sometimes inaccessible, but sometimes lovely

books:

	• The Periodic Table Primo Levi Schocken, 1995 - 240 pages average customer review:based on 40 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Poetry and Prose in one volume

Entertaining, sad, and insightful. What a loss to the world. "Carbon" chapter is fascinating. Began second reading immediately following the first.

Daringly creative

In this collection of stories, Primo Levi lets go of the Holocaust theme, and tells the story of his life through the prism of his profession as a chemist. As others have said, each chapter is headed up by a different element, and through the properties of that element he explores a theme. There are two chapters--"Lead" and "Mercury"--which are completely fanciful. "Lead" is about a mythical tribe that makes its living mining lead. Not knowing that the metal is deadly, they all ultimately die of a mysterious disease, but they accept it as their fate, the price they pay for fulfilling a special role among men. "Mercury" is about a couple living on a desert island, which holds inexhaustible reserves of mercury, and what happens when two newcomers, one an alchemist, joins them. Both stories are riveting.

I have to admit that I, as well as my very literate book group, lost a lot by having forgotten most if not all of our knowledge of chemistry--not that we had much to begin with. Some familiarity with the science I'm sure reveals a whole new level to the writing.

Some reviewers criticized the lack of insight about the author's time in Auschwitz, but I see that as one of the amazing aspects of this book. For good reason, so many Holocaust survivors are irreversibly marked and changed forever by their experiences. That Levi can write a rich and compelling book that gives weight and significance to the other parts of his life is evidence of an amazingly strong and resilient spirit.

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The Periodic Table.

It's an emblematic title for a book designed whit tales that confection a whole history. The book is a metaphor of the periodic table: elements conform substance so words conform ideas.

Primo Levi is a mentor; he begins a melancholic tale, connecting us with characters and at less expected time we receive a little lesson about chemistry, -it's a good way to spread science, didn't it?- but that's not enough for him so we also get his testimony about how he suffered WWII.

Primo's statement is hard: "... I felt guilty at being man, because man had built Auschwitz..." at last it's not clear if he got peace at his mind; but, I must recognize he is honest, because somewhere in the book he says that Primo Levi writes for Primo Levi.

In conclusion, it's a gentle book wrote to present a testimony of a man who was born Jewish in Italy, studied chemistry and suffered the war.

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sometimes inaccessible, but sometimes lovely

Like other reviewers, I sometimes found the science in this book a bit hard to follow. But that was made up for by the general loveliness of Levi's dry wit. My favorite examples-

- "a livered [solidified] paint is much more rebellious, more refractory to your will than a lion in its mad pounce; but, let's admit it, it's also less dangerous."

- "Gina then made a cruel decision: if she couldn't bind herself to the man she cared for, the only one, there would not be any other . . . she forbade herself marriage forever in a refined and merciless manner, that is, by getting married."

-"It was clear that Bonino's story would be far from brief; but I remembered how many long stories I myself had inflicted on people, on those who wanted to listen and those who didn't. I remembered that it is written [Deuteronomy 10:19] 'Love ye therefore the stranger; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.' and I settled back comfortably in my chair."

- [before the start of the book] "Troubles overcome are good to tell."

This is not a Holocaust memoir like some of Levi's other works; it is a group of [mostly autobiographical] little essays, almost all about Levi's pre- and post-Holocaust life, by a great writer who just happened to have been in Auschwitz.

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good chemistry!

I didn't know what to expect when picking up this book. I'd recently finished the not unrelated Garden of the Finzi-Continis and thought I might find some variant on this. Yes, both books consider Jewish-Italian culture in the years surrounding WWII, with the specter of the holocaust in the background (mainly). But they are quite different. F.C. has at its roots the humanities, and P.T., the sciences. And what I most enjoyed about P.T. was the chemistry. It's a rarity in literature to find a subtle appreciation for the career of the scientist, and Levi succeeds admirably. This book would be an outstanding choice for any science and engineering student to read just to see how one can ply a trade, be it in the laboratory, the mine, or the consulting business. Bravo, Dr. Levi.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)

The Periodic Table is largely a memoir of the years before and after Primo Levi?s transportation from his native Italy to Auschwitz as an anti-Facist partisan and a Jew.

It recounts, in clear, precise, unfailingly beautiful prose, the story of the Piedmontese Jewish community from which Levi came, of his years as a student and young chemist at the inception of the Second World War, and of his investigations into the nature of the material world. As such, it provides crucial links and backgrounds, both personal and intellectual, in the tremendous project of remembrance that is Levi?s gift to posterity. But far from being a prologue to his experience of the Holocaust, Levi?s masterpiece represents his most impassioned response to the events that engulfed him.

The Periodic Table celebrates the pleasures of love and friendship and the search for meaning, and stands as a monument to those things in us that are capable of resisting and enduring in the face of tyranny.

From the Hardcover edition.

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