In 1892, Wilhelm
Steinitz and Mikhail Chigorin squared off in the finals of
the World Chess Championship in Havana, Cuba.
One of the deciding matches so original in gamesmanship and rife with
strategically interesting play, it has become one of the more well-known
matches in history. (The game can be
replayed virtually here and with
analysis here.) Picking up on its nuances and seeing the
potential, John Brunner decided to use the match to structure a novel. 1965’s The
Squares of the City the result, it tells of a city experiencing a strong
racial divide, with each character representing a piece in the game. The premise both strengthening and weakening
the story, the book is nevertheless a unique read, but is perhaps most special
for social conscience behind it all.
The
Squares of the City
is set in the South American city of Vados, capital of the fictional
Aguazul. Like Canberra and Brasilia,
Vados is a planned city, and is the shining result of Aguazul’s rapid rise on
the global economic scene thanks to the shrewd maneuvering of its eponymous
president. But wealth and prosperity
have not trickled down to the country’s native Indians—a people who move to the
city in droves, seeking a better life and more opportunities than their
deprived countryside existences allow.
The city’s elite, many of which are nationals of foreign origin, desire
ways to quell the eyesores of Indian habitation which result—the city center
itself the biggest point of contention given the squalid market that has taken
root there. The government of Aguazul
marginally democratic, they seek a defendable means of clearing the lower class
from its nest and hire Boyd Hakluyt, one of the world’s best traffic engineers,
to design away their social ills. The board
is thus set.
Hakluyt (white knight king-side) arrives
in Vados knowing little of the cultural tension threatening to split the small
country in two. Reading the city’s two
opposed newspapers, encountering political demonstrations, hearing of questionable
disappearances, and meeting for himself some of the members of government—shady
and otherwise, he is quickly brought up to speed as to the designs Vados and
his supporters have for his skills.
Gaining empathy for the natives while out in public collecting traffic
data, Hakluyt dislikes the middle-man position he finds himself in and attempts
to evade the pressure coming from all sides.
Getting only further involved as a result, Hakluyt inevitably becomes
part of Vados’ fate. What this fate is,
however, cannot be foreseen even with forehand knowledge of Steinitz and
Chigorin’s end game.
Story plotting holding much in common
with chess, the gamut of “moves” which Halkyut makes and is witness to readily
parallel the game. The feinting, the
baiting, the posturing, the unretaliated move, the untaken move, the sacrifice,
the exchange of pieces, controlling the center—all these standard “tropes” of
the game are in Brunner’s plot, making the story an exciting thriller. That being said, knowing that the characters’
actions are just mirroring a game diminishes the overall dramatic effect. The deaths lack poignancy, and in turn
foreshorten Brunner’s intentions.
But nobody can say the thematic goals
themselves are weak. The black vs. white
of the chess game overtly symbolizing much of the social and cultural tension
still plaguing colonial and post-colonial countries, The Squares of the City addresses both sides of the racism issue to
solid, if not occasionally over-dramatic effect. Angiers, Hakluyt’s elitist supervisor, Maria,
his police chief O’Rourke, even Vados himself are all presented in realistic
enough terms so as to embody much of the ideology and problems resulting from
the interaction of color and culture.
The fact uncertainty and turmoil continue to exist in several South
American countries is a testament to Brunner’s goals and the novel’s continued
relevancy.
A note needs to be made regarding the
book’s conclusion. At the plot level it
seems a disappointingly empty device, but from a meta-textual perspective one
sees the analogy Brunner was aiming at to the real world. How involved are leaders in the government
of state? Are individual concerns of
more importance, or is the seriousness of the responsibility fully borne
out? And perhaps most importantly, are
we all pawns to the system, or does personal choice still play a role? While some may feel the ending misanthropic,
the final page of the novel would seem to say otherwise.
In the end, The Squares of the City is a solid novel that is strong
stylistically and thematically, but bears some criticism for the effect its
main plot device has on the integrity of the ethnic concerns under
discussion. Looking strictly at story,
it is an exciting political thriller in the vein of Graham Greene
(stylistically, as well), with the denouement a strong statement regarding a
person’s involvement in the affairs of society.
Thematically, the issue of racism in an economically delimited
environment is examined to proper, but not astounding effect. A problem arises when attempting to reconcile
the two: the chess premise nicely highlights the theme of racism, but in turn
acts in undermining fashion, the knowledge it’s all based on a game rendering
the story somewhat hollow. Regardless, readers of Huxley, Orwell, Le Guin,
Silverberg, or any of the other socially conscious writers of science fiction
may want to have a read. But for fans of
Brunner, particularly The Jagged Orbit
which The Squares of the City may be
a preliminary sketch for, the book is a must read.
As a last note, while reading readers
may go to the end of The Squares of the
City to see a list of characters and the chess pieces in Steinitz and
Chigorin’s game they represent, though it’s not recommended due to full-on
spoilerage. Brunner does a good job of
introducing the characters in relevant scenes throughout the narrative, but the
list can still be helpful sorting through the names and trying to understand
their position in the overall plot the closer one gets to the end.
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