A couple months ago, I was lucky enough to have a portrait session with Suzy Gorman, the same Saint Louis photographer who took glamour shots of participants at the US Women’s Championship. The Gorman photos and some resultant controversy on blogs and forums, reminded me of how difficult it was for me, four years ago, to write Chapter nine in Chess Bitch, European Divas. In the chapter I profiled Antoaneta Stefanova and Alexandra Kosteniuk, two beautiful and accomplished Grandmasters (Kosteniuk became Women’s World Champion and a GM since I wrote Chess Bitch) who took opposite approaches to publicity. Stefanova is very under the radar compared to her accomplishments, while Kosteniuk with few possible exceptions (Kasparov,Carlsen) is the most popular chess player in the world.

I pointed out the pitfalls of celebrating women chessplayers as pinups: It could penalize or scare women away who don’t fit into a certain standard of beauty, or who just don’t feel like posing for glamour photos. On the other hand, emphasizing beautiful chessplayers contradicts the nerdy image of chess that persists. Also, dressing up and posing is fun for many girls and women and attacking that head-on is not my brand of feminism. At the time of writing Chess Bitch, I was ambivalent about all these issues. However, I was sure about the chapter’s conclusion, a line too perfect to cut once conceived and also a great way to test whether my friends actually read Chess Bitch: “Journalists and fans don’t go around commenting on the size of Kasparov’s cock.”

Four years later, the negatives have faded (pun intended here as well). As long as sexy publicity campaigns are high quality and optional, I approve of them more as a journalist and artist than I disapprove as a feminist. Alexandra Kosteniuk said her new book, Diary of a Chess Queen, “It was the 2001 World Championship that made me understand how important it was to work constantly with the press; and since that time I have given a lot of attention to photo shoots and my off-the-board activities. The popularity of chess during the Fischer, Karpov and Kasparov eras can be explained by the outsized personalities of those grandmasters. People who do not play chess aren’t very interested in what novelty Grandmaster N employed on move 40 of the Petroff’s Defense…”

Anna Zatonskih, 2009 US Women's Championship

During my own photo session, Bjork was playing, and I found when looking over the photos later, my favorite portraits were those that seemed to be less mimicking sexy face and more like me, or at the very least more like Bjork. For my new website theme I had to jump at the chance to be forever 29 suited. Some of the other photos are too risqué for me to post here, but I do have a new poker/chess themed twitter page and I also added two new galleries on my photos page, on roulette chess and hula chess.

On the subject of the Women’s World Champion, I’m grateful that Grandmaster Alexandra Kosteniuk decided to do her Christmas Goodwill simultaneous in Tucson. When I saw this offer on Kosteniuk’s blog, I knew that Jean and the Tucson 9queens Academy would be a wonderful venue for Kosteniuk. Look for upcoming photos and details of the event on the 9queens blog, Chess Life Online and Kosteniuk’s various websites, including twitter.

I hope everyone has a very happy holiday and if you’re looking for a place to give, please consider donating any amount to 9queens, or read Half the Sky by Nicholas Kristoff and Sheryl WuDunn for more ideas.
Love, Jennifer

I was inspired to update you on this project when reading a recent New Yorker article about Scrabble, "Spreading the Word" by Judith Thurman. The article touches on a lot of interesting points, including the lawsuit over Scrabulous (now renamed Lexulous on facebook.) There is also a section on online gaming addiction, in which New York Times columnist, Deborah Solomon is quoted: "I used to be a productive individual who read serious fiction in the hours before I went to sleep. But that was in the innocent Un-Scrabbled past." Thurman continues: "She plays every night on ISC(Internet Scrabble Club) under the screen name Duchamp- a nod to the French Dadaist, who claimed to have renounced art for chess, and who Solomon says, ‘in that sense, deserves to be seen as a pioneer of the ruined-by-games-online present.’"

After reading a fascinating article about fact checking at The New Yorker, I’m surprised this sentence went through. Duchamp never “claimed to have renounced art for chess,” as Thurman stated. He never said this or anything like it, although, admittedly, countless others have, as the present case demonstrates. I also object to the idea that chess stole Duchamp away, as if it was a useless pastime that didn’t inspire him or add anything to his oeuvre. In fact, Duchamp’s artistic output related to chess is prodigious: He collaborated on a book on pawn endgames, created a pocket chess set and co-organized with Julian Levy the exhibition, "The Imagery of Chess." Many of Duchamp’s works refer to or represent chess, from his early Cézanne-inspired painting, The Chess Game (1910) to the Cubist King and Queen Surrounded by Swift Nudes (1912.) When you read Marcel Duchamp: The Art of Chess, you will see that this is just the beginning.  In this book, gallery owner and the mastermind behind the publication, Francis M. Naumann, writes an essay that examines Duchamp’s career arc as if it were a chess game. Professor Bradley Bailey adapted his thesis on Duchamp, chess and The Large Glass for the book. All the aforementioned things come even before Duchamp’s games themselves, which include many brilliancies. I was particularly impressed by Duchamp’s handling of an opening close to my heart, the Dragon, which showed that in some ways, Duchamp was ahead of his time in chess.

