“I told him that it did not seem fair to me that the world should know everything about how the doctor, prostitute, sailor, assassin, countess, ancient Roman, conspirator, and Polynesian lives and nothing about how we transformers of matter live: but that in this book I would deliberately neglect the grand chemistry…I was more interested in the stories of the solitary chemistry, unarmed and on foot, at the measure of man, which with few exceptions has been mine: but it has also been the chemistry of the founders, who did not work in teams but alone, surrounded by the indifference of their time, generally without profit, and who confronted matter without aids, with their brains and hands, reason and imagination.” – from “Silver,” p. 203 of The Periodic Table
Written by Auschwitz survivor and Italian chemist Primo Levi, The Periodic Table is a bit of a genre-bender, sometimes categorized as memoir and sometimes as short stories; it was even voted the best science book of all time in 2006 by the Royal Institution of London. To me, it reads mostly like an essay collection, with two bonus short stories clearly differentiated by italics. Interestingly, a few pieces appear to be nonfiction but feel more story-like because Levi employs a third person narrator attached to a character other than himself, such as a little girl named Maria watching a painter (“Titanium”) and a man named Lanza tending a furnace through the night (“Sulfur”). Each piece has at its core some connection—literal or metaphorical—to an element from the periodic table.
While the first chapter (“Argon”) is rather meandering and philosophical—Levi invokes the metaphor of an inert gas to reflect on etymologies and anecdotes of his Jewish ancestors—the action picks up with the second chapter, as he recounts sneaking into a lab with his friend Enrico and proving a hypothesis with a hydrogen explosion. The book moves chronologically through Levi’s life but more or less skips over his time in Auschwitz, which is the subject of his memoir If This is a Man (titled Survival in Auschwitz in its English publication), though several stories still touch on his experiences there and their emotional fallout. A few are fiction, as mentioned above—both involving historical explorations. Most, however, tend to the contemplative side, using Levi’s personal experiences with chemistry as a lens for broader reflection, celebrating hard-won insights as well as coming to terms with his own finitude and the world’s moral complexity, especially in the context of living under and in the wake of fascist and Nazi regimes. My favorites involved the process of solving some chemical mystery, such as the chapters on chromium and silver, which inevitably shed light on some otherwise unnoticed human factor.
This book is well-suited to picking up and putting down, reading a chapter or two at a time. Each has its charms and unexpected turns, whether in form or content, and the writing is beautifully constructed throughout, akin to those endlessly versatile carbon chains he describes in the final chapter that comprise all living matter. In total, Levi offers a fascinating window into the mind and life of a chemist who is also very much a humanist—and as brilliant and careful a writer as he is a scientist.
My spouse thinks very highly of this book. I'm not sure if it's because she's a chemist or if it's just that good! I've read pretty much every book she's recommended except this one. I'm saving it for a special occasion, I guess. Thanks for the review.
A light re-shone on a well-known, much-lauded masterpiece of the art - and its attendant craft - we think of as writing;
Two queries, you may like to consider, Jules:
Is The Periodic Table, in part or in whole, a work of creative non-fiction?
What is the process that determines what you select to review: 'random' or 'causal'?
Genially thought provoking review, thank you, 'Kilo-Jules'
Rob