The Voice of Memory: Interviews 1961-1987

The editors point out that talking - giving interviews, speaking in schools, etc. - was almost a third career for Levi, after his work in SIVA and as a writer. The interviews included in this collection show what a good talker he was. Most important, perhaps, there is a good deal here that does not appear in Levi's better known works, and which rightfully cause us to think more deeply about the complexity of his thought and life. For example, his conclusion in _The Drowned and the Saved_ that "the worst survived; that is, the fittest; the best of all died," has become an archetype of Levi in his last years. Readers may be surprised to read that in 1986, as he was completing _Drowned and Saved_ , Levi also said: "To be a mensch was a factor in survival," although "not every survivor was a mensch." Fortunately, perhaps, Levi also said that year (in his interview with Philip Roth), "Please grant me the right to inconsistency." In granting Levi the right to inconsistency we honor him most of all. No one described better than he how quickly human complexity becomes oversimplified. This book is a valuable antidote to the ways that has happened in the story most often told about Levi himself.

Primo Levi is one of the great literary witnesses of the Shoah. He is also a remarkable literary figure, and the self- described centaur who is composed of a scientific, work, chemist side, and a literary, poetic side. These interviews in which he discusses the Shoah( The Holocaust) his experiences, and his witness, his writing, his relation to his Jewishness, his relation to many beloved writers of his enriches our sense of the man and his work. His calm reassuring moral voice is the voice of one who has seen much and been able to tell its story. At the end of the interviews there is a sense of weariness , and a sense of having said it all. There too is a feeling that the younger generation no longer can really sense what he is saying, as the younger generation could after the war. Levi is a truly poetic and deep soul, but exact as a scientist and a therefore seemingly a most reliable witness. His finding human dignity in simple work is another major theme of his work and life. And his modest, practical and realistic answers ( for instance to the question of why he did not distribute food found and made at the point of liberation to three thousand prisoners when he was with ten who ate the food and were kept alive by it) shows his awareness of his own human limitation and fundamental decency. One caveat. The very leftist interviewers in the Jewish section seem to go out of their way to make Levi criticize Israel for its 1982 effort to stop terrorism coming at it from Lebanon. Levi is critical of Israel but only to a certain point, and does not fall into the trap of condemning the Jewish state. After all he knows what it is to be attacked as a Jew and he understands that the Jewish state is fighting for its survival. All in all this is a wonderful set of interviews with one of the great voices of conscience of the twentieth century.

Primo Levi{of Blessed memory], was one of the great writers of the past half century. Memoirs{survival at Auschwitz},fiction{the monkeys wrench,If not now, when] essayist[The Drowned and the saved, his magum opus} and Reawkenings, his description of life from the liberation of the camps until he finds his way back to his beloved Turin, Italy[where he lived ,save those years in the camps, all his life. A chemist by trade,amy believe his best work to be THe Periodic Table, whre he begins each "story" named after one of the elements. I have read all of Mr. levi, and he is one of the few, very very few, writers or people that I hold in awe.I have two earlier collection of interviews that he gave,though none carries the sheer inclusiveness of this collection.These interviews take place over a 26 year period,and are grouped into specific catergories.Part 1 is ENGLISH ENCOUNTERS,interviews in Englan, with English new agencies or with English writers. Part 2 isLIFE,interviews about Mr. levis life.Part 3 is BOOKS, interviews regarding Mr. levis published works.Part 4 is LITERATURE and WRITING,interviews regarding the art and craft.Part 5 is AUSCHWITZ and SURVIVAL,a group of interviews and one essay, the preface to IF THIS IS A MAN, what is my favorite non fiction among Mr levis work. Part 6 is JUDAISM and ISRAEL,a series of thoughtful,painful hopeful interviews on the subject,perhaps all the more relevant and poignant due to the recent neverending hatred going on there on both sides.How i wish to hear Mr levi's calm gentle words on the current state of things. The astonishing thing that I carried from these interviews was Mr Levis lack of bitterness or rancor. The coda, of course is that Mr levi commited suicide in 1987,at last a victim to the HOLOCAUST which he so valiantly fought to memory. At lifes end, he found himself forgetting details of his life{early alzheimers?} and was forgetting his time in the camps,was forced to read and re-read to remember what he had just read. In the drowned and the saved,he speaks of the growing movement to de sacralize the holocaust, to downplay its uniqueness, and how the guards at the capms would taunt him by tellig him"no one will believe you, or remember." Thanks to people like Primo Levi, that will not happen. A brillaint absolutely essential book by a good and great man.HIGHEST POSSIBLE RECOMMENDATION