I am involved more and more in art through writing, and various video and photo projects, and I’ve noticed some ways that my background in chess helped me as an artist.

1.   Relentless Self-Criticism:  From chess, I know that some ideas that seem good at first do not pass the "bullshit" meter. I try to be self- critical about any major projects I undertake, so I don’t waste a lot of time on something that is inherently flawed.
2.    Focus: Chess helps me recognize flow moments, where you lose a sense of time and are lost in the moment, which is crucial in any creative endeavor.
3.    The importance of confidence: In chess, without confidence, you can’t improve. I’m also realizing how important confidence is in art and writing. In an interview with February 09 Chess Life cover girl Rusudan Goletiani said it again and again — she never would have won medals at the 2008 Dresden Chess Olympiad if she wasn’t confident. In chess, it’s obvious to me if I spend too much time on a move, it may be cause me to lose on time. If a month passes me by without progress on any projects that are important to me, due to some combination of a lack of confidence and distraction, it’s not as obvious that this may signify a missed opportunity, a project stalled, a chapter unwritten. Check out one embarrassing excerpt from the aforementioned interview:

Rusudan Goletiani (RG)- Our motto at (my chess academy in Westchester) is the 3 C’s. 1. Concentrate, 2. Calculate and 3.

JS:  Oh, confidence, duh!
RG: Yeah, I guess if it took you so long to get that, it may be something you need to work on it….  (Laughs)

On May 6, the Saint Louis University Museum of Art will host a book signing and panel discussion for Duchamp, the Art of Chess. This is just a day before the 2009 U.S. Championships will kick off at the Chess Club and Scholastic Center of Saint Louis. Look for more details on the book and related events here or on uschess.org.  

Writing this review also reminded me how I miss the process of writing longer pieces, like Chess Bitch, or even college term-papers. One particularly memorable research experience was three years ago in the dead of winter when I visited the Cleveland Library, which has the largest chess book collection in the world. There I discovered a book by Sonja Graf, a woman’s chess professional and  rival of 7-time Women’s World Champion Vera Menchik. Sonja had a whirlwind of a life, residing in three different continents and pursuing love affairs with both genders. She also denounced the Nazis, and was lucky enough to find herself in Buenos Aires in the fall of 1939. Luckily, I studied Latin American literature in college so I was able to read Graf’s books, which were written in Spanish. I dived into the mostly forgotten books, written in a wild, passionate style, and I was so thrilled to uncover them that I felt as though I’d discovered the Dead Sea Scrolls! Later Sonja Graf co-starred in the second chapter of Chess Bitch, "War-Torn Pioneers." 

In the case of my Outliers Review, I acquired data on champion youth player birthdays, which are not available to the public anymore because of tightened anti-predatory laws. I wanted the birthdays to test whether a theory espoused in Gladwell’s book, the "Matthew Effect" would also hold true in chess. The Matthew Effect asserts that an age cut-off in sports will create a glut of athletes born just after the cut-off. I was really surprised to see that in a modest sample of 715 birthdays, the data was also tapered, with January being the most frequent month and December the least.

Finding and analyzing new sources makes me fantasize about going back to school, but I’m not even sure what for: Economics, Literature, Media Studies, Gender Studies, Art? My lack of focus is not the only reason I resist grad school- I’ve come to value public opinion. The writing I learned at NYU was based more on how to appeal to a professor rather than a typical reader. College was enormously helpful for my writing and thinking, but I have mixed feelings about ever returning.

To cure myself, I visualized my dream, refused the pills and went running instead. This is a technique that my former therapist taught me in New York. It’s also in lines with Rodger Kamenetz’s book, The History of Last Night’s Dream, which is an ambitious and literal analysis of dreams. Kamenetz, who also wrote the Jew and the Lotus, often uses the Old Testament as a source. In the chapter, "Jacob the Hero of the Revelation Dream", Kamenetz writes about how Jacob’s initial response to going up a ladder to god and heaven is appropriate awe, but then turns into analysis of how he can use the dream to improve his waking life: "Jacob turns a brilliant promise (to be protected by god) into a mere bargain."

I worry that the many biblical quotations limits the audience of Kamenetz’s book, and I wish there were more dramatic examples from the lives of others, especially women and children.  But the book did affect me in that my inkling about dreams has now turned into a conviction. Dreams may be related to life, but I prefer to think of them as an opportunity for a second life. Last night I dreamnt about a man sliding through the most dangerous streets of Philadelphia on a board, his face toward the concrete.  I don’t care why I dreamt it, I want to tap into the  pure fear and sensual pleasure in it.   Sure, it would be great if my dreams could reveal to me the secret of happiness, but maybe for that to happen, I need to focus on dreaming happy dreams.

