischer." Fischer managed to keep directly out of the public eye for 20 years. Fischer adamantly turned down commercial offers. He dreaded and fled the glare of the public eye.
It is a terrible irony that even his 2008 death did not grant relief. True, he was, as he had instructed, buried in a quiet church graveyard in Iceland. But tour buses keep coming to his grave.
Source: http://www.charlotteobserver.com
