MAGIC IN BLOCKBUSTERS

The Sistine Chapel, generated by the digital Library of Babel

We got a lot of good feedback on our post about the use of magic in literature and it inspired further discoveries. It’s not just Borges. Turns out that commercial fiction writers, shameless scene stealers by nature, have had no qualms about taking some of magic’s best ideas and turning them into plot twists. Without credit, of course.

Just by chance we picked up a copy of Sidney Sheldon‘s 1985 bestseller If Tomorrow Comes. As soon as we read that two rival chess grandmasters were about to board the same luxury ocean liner as our intrepid and very sexy heroine, we thought, “Aha! Corinda! And Kreskin!”

Sure enough, in the next chapter she – who never played chess before – is challenging both champions to a simultaneous match for a large sum of money, and she’s betting she’ll be able to at least draw the contest. In other words, she’ll either draw both games, or win one and lose one.

Of course the masters bet the ranch and so do the passengers. When our dream-girl does in fact draw both games, she pockets a quarter of a million dollars. 

Mentalists out there will recognize this as lifted directly from Tony Corinda’s classic 13 Steps. It was possibly suggested by a real-life challenge issued a few years earlier, and covered extensively by the press, including ourselves.

We had the Schadenfreude of seeing this stunt attempted by one of our favorite foes, “The Amazing Kreskin.” He was daring to play four-time Russian champion Viktor Korchnoi (R.I.P. 2016) and New York Times chess columnist Robert Byrne simultaneously – and blindfolded!

Challenge accepted. It took place before a packed house of journalists in a skybox at UN Plaza in New York City.

Kreskin, like Sheldon’s babe with the emerald eyes, had no previous experience at chess beyond knowing how the pieces moved.

To put both our readers and Kreskin out of their misery – he got slaughtered! Korchnoi beat him in 14 moves, Byrne in 23.

It couldn’t happen in a potboiler, but it happens all the time in real life: hubris. The smartass hero made a dumbass mistake. Kreskin thought he had engineered it so that whatever move Korchnoi made on one board, he would make the same move against Byrne on the other, and vice-versa. So in effect the two chess masters would be playing against each other. But hubris will out! Maybe it was the blindfold, maybe it was Kreskin’s true ignorance of the chessboard – he botched Byrne’s second move. This derailed both games and caused Kreskin to make several illegal and idiotic moves. Dual checkmates quickly followed.

Again, only in real life - hubris always strikes twice in the same place: Kreskin tried to make a virtue out of his horrible blunder. Rather than confess he’d blown it, his bio until this day crows about how he lasted such a long time against the two grandmasters!

Full disclosure: we’ve had other issues with Kreskin over the years. So let us not place any more stumbling blocks before the blindfolded.