 Dreams are a tricky subject, very similar to drugs in that the experience of having them tends to be interesting only to you, your mother and your lover. This week, I was reminded of the two risky "dr’s" when I went to a "story slam" which totally packed a fancy Philly Old City bar at 8:30 on a Tuesday night. Despite my lack of a seat, I was thrilled. In spite of the limitless joys of facebook, Wii and reality TV, we want to go out! Summer is here!

 Although the overall quality of the participants was pretty high, several of the contestants wrapped their stories around drugs. I felt like I could be talking to any dude in the world about how fucked up he got the night before. I mean, what do people want after stories like that? An Advil and some congratulations on still being alive?

Drug and alchohol experiences and dreams are difficult topics because they resist a beginning-middle-end. Instead they are "experience" stories in which you go into a bubble, have a great time, and leave the bubble, essentially unchanged unless you actually did something dramatic due to the dream or the drug: It’s the drugs are boring paradox. 

The concept of dreams being boring was best expressed to me in the Built to spill album, Almost Perfect. Unfortunately, the transcription of the lyric will not do justice to the line, so I suggest you buy the album.

Another thing you should do if you live in New York is attend the Whitney Biennial by the end of the week. (Closes on June 2) I loved a piece on blind people touching elephants. It reminded me of day-long photo shoots with my friend Gabi in the abandoned Brooklyn pool where the video was shot. It also reminded me of being 19, when I was mostly driven by the pursuit for new sensations. Sensuality now has to share space with ambition: A tough pill to swallow, but not worth dying over.  
 

To console myself, I thought about the positive side of the long drag. Perhaps the proximity of the result to the actual ballot-casting will allow the interest in the race to peak in the summer, and simmer until election day in November.

So, what do Barack Obama and Dave Eggers have in common? They both have terrible book titles. I know this is an easy criticism to mock, since both have written big bestsellers, but seriously, Dreams From My Father and The Audacity of Hope? In a title-only book contest, those would be low on my list. I love Obama’s writing, but I hope he consults me on title #3.

 I resisted reading Eggers for years because of the annoying title, Heart-Breaking Work of Staggering Genius and then also rejected What is the What? which sounds like a book that you can only read if you’re really smart. To me, that’s pretentious titling and also absurd, since the book is an accessible and soul-searing memoir of a boy’s walk through war-torn Sudan, and his eventual immigration to America.

I gave into What is the What?, because it was selected as the "One Book, One Philadelphia." I enjoyed it more than any book I’ve read this year. It’s beautifully written, brilliantly structured and the ending is sublime. The next book I read was of course, Heart-Breaking Work of Staggering Genius, which was also great for the first 100-150 pages, but then became virtually unreadable in its self-obsessiveness. In his debut, Eggers failed to solve the problem of keeping first person narration interesting for 400+ pages, but in What is the What, he solved it in a brilliant way: although the narrative voice is always Valentino Achak Deng’s, the audience shifts. In one chapter, Deng directs his writing to his pious upstairs neighbors, and in the next, it’s a jogger that he checks in at the gym he works at.
 
After voting, I ate a Calamari Caesar salad (as good as it sounds) and gave up on Heart-Breaking Work of Staggering Genius. On my way home, I ran into a black man, who was pushing a cart with a limp. He may have been homeless. He asked me "What is that, auburn hair?" I told him I’d call it red, and we both agreed that regardless of nomenclature, it was a great color. This type of exchange has become typical for me in the past few weeks: the number of black men who have hit on me since going redhead has gone through the roof, while white men flirt with me the same amount, maybe even less. For instance, today at the 7-11 I got: "I want to have a redheaded baby."

Red>Blonde

I asked the man on the street if he had voted yet, and he told me not yet, but that he was on his way to the polls. He looked at me, and said, "you’re voting for Hillary right?",  an annoying question because he was right but how did he know?  I avoided the question, and asked who he voted for. He said "Obama" and I said, "yeah, he’s great, good choice." So I wished him well and walked off but he asked louder, "So who did you vote for?" I waffled again and said, "Both good choices." When I was already on the other side of the street he shouted the question one more time. I didn’t want to admit to a probably homeless and definitely poor black man that I voted for H.C. But I couldn’t lie and could no longer escape his inquiry. I was already across the street when I finally yelled: "Hillary." Before walking away, he told me: "Good choice too."
 

Last weekend, I traveled to San Diego for "Disorderly Conduct", a program of video arts, conversations and installations at collector Eloisa Haudenschild’s 20-car garage, which she converted into a gallery and performance space. I had some insights and weird experiences that I’d like to share.

