Autobiographical Stories, Beautifully Translated
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I saw a negative review here, and I want to speak in this book's defence. Not that the great Primo Levi needs me, it's simply that The Periodic Table is the book I have most enjoyed reading in the past couple of years.
Levi was by profession a chemist. Almost every chapter is a story from his remarkable life (two chapters are fiction); each has a chemical element for its title and that element appears in the story, either literally or metaphorically. In the first chapter, Levi tells something of the history of his family: Jews in southern France, Venice and lastly in the city of Turin, where Primo Levi grew up (except during the war he lived in the same apartment for his whole life). The first chapter is slightly harder going than the rest of the book (it has interesting information about some Hebrew names and how they were twisted via French into the local Piedmontese dialect), and I think that's where some readers got stuck -- too bad, because once you get further it gives a nice balance to the rest. Then there are stories about his interest in chemistry as a child, mixing things up and causing explosions, his university education, how Fascism started to become a factor in his life as a young man, and then the story of how as a captured anti-fascist fighter he got himself sent to Auschwitz as a Jew in order to avoid being shot by the Fascists as a 'traitor'. There is one Auschwitz chapter, then stories of Levi's return after the war to Turin where he became the head of the chemistry department at a paint factory.
Although chemistry is not the most obvious raw material for a writer of Levi's calibre that is what makes the book unique. He lays out how it crisscrossed the path of his life from the nineteen-thirties through to the eighties. Some of the incidents are exotic or dangerous, others prosaic, but Levi's extraordinary power of observation, his eye for the special, curious detail runs all the way through. You do have to concentrate to make the most of this book, but it is worth the effort. And, by the end, you have learnt a little chemistry too.
Really, I cannot recommend The Periodic Table highly enough to do it justice. Raymond Rosenthal's translation is beautifully done: it's English that doesn't disturb the original. As anyone who occasionally reads translated Italian knows it can easily become very turgid, and Rosenthal avoids that. There is a good introduction by Philip Roth in which he tells of meeting Primo Levi in the 1980s. Honestly, for this price, what a deal. Do yourself a favour and buy this book now.
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A difficult book- review by 'Keyne Readers'
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This turned out not to be a good choice for us. Many of the group did not manage to read much of the book. There were a variety of individual reasons, but perhaps the book is simply difficult to engage with, and uncomfortable when you do. A number of people started it but turned to lighter books for bedtime and holiday reading (which is when most of us do our reading for this group, so heavyweight reading does not go down well). Chapter 1 in particular was not popular. People struggled with it. Someone remarked that there were just too many characters. One member had a copy of the book on her shelves for 20 years and had never got round to reading it. She got bogged down in the first chapter, but persisted and found the book got better as she read alter chapters. Some people liked the fact that they could dip into chapters that were of different styles and different lengths.
One of the group remembered that she had once worked on a course that used something of his called `The Mark of a Chemist', about learning to be a professional chemist. We discussed whether reading The Periodic Table would enthuse anyone to become a chemist. Some of us (non-chemists) felt that we got a sense of his excitement and passion for his work, and thre were places where we laughed at his mis-haps. Our professional chemistry academic loved it, but someone else who had studied chemistry with other sciences felt that she couldn't relate it to the chemistry she knew. For some it reminded them of why they gave up the subject. Although the book is a biography of a `jobbing' chemist, and authoritative about chemistry, many of the group preferred the parts about people. However, we also noted that Levi is the central character through out, other characters tend to be significant only with respect to their relationship to Levi, not as characters in their own right.
Some members had an edition with an introductory chapter which discussed Levi's suicide. We were all shocked that he died in this way and we were aware of it as we read the book. Maybe knowing this was why some of us felt that the book was full of sense of foreboding. It is as much a retrospective story about the experience of Jewishness in the 20th century, as of being a chemist.
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wrong book
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This book with the title "The Periodic Table", "The best science book ever written" (comment by the London's Royal Institute) is completely misleading. If you are in search of a book explaining the periodic table, then this is NOT the one to buy. I couldn't care less about Primo Levi or the Jewish community in Piedmont. I'm returning this book! It's like buying a book called "The Christmas Cake, the ultimate cookery book" and ending up reading a story about sunny Africa. It goes into Room 101!
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Recommended for academic fairies.
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The first few paragraphs seemed to cover a phenomenal sense of history, humanity and with beautiful prose, but the "Essential penguin" edition is printed with characters the size of one lead atom (or possibly 9pt type) and is subsequently unreadable.
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A little disappointing
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Levi's books about Auschwitz and its aftermath ('If This is a Man' and 'The Truce') are great works of twentieth century literature (and important documents of twentieth century history). By comparison, 'TPT' is slightly more self-indulgent, combining Levi's two great loves in life, chemistry and writing. It is a series of short stories (mostly non-fiction), each of which is based on a theme dictated by the properties of a chemical element and usually focussing on Levi's career. Levi deliberately omitted the Auschwitz years, making 'TPT' a generally quirky and upbeat read.
I did find 'TPT' enjoyable, but much more frivolous and less emotionally involving than his other books. Perhaps it is unfair to look at Levi as only a holocaust survivor, but I didn't feel that he had much to say about the other parts of his life. There is an ominous quality to some of the writing, as he goes about his daily life barely paying attention to the gathering war, unaware of the horror it would eventually bring, but I found too much to be lightweight and uninteresting. The analogy to chemical elements was often forced or fleeting, providing very little cohesion to the book as a whole. I certainly didn't hate 'TPT', and perhaps my expectations had been raised too high by what I had previously read, but it wasn't, in my opinion, Levi at his best.
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