lokster71's review
4.0
This is a fascinating, in-depth account of the life and work of Primo Levi. I have read a couple of Levi's books and I started this one because my Reading Group was reading The Periodic Table and I wanted to know more about Levi himself.
This book begins with Levi's suicide and ends explaining that it is impossible to really know why Levi chose to die that way. As the book explains Levi did suffer from terrible depression and perhaps that was 'all' it was. Did his experiences during The Holocaust make this worse it seems impossible to know, but I suspect not? He seems to have channeled his experiences in Auschwitz in a different way: into witnessing. The book makes it clear that the semi-regular reemergence of Holocaust denial and neo-Fascism pained Levi. The book quotes Levi himself, "Daniel Toff asked Levi if he thought that the tendency was for people to forget Auschwitz. 'Signs do exist that this taking place: forgetting or even denying it. This is significant: those who deny Auschwitz would be ready to remake it.'" (p431)
Levi's personal life seemed to be a burden to him. People saw him trapped in his home by his elderly, infirm mother. He also seemed burdened by old age and the fears that this brings. But I am turning this review into a focus on his death, which is wrong.
Ian Thomson does a great service here by focusing on Levi's life and its living. He knits the biggers historical picture together with the specifics of Levi's life neatly and this is especially effective as the claws of Fascism, then Nazism dig into the Jewish community in Italy. I feel Thomson also does an excellent job of explaining Levi's post-War feelings about Germany and Germans and about forgiveness or lack of forgiveness.
Overall this is a good biography of a good man and a great writer. It is a reminder - to me anyway - of the importance of never forgetting or diminishing the Holocaust. But as Levi himself wanted not just to be defined by that event. He wanted to write not just about the Holocaust - and I wasn't aware that he wrote - and liked - science-fiction, for example. And again Thomson does a good job of making Levi a whole person.
Is this a man? Yes. Yes it is.
This book begins with Levi's suicide and ends explaining that it is impossible to really know why Levi chose to die that way. As the book explains Levi did suffer from terrible depression and perhaps that was 'all' it was. Did his experiences during The Holocaust make this worse it seems impossible to know, but I suspect not? He seems to have channeled his experiences in Auschwitz in a different way: into witnessing. The book makes it clear that the semi-regular reemergence of Holocaust denial and neo-Fascism pained Levi. The book quotes Levi himself, "Daniel Toff asked Levi if he thought that the tendency was for people to forget Auschwitz. 'Signs do exist that this taking place: forgetting or even denying it. This is significant: those who deny Auschwitz would be ready to remake it.'" (p431)
Levi's personal life seemed to be a burden to him. People saw him trapped in his home by his elderly, infirm mother. He also seemed burdened by old age and the fears that this brings. But I am turning this review into a focus on his death, which is wrong.
Ian Thomson does a great service here by focusing on Levi's life and its living. He knits the biggers historical picture together with the specifics of Levi's life neatly and this is especially effective as the claws of Fascism, then Nazism dig into the Jewish community in Italy. I feel Thomson also does an excellent job of explaining Levi's post-War feelings about Germany and Germans and about forgiveness or lack of forgiveness.
Overall this is a good biography of a good man and a great writer. It is a reminder - to me anyway - of the importance of never forgetting or diminishing the Holocaust. But as Levi himself wanted not just to be defined by that event. He wanted to write not just about the Holocaust - and I wasn't aware that he wrote - and liked - science-fiction, for example. And again Thomson does a good job of making Levi a whole person.
Is this a man? Yes. Yes it is.
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