Bronstein

Bronstein offers a lot to chessplayers, but his views as expressed in the interview referenced by the OP  seem overstated and whiny to me. "Chess has lost its creative component... all solutions out of a situation have long been known..." Really? The world's not like you wanted it to be?

I've always treasured the famous tournament book he wrote (the McKay edition is my favorite cover of all time) but Soltis somewhat panned it in favor of the one by Najdorf.

Thanks Batgirl for posting this. Got me interested in the man and so I ordered one of this books. "The Sorcerer's Apprentice". Have just begun to go through it and it's quite interesting. I wish someone would write a biography of the man. He seems to have been quite a character and I believe a biography would be a fascinating read.

Thanks Batgirl. Add me to the list of those who are in favor of your "romantic" agenda. I adore the spirit of the romantics, whether it be music, art or chess.

My theory is that once you have "professionals" taking over the sport, the bottom line becomes winning at all costs. As I lose my taste for victory, the game becomes a lot more fun.

Unfortunately, that qualifies as one of the worst chess books I have ever read.  Here's my review from goodreads:

A major major disappointment. Seriously, this is probably the worst book I've ever seen from a great player (and I don't even exempt Reshevsky's offerings from that remark).

I guess I should've realized from the beginning that I was in for a letdown with the early chapter of advice to beginners. Then I came across a chapter of games with one position from each diagrammed...and not really much of an explanation about any of it (and certainly no annotations or words of wisdom about the rest of the moves). Later on there were a bunch of games "with diagrams" (which apparently were deemed so illuminating that they would take the place of notes). And we finished up with a slew of "picturesque" games (although how that adjective applied to some of them was beyond all conjecture on my part). I'm not sure what was supposed to be so terribly eye-catching about his 120-move queen ending loss to Alexander, for example.

The only really usable section of this book was the 50 annotated games. But even here (as throughout) Bronstein comes off like a thorough-going space cadet. Seriously, he sounds like he's just tumbled out of Spicoli's van, and you're barely able to discern his vague outline through a haze of smoke while he coughs up his latest imponderable dictum (no doubt about it, the man definitely puts the "sage" in "sagely").

In addition to all of this, his snide little ongoing spat with Botvinnik infuses the pages and belies his whole message of Love of Chess and Being Above All Competition, one which he is so obviously trying to embody. Truthfully, I would've given this godawful mess 1 star, but a collection of 200 Bronstein games (even if they are largely unannotated) has to be worth something anyway...

Yes, all you have to do is know the openings, and then play without a single mistake afterwards.

Well... Carlsen doesn't even bother with openings much.

Ok, so all you have to do is play without a single mistake.  Oh, and it's very easy, just put your pieces in the middle

I do agree professional chess isn't about creativity.  But as the interviewer pointed out neither is soccer.  You practice and do drills and attempt to preform well in competition.  I'm not sure why he was so dismissive about this.  That the general public may not know that chess isn't some brilliant game isn't so important.

He really seems to be off on his own romantic (and self-indulgent) cloud...at least to judge from a lot of the stuff in Sorcerer.

"puts the sage in sagely" lol

Yes, it reminds a bit of Fischer's complaints. Both were great players but in their retirement they sounded very bitter and seemed to find it hard to accept that other players now were young and creative as they once had been themselves. "Chess has lost its creative component", "chess ceased to be a game", "formerly, chess was entertainment to people of culture", "in the past, chess was sort of intriguing", "when computers arrived, it finally killed everything", "all solutions ... have long been known", the development "rules chess out as a game of intelligence" etc.

So far I've really enjoyed "The Sorcerer's Apprentice".

It begins with some background information and then goes right in to "40 games with explanation". After each game he writes approximately a half page explaining the salient points of the contest and what one should learn from it.

This chapter is followed by "50 games with comments". Where he goes over the games in a more in depth manner. Not move by move, but certainly in more detail.

This is followed by the section titled "60 games with diagrams". And yes, I can see why you weren't enthralled with that section. It's simply 60 games with 4 or 5 diagrams per contest. I intend to play through them, but there isn't any commentary from Bronstein to lead one through that section.

Then comes the "70 picturesque games" section. This time there is only one diagram per game. I presume that is the board position he believes is picturesque. We shall see. A little disappointing he didn't go in to more detail in this area.

Then comes a section I'm looking forward to. A brief Q and A with the man on his 75th birthday followed by "My Experiences with Computers". Where he goes over some of his games with our electronic friends in a decent amount of detail. 

Not that I'm an expert on chess studies or anything. But to me it's been informative and enjoyable reading to this point, and I'm not sorry I bought it.

For a player with experience it may not be the best of tomes. However, for a guy like me that hasn't studied chess much, I expect I'll learn a great deal from this effort. At least I hope so. Peace man....

It would also surprise me that anybody with a real chess culture would write such things about a real chess hero.

if that was true about chess, walking and vitamin C, what in the world would be wrong with that? I find your attitude here hard to understand.