utopia, 01 september 2026

Stories, newspapers, and chess, of all things

Before we jump off this cliff: It's release day today, so if you are someone who is reading this and you somehow managed to not already know that Sleeper Squad 60 is out ... well, actually, I suspect that's mathematically impossible, so never mind, but this entry will get the Release Day tag nonetheless.

Now, then.

Earlier tonight my spouse found an article in Gambit, which is a New Orleans alternative periodical that she apparently had never heard of before, which was a little surprising to me because, of course, having spent a large chunk of my life New Orleans-adjacent, I naturally and parochially assumed that everyone who knew anything about alternative newspapers knew about it.

Gambit is not that alternative anymore. Once upon a time, it was (though it never approached the quality and snarkiness of the late lamented Gris Gris, because Gris Gris was run by John Maginnis, a political observer/writer/critic nonpareil ... but that's a different Louisiana story). In order to survive the Death of the Periodical, Gambit got bought by the people who run The Advocate, the zombie newspaper complex in Baton Rouge and New Orleans. When they got bought, Gambit immediately lost its teeth and became a "Here's some fun things to do in N.O. this weekend" publication. It also became considerably less gay. This is not a positive.

Digression, which is on blueboard because it's too fucking long for a pop-in:

The Advocate was originally the Baton Rouge newspaper alone, and the "New Orleans Advocate" was just its New Orleans edition, with about five pages of variant local coverage, that the Manship family began running when the last remaning grand dame of New Orleans newspapers, the Times-Picayune, cut back to three days a week and they smelled blood in the water. Nobody gave a shit about the New Orleans edition of the Advocate. But the Times-Picayune continued to sink, and the Advocate's owner, who by then was John Georges, stepped in and bought it, merging it into the N.O. Advocate. Since then, the Times-Picayune has lost all remaining quality, just as the B.R. Advocate lost all its quality the instant the Manships sold it. The Manships were assholes, but they did run a good newspaper for more than a hundred years, and funded a journalism school at LSU that used to be pretty good back when we still had journalism.

I suppose I should be thankful to John Georges for keeping these newspapers alive at all, just as I respect Linda Henry for somehow keeping the Boston Globe alive even in severely neutered form ... but sometimes I do wonder, at what cost? Maybe we should just let 'em all die and then you people are going to realize what you lost. Yeah, I get real bitter about this. Being the youngest person in the country who still reads a physical newspaper every morning will do that to you.

Ironically, the Times-Picayune was itself a merger paper, something people have long forgotten; it was the merger of the Times-Democrat and the Picayune (in 1914), and in 1962 it swallowed the other daily, the States-Item (itself a merger of two papers -- guess their names) ... and at the time, in 1962, people yelled about how this was a sign of the decline and fall of everything, that New Orleans apparently could no longer support two daily papers. Those people in 1962 had no idea how bad it was going to get.

You may be saying "This ranting about newspapers has nothing to do with chess." You're absolutely right. If you want a direct, to-the-point narrative, why are you here? Go read Sleeper Squad 60. Auntie Col's busy being cranky. (Actually, if you want a direct, to-the-point narrative, Sleeper Squad 60's likely to disappoint you pretty hard too. Sorry about that.)

OK, so, where were we? Article in Gambit. Spouse had never heard of Gambit.
Spouse, suddenly: Oh, they named it that because of the New Orleans thing. I get it. [Ironic snickering]
Me, knowing my spouse's interests and what she was probably thinking: No, no, no. They didn't name it after him. Gambit's been around since I was a teenager. No connection.
Spouse: Oh.
Me: Hell, Marvel could have named the superhero after the newspaper!

(In fact: Gambit the periodical began in 1981. Gambit the obnoxious-mutant-with-fake-coonass-accent began in 1990. And that is, ideally, the last time Mr. Remy fucking Lebeau will ever be mentioned in these pages.)

(I stopped being interested in the X-Men sometime around the late Claremontaceous, and this is a fine example of why.)

But I did start thinking "What was the newspaper named for?" I mean, it's kind of a strange name for a periodical, period ... unless it's about chess. And then it occurred to me: What if it is a chess joke? What if it's a sly reference to one of New Orleans' great historical weirdos, Paul Morphy?

Told the spouse that. She did not know who Paul Morphy was.

OK, so, I am always willing to excuse great ignorance in other people, in hopes that they will forgive me the many things I am greatly ignorant of in turn. But in case you, too, are drawing a blank, lemme explain about Paul Morphy.

Paul Morphy was probably the greatest chess player the United States ever produced. At the time he was pretty indisputably the greatest chess player in the world. It is entirely possible that he has never been equalled. It's hard to tell, because 1) he was a complete freakazoid and 2) he died at the age of 47 and 3) that was in 1884, which for most people these days might as well be the Pleistocene (or at least the late Claremontaceous).

Morphy did not like being called a professional chess player. He insisted to the end of his days that he was an amateur, that he was no more interested in chess than anything else in his life (which is to say, not much), and that chess was a frivolity. In a speech he gave in New York City at a testimonial dinner in his honor, in 1859, he said

Chess never has been and never can be aught but a recreation. It should not be indulged in to the detriment of other and more serious avocations -- should not absorb the mind or engross the thoughts of those who worship at its shrine; but should be kept in the background and restrained within its proper province.

He cemented this status by never, not once, playing chess for money. When he won a chess game that had prize money attached, he refused it. (It's also worth noting that he inherited wealth, and thus could afford to leave money on the table. He died weird, but he did not die broke, as some folks have sometimes misreported.)

Morphy was a deeply strange man who had (in my non-medical opinion) what we would now call severe OCD, among other things. The "other things" are subject to dispute. It's unclear exactly to what degree Morphy had any kind of mental illness -- that is, other than the OCD. People have written that he burned out his mind on the chess and was a shell of himself in later life -- this does not appear to be substantiated. If he was mentally ill it doesn't seem to have shown much in his actions (again, apart from the OCD, and a documented tendency to talk to himself aloud). His mother and brother tried to have him committed to a Catholic sanitarium in 1875 -- implying they definitely felt something was wrong with him -- but he prepared a solid legal argument against them (Morphy studied law, though he was a much better chess player than lawyer) and, as one version has it, threatened to sue the nuns if they admitted him.

Morphy wandered around New Orleans enough in his final years that he became established as a story and a tragic figure, sort of New Orleans' answer to Emperor Norton. There are apocryphal stories of people playing street games of chess with some strange man, only for the man to mop the table with them. I don't think I believe those. By that time Morphy had long since stopped playing chess. He may have become disgusted with it. Or maybe he felt he could no longer play it at his accustomed level.

Morphy was found dead in his bathtub. The diagnosis was that he had died of "congestion of the brain," which tells us nothing. 1880's medicine. Wikipedia's opinion is that he probably had a stroke.

His mansion later became the restaurant Brennan's, which as far as I know is still operating, and hopefully is still one of the few good things in New Orleans that time has not managed to deteriorate or destroy.

Couple of footnotes.

One of the pieces in New Orleans Unmasqued by S. Frederick Starr -- one of the best books about New Orleans that you've never read -- is about Paul Morphy. If you own the book (you don't), it's the one called "Unemployment."

This article from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette Press isn't bad.

This article from some kind of tour group which doesn't seem to have anything to do with chess or Paul Morphy is OK too?

Gotta link Wikipedia, especially since I wanted to make sure I got the quote accurate so I ganked it from them.

I actually loathe chess pretty strongly, but I'm very fond of Historical Weirdos.

01 September 2026