Some aspects of the review trouble me.
We read that Shereshevsky engages in "copying of other author's [sic.] works," "fails to adequately cite the passages he takes," and "reads like a freshman's plagiarized term paper." "Copying" is ambiguous. Does it mean fraudulent imitation or unauthorized reproduction? "Fails to adequately cite" is ambiguous. Does it mean "fails to cite" or "fails to use standard expected formats in citation"? "Reads like a freshman's plagiarized term paper" is ambiguous. Does it mean "contains as much plagiarism as a plagiarized term paper" or "reminds one of the rhythm of original and quoted material in a plagiarized term paper"? In each of these cases the milder of the two interpretations actually obtains, but the review does not clarify that, though it easily might have. In other words, it makes insinuations that go beyond the facts.
Part III of Shereshevsky's book reads not like a freshman's plagiarized term paper (those lack quotation marks and crediting asides), but like a bundled compendium of important recent chess thought for the Russian chess school--an annotated course reader--which it partly is. A copyright violation for using Xerox machines to generate a course reader is a matter of quite a lower order from passing off someone else's thought as one's own. No one is thrown from office years later in a scandal over Xerox rights. Moreover, it does not seem to have occurred to anyone that the inexplicable retranslations from English to Russian back into English might precisely preserve those rights under the law if an licensing agreement with the Russian Chess Federation exists. Perhaps this is poetic justice for Nunn's producing his gratuitously-edited version of Fischer's classic, a version which has been described as
"My 60 Unforgettable Games." But why should gray areas of royalty disputes be of concern to the reader?
What is the defect of the citations in the book? Mostly, the absence of page numbers and the fact that where Shereshevsky quotes from only one work of an author, he names the work only in the first quote and thereafter only names the author. Once that is understood, there is not a quote in the book (at least not that I could find) for which there is doubt about the author, the title of the work cited, or which words are and are not Shereshevsky's. One of the worst-cited quotes is that of Nunn's first passage on DAUT. At the end of one Shereshevsky chapter, on p.235, we get "We will now move on from Beim's work to John Nunn's excellent work
Secrets of Practical Chess.." On the next page, at the head of a new chapter, we get simply "John Nunn: 'DAUT. This means ...<long quote>' " Now, that will not do as a citation in an academic journal, but in practice there is hardly a problem, especially given that the work in question contains a chapter called DAUT. Other quotes are generally in much better shape. "I would like to quote an excerpt from Mikhail Krasnekov's previously-mentioned article 'Wandering in the Wilds.'; "Now we will study the comments of Grandmaster Denis Khismatullin in the Magazine
64-Chess Review No. 4/2015"; and so on. True, after a quote has been introduced, subsequent quotes from the same work are often just attributed to the author. --This is what is meant by the depraved-sounding "fails to adequately cite."
Furthermore, the review seems needlessly dismissive. A discussion of the meaning of "genius" may be unimportant, but Shereshevsky's original method for combating time trouble given in Part III, on pp. 277-278, a method I have never seen and now plan to use myself, certainly does not constitute "banalities or gossip." Nor does Shereshevsky's revalatory clarification of Karpov's thought process on p. 281: "As for inaccuracies in his analysis of secondary lines [in the previous game against Spassky analyzed by Beim], they are caused by the fact that the future world champion hardly analyzed them. He just knew that he had an advantage in those lines, and how to deal with them is something he would work out if and when he came to it. In other words, Karpov [when making his 25th move in against Spassky] saw [the main line up to] the light at the end of the tunnel, i,e. 32. Qg5!!, and only looked around at the side variations relatively briefly." In fact, Shereshevsky generously attributes this visiom to Beim, who is, however, much more unclear about it if he even meant it.
The mention of a "freshman's ... term paper" is also gratuitously condescending (not that that's bad--I enjoy acid writing at times, and I've written some pretty insulting things about, e.g. Naroditsky. But I have another point in mind). So is the remark on the chapter "Laziness" that mostly consists of words by Nunn: "The title of [that] chapter? 'Laziness.' You couldn’t make it up if you tried." But did anyone think to ask why Shereshevsky should ever have entitled a chapter on opening analysis "Laziness?" --As a matter of fact, it is not Shereshevsky on whom irony has been lost here. On the contrary, that subtle author, with gentle self-deprecation, confesses to laziness in introducing the Nunn quote: "It seemed very important to me to show the reader the application of the principle of 'DAUT' in home analysis of questionable opening schemes. ... I tried this good intention myself and found that it is like other such good intentions [in that I am too lazy to do it--R.D.]. So...I decided to present Nunn's own version and not waste time" (p. 244). Hence the chapter title.
Now, even if proustiskeen had noticed this, I have no doubt that he would still have disapproved of the quote; and I believe that he genuinely finds the "conducting" method illegitimate, even repulsive. Maybe he's even right--I don't insist on my view. Yet something more nags at me.
LeeRoth wrote on 05/03/18 at 14:57:25:
Everything is quoted and attributed. YMMV, but I personally found John's review a bit unfair and perhaps a little too self-righteous in this regard -- the book is condemned on this basis alone and two posters here have already gotten the impression, based on the review, that Shereshevsky is "stealing" other people's ideas.
Indeed, given that (1)
Chess Life has the largest circulation of any chess magazine in the world, (2) the attack on Shereshevsky's book leaves the impression that the author and publisher and hence the purchaser are morally compromised, (3) very little time in the review is devoted to Shereshevsky's chess ideas; that hence (4) the effect of the review is not to disagree with or criticize or even mock Shereshevsky's ideas but
to prevent people from reading them, first by implicating purchasers of the book and second by pressuring the publisher to withdraw it (this is really playing hardball--we all know in what a cowardly manner public-entertainment companies in this era fold to mere allegations of bad behavior by someone associated with them); and that (5) the review is condescending and insinuates graver offenses than exist ("I said it read
like a student's plagiarized term paper")--given all that, one might wonder whether proustiskeen has some ulterior reason for animus against this book, conscious or unconscious.
I believe that such a reason exists in Shereshevsky's omission, dismissal, and psychological diagnosis (including, notably, the word "immoral") of the work of proustiskeen's teacher and chess mentor John Watson.
I respect Watson--and Hartmann: we all have our excesses--but I just bought a second copy of
The Shereshevsky Method, a hard copy in addition to my ForwardChess one, to show my support for Shereshevsky and NIC in this matter.