The Periodic Table: A Memoir (Everyman's Library Contemporary Classics Series)

You do not have to be interested in chemistry to enjoy this book. This is a non-fiction story about a chemist who is captured by nazis. Primo Levi writes beautifully.

Primo Levi was a gifted writer that happened to practice chemistry. In these short memoirs he tells the story of a chemist, a chemist that is living in Mussolini's Italy, a chemist that is Jewish and survived Auschwitz. Levi has written of Auschwitz previously and only a single chapter in "The Periodic Table" directly discusses Auschwitz.To many readers the career of a chemist might seem as exciting as the career of an accountant or a tax attorney, essential to society, but better left to someone else. It hardly seems the subject for a remarkable literary work.Levi paints an intriguing portrait of a chemist, a detective unraveling the secrets of matter, a philosopher searching for meaning. We learn much about the kinds of problems that excite a chemist and how a chemist goes about searching for answers. But we learn more about Levi himself, about life in a Fascist state, and about human relationships in difficult situations.Primo Levi titled each chapter with the name of an element that either plays a role in that particular chapter or exhibits characteristics that are metaphorically descriptive of human relationships portrayed in that chapter.Most chapters revolve about an important biographical event. However, the first chapter, Argon, tells a rather quiet (inert) story of the unexciting Levi family history and it might be best to skip chapter one until later. Hydrogen, the second chapter, is more exciting, almost explosive. Zinc, Iron, Potassium, Nickel, and others follow.Three chapters - Lead, Mercury, and Carbon - are fictional. I was absolutely fascinated by all three. Levi is a great story teller. Lead should be read by students of history and Mercury likewise. Carbon should be mandatory reading for all students of chemistry and biology, probably for all humanities majors too.I have read "The Periodic Table" several times and it remains one of my favorite books. It melds sadness and humor, offers prose that is almost poetry, and uniquely blends history, chemistry, and memoir. It is widely recognized as an exceptional work of literature.

When I was 14, my high school chemistry teacher gave my class a writing assignment, which really pissed us off. We were in a chemistry class, why did Mr. Ellison expect us to write a short story? It wasn't actually an entire story: the first half was already written for us. It was about the 'adventures' of one atom of carbon. I felt like I was reading a book for small children on molecular chemistry because the writing style was simple, with no extra flourishes and long, scientific phrases. How demeaning to 14 year old me! In any case, I went home and wrote a completely uninspired ending to the carbon-atom fairy tale. If I remember correctly, the rest of the class did the same thing. Some were better than others, but none of them even began to come close to the original ending.Mr. Ellison took our mediocre stories and, in a bargain where we definately got the better deal, gave us the end of Primo Levi's Carbon, the last chapter of The Periodic Table. Nothing had prepared me for it. That simple style that I had so despised the night before was in fact the work of a writer who had stripped off all of those unnecessary phrases that I had been looking for, who had left nothing but the unadorned truth. Struck by this, I went out and bought the book. It consists of 21 chapters, each of which have an element of the periodic table as their themes. But in truth each chapter/story is based on one idea which is explored. Some stories are pure fiction, some are remembrances, and some are meditations. They range from family gatherings to amusing teenage chemistry mistakes to the threads that bind us all together. Levi was not only a gifted chemist and a gifted writer, but someone who had that rare talent of opening his personal philosphies to the reader, and you can't help but feel that you've gotten to know him by the end of the book, which certainly makes the read worth it.

Nobel Laureate Saul Bellow said, regarding this book, "There is nothing superfluous here; everything this book contains is essential. It is wonderfully pure and beautifully translated."Since I read this book in the original Italian, I cannot attest to the beauty of the translation. However, I would agree with Bellow that the book is wonderfully pure and lacking in the superfluous.The Periodic Table, Primo Levi's fantasy regarding chemical elements and written in his elegant, spare style, is filled with images that animate the chemist's world. To a trained chemist, as Levi was, the molecular world is very real, and the its underlying events do not go unnoticed. This is the world that exists beneath the one we usually see; the world that gives matter its colors, tastes, smells, shapes and capacities. Levi's desire for a more complete understanding of the chemical world parallels his desire for a more complete understanding of the spiritual world of mankind.In this book, Levi tells us, in part, of his years as a teenager and of his experiences with another young man named Enrico. Both boys wanted to become chemists, but for very different reasons. Enrico thought that chemistry would be the key to a more secure life. Levi, however, looked at chemistry as a way to understand and make sense of the universe. He says, "Chemistry represented an indefinite cloud of future potentialities which enveloped my life to come in black evolutes torn by fiery flashes." He goes on to describe his burning desire to find the truths hidden in chemistry by telling us that he would have grabbed Proteus, himself, by the throat and forced him to speak, so great was his hunger.Levi's burning desire for a deeper understanding of the universe and all it contains is not new. The ancients, such as Aristotle, and later, Newton, also searched for the key to the mysteries of life. But Levi's desire was perhaps more pure, more essential. He writes, "Conquering matter is to understand it, and understanding matter is necessary to understanding the universe and ourselves."Although chiefly a Holocaust memoir, the book is not without its lighter moments. In school, Levi had decided that chemistry alone could no longer fulfill his needs and he resolved to pursue physics. As an assistant, he was called upon to prepare pure dry benzene for an experiment by distilling the solvent over sodium. However, using potassium instead of sodium, Levi caused a laboratory fire.The quest for knowledge of the universe is ongoing. Levi, however, sadly found himself spurred on by the prejudices that only man can inflict on man.

This book, like all truly great books, can be viewed in many ways. A possible, rewarding one is to view it as the story of an education. Each chapter, named after the periodic table of the elements, tells about the acquisition of an important piece of the mosaic that was Primo Levi.There is the discovery of the "essential language" of science, as opposed to the void rethoric of fascism, the discovery of courage, in the chapter named "Iron", of rigor, in the "potassium". But this is not a didactical book. This is a series of wonderful tales, of exquisite poetry and of life, true life. I didn't read more than five books comparable to this one.