The Long Goodbye

A good passage

[...] I set out the chess board. I filled a pipe, paraded the chessmen, and inspected them for French shaves and loose buttons, and played a championship tournament game between Gortchakoff and Meinkin, seventy-two moves to a draw, a prize specimen of the irresistible force meeting the immovable object, a battle with out armour, a war without blood, and as elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you could find anywhere outside an advertising agency.