To be sure, I was not then, nor am I now, a good player. Probably not even as good as Napoleon. When, for instance, Marcel Duchamp once invited me to play a game with him, I forgot everything I knew about the game because of my unholy respect for his knowledge of it. With Lou Jacobs it was worse. I could never arrive at any conclusion about his knowledge of the game. What defeated me with him was his utter nonchalance. “Would you like me to give you a queen or two rooks or a knight and two bishops?” He never uttered these words but they were implied by his manner. He would open in any old fashion, as though out of contempt for my ability, though it was never that; he had contempt for no one. No, he did it merely to enjoy himself, to see what liberties he could take, to see how far he could stretch a point. It seemed to make no difference to him whether he was winning or losing a game; he played with the ease and the assurance of a wizard, enjoying the false moves as well as the brilliant ones. Besides, what could it possibly mean to a man like him to lose a game of chess, or ten, or a hundred? “I’ll be playing it in paradise,” He seemed to be saying. “Come on, let’s have fun! Make a bold move , a rash move!” Of course the more rashly he played the more cautious I grew. I suspected him of being a genius. And was he not a genius to thus bewilder and confuse me?" The way he played chess was the way he played the game of life. Only the “old dogs” can do it. Lao-tse was one of those gay old dogs. Sometimes, when the image of Lao-tse seated on the back of a water buffalo crossed my mind, when I think of that steady, patient, kindly, penetrating grin of his, that wisdom so fluid and benevolent, I think of Lou Jacobs sitting before me at the chessboard. Ready to play the game every way you liked. Ready to rejoice over his ignorance or to beam with pleasure at his own tomfoolery. Never malicious, never petty, never envious, never jealous. A great comforter, yet remote as the dog star. Always bowing himself out of the picture, yet the farther he retreated the closer he was to you.

Henry Miller, the books of my life, algo assim etc.