1. San Diego is stunning from every vista, almost too good to be true, so I asked around for ugly San Diego tours. The hotel’s shuttle bus drvier Freddy clued me into a  hidden dwarf city, but my answer came at a brunch that was part of the weekend’s decadent schedule of events. I met 15-time author Mike Davis, who co-wrote a book on precisely the topic of my curioisity, "Under the Perfect Sun: The San Diego Tourists Never See. " I’ll get back to you on the book, but here are some photos of beautiful San Diego and one that reminded me that there’s always an ugly side.

2.  The weekend’s headline event was a chess tournament with candles as pieces, Burning Boards by Glenn Kaino. The candles descended in height from king to pawn except the rooks, which despite being the second most powerful chess piece, were actually shorter than the bishops and knights. This,  together with the decision to not do anything about the fact that the black candles burned faster than the white demonstrated that aesthetics, not chess accuracy, was Glenn’s top priority. And he was successful; Burning Boards debuted last year at the Whitney Museum, but even that event couldn’t hold a candle to last weekend’s dramatic, stark installation. Thirty chessplayers and artists lit their pieces on fire and then the diaphanous curtain was drawn, revealing the action to dozens of spectators.

Can you recognize this position?

  I wrote about the chess in a uschess.org article, where you can play through my game with Liu.

I felt lucky to be in a home created out of passion for art. Books were stacked on tables because wall space was reserved for photographs and paintings. The house was so impressive that one probable millionaire from the area looked around and asked  me, "Is this how the other half lives?" but then soon admited that he really meant, "is this how the other .006% lives?"

3. In San Diego, I met my 9queens partner Jean Hoffman, who I email several times a day but haven’t seen since October. Jean has been amazing at promoting 9queens and getting it off the ground.

Jean Hoffman, my 9queens partner

Check out this article in a Tuscon paper, which both describes the organization and promotes the ChessFest benefit that I’ll be attending next month. If you happen to be in the vicinity of Tuscon in May 10, definitely register or come and say hi.

4. The Disorderly Conduct program included a lecture on the Aesthetics of Murder led by artist Daniel Martinez (pictured below playing against Glenn Kaino in Burning Boards) and writer Mike Davis.

The discussion explored whether the repetitive watching of the most disastrous events in our times makes audiences and the media complicit in creating heroes, even artists, out of villains. Another implied idea of the conversation was that you can understand evil better if you momentarily remove morality from consideration. The topic idea came from the 19th century British author Thomas De Quincey’s essay, "On Murder Considered as one of the Fine Arts." Honestly, I was not able to focus my ears, because images of Columbine, Abu Ghraib and 9/11 were projected and running on youtube loop. I purposely avoid those sorts of images as I think they are totally pointless unless educational or edifying. Why do I ever have to see Columbine? I feel that my life and the life of the victims would be ever so slightly better if I NEVER saw it. I felt attacked, which I suspect was part of the point . 

5. Since I was in California, I read the L.A. Times for a change. Of course the L.A. Times is a great paper, but I had to laugh at the front-page story, "Cosmetic Surgery Business Sags as Purse Strings Tighten"  I came up with even better headlines: "Plastic Surgery thins as recession pumps itself with collagen implants" or "Plastic Surgery wrinkles as Recession schedules yet another face-lift." In all seriousness, I found the article surprising; I’d think it would be even more important to look beautiful during a recession.

Martha Frankel, like me,  grew up in a house of games, where "Never play to an inside straight" was as important of a principle as "use butter when baking." Later she became a celebrity interviewer, famous writer, and her fascination for poker grew. It’s hard to tell whether she was talented or just fascinated, because in the book, she makes it seem like it took her a long time to grasp very basic things, like the ranking of hands.This could be just to make the book more accesible. In Positively Fifth Street,James McManus did the same sort of thing, and he was known as a very good player, so his "geewhiz" attitude was definitely disingenous. In Martha’s case her skill level is less clear, but she wins in live play, in casinos and cruises, largely due to her poker coach and cousin Keith’s excellent mantra to "Crush them all by folding." (That’s really my friend Donny’s quote, but same point.)

The worst thing about the book is that Martha strongly implies that there is rampant cheating, robots and collusion in online games. She does allow the possibility that she played badly on Paradise Poker, but  briskly, as if it’s a minor possibility not worth more than a paragraph or two. The childhood stories are so much more vivid and considered than her account of addictive internet gambling spell, which is both the book’s selling point (that’s all NPR wanted to talk to her about), but also its most superficial and defensive part. Despite the hidden truths that remain, most poker players hate to admit when they lost, so what Frankel did reveal required bravery.

Hats and Eyeglasses offers insight into gambling addiction and the risks and benefits of an extremely independent marriage that somehow survives catastrophic online gambling losses. I would never back Martha Frankel in a poker tournament, but I must say that in terms of men and publishing, she seems to be blessed.