Primo Levi's periodic table, and when scientists write fiction

by Janie
 

There are lots of fan­tas­tic books that con­vey love of a sci­ence, depict the braid­ed lines of logic and in­tui­tion and luck in ex­peri­menta­tion, and depict scien­tists' lives both in and be­yond the lab. Mem­oir, fic­tion, bio­graphy. Sci­ence as meta­phor for life, these books will freq­uently al­lude to, or out­right say. In­evit­ably they will also have it vice versa – life as meta­phor for sci­ence – whether that is DNA as a blue­print, a mic­robe as friend or foe, or org­anic chem­istry as a lang­uage – all things that are com­mon­place in sci­ence com­munic­ation. But it's rare (I think) that a sci­ence book does all three dep­ic­tions and both in­ver­sions in a way that is so nat­ural and per­sonal that you won­der how you could not have thought these things be­fore.
 

So when I read The Periodic Table by Primo Levi for the first time, a gift from a friend (thank you!), I was blown away. Usually the books we write about in this blog are those pub­lished within the last couple years; this is an ex­cep­tion. First pub­lished in Italian in 1975, The Periodic Table is many stories fol­ded into one. It is the story of a Jewish chem­ist in fas­cist Italy, it is a story of the growth of a love for sci­ence, of sur­vival during the Holocaust, of the role of story­tel­ling in sur­vival, of pres­erving one's sense of self, of find­ing per­sonal mean­ing in sci­ence... Of its twenty-one chap­ters, each named after a chem­ical ele­ment, some stories are mem­oir and some are fic­tion, but the con­stant through­out is that the dis­tinc­tion bet­ween chem­istry and human life is in­dis­tinct.
 

Larry Rivers, Ritratto di Primo Levi.

I found my atten­tion par­ticul­arly drawn to the book's chron­icling of the growth of a sci­entist, from Levi as a college-aged youth first dis­cov­ering chem­istry, to his middle-aged gigs in ana­lyt­ical chem­istry. In the chap­ter "Hydrogen," there is a de­light­ful dep­ic­tion of hands-on cu­rios­ity and young Levi's spunk as he tink­ers with elec­trol­ysis of water into oxy­gen and hydro­gen. The chap­ter "Potassium" is a vig­nette on learn­ing from early mis­takes in the lab. Like the ar­rival at puri­fied sub­stances through chem­ical dis­tilla­tion des­cribed in this story, Levi dis­tills big­ger life les­sons from his ad­ven­tures (and exp­losive mis­adven­tures with potas­sium plus water) in the lab. The story "Nickel" is filled with young Levi's thrill – what he calls his "neo­phyte's enthus­iasms" – as scien­tific prin­ciples learned in a class­room first be­come impact­ful in real life, no longer bound to the pages of text­books. In "Chromium" is his detective-like work as he puzzles over how to stop paint from gel­ling, fol­lowed by the resul­ting thrill of sci­entific dis­cov­ery, fol­lowed by a reflec­tion on ques­tion­ing every­thing and never taking for granted even long-established proto­cols (he com­pares for­mulas to dead lan­guages). One must always stay vigil­ant in sci­ence, say the spaces between his sen­tences. Of course, there is also a story dev­oted to the in­evit­able fail­ures in experi­mental sci­ence, "Nitrogen" (despite Levi's series of attempts to ex­tract a nitro­gen­ous com­pound from chicken drop­pings, "the shit rem­ained shit").
 

"Chromium" and stories that fol­low it are enjoy­able in res­earch's detective-mystery kind of way. What is the un­known con­tam­inant in a bag of sugar? What chem­ical con­stit­uents are req­uired to prod­uce a lip­stick that stays on? What is this mys­tery metal left be­hind by Nazi pilots in the after­math of the war? What is caus­ing a manu­factured paper prod­uct to be def­ec­tive only in batches prod­uced on Wednesdays? Such cases in Levi's stories are sol­ved by sci­enti­fic in­tui­tion and lines of logic. This all cul­min­ates in the final story, "Carbon," which nar­rates the con­vol­uted route that a single car­bon atom can travel between the life and death of org­anisms span­ning cen­turies. It's a cele­bration of child­like sense of won­der. What kid, when learn­ing for the first time that the mol­ecules they are breath­ing were once breathed by dino­saurs, didn't ima­gine such a story them­selves?
 

What comes to mind is a line from Pale Fire, a novel also by an author with a sci­ence back­ground, and I think it's per­fec­tly the heart of The Periodic Table: "How fully I felt nat­ure glued to me." In all these stories, the title ele­ment em­bodies a cen­tral role in how either Levi or another char­acter views or inter­prets the world. Prev­ious ele­ments re­ap­pear in cameos in chap­ters that fol­low – in a way the book is like a mol­ecule. It's a ref­lec­tion of the deep per­sonal mean­ing and sig­nifi­cance that sci­ence can have, of the many ways of look­ing at the world, of the poetry – as Levi often writes – in and of sci­ence. Chem­istry and life are one and the same, in more ways than only the bio­chem­ical. It is an ele­mental kin­ship.
 

Pos­sibly this book struck me so heav­ily in this mom­ent bec­ause I'm one of the many who are start­ing grad school this fall and bec­ause with­in this chron­icling of a sci­entist's growth are snip­pets of pos­sible fut­ures, pos­sible des­tin­ations – and as I read the book I tried these on, like jac­kets at a store, hoping to pre­dict what really will become the present. Within The Periodic Table's stories is an af­firm­ation of the place of new gen­era­tions, ex­pres­sed most ex­pli­citly in these lines from an older Levi ref­lect­ing on his past: "The lab is a place for the young, and ret­urn­ing there you feel young again: with the same long­ing for ad­ven­ture, dis­cov­ery, and the un­expec­ted that you have at sev­en­teen… The lab re­vis­ited is a source of joy and exerts an in­tense fas­cin­ation, which is that of youth, of an in­deter­min­ate fu­ture preg­nant with pos­sibi­lities, that is, of free­dom." Also within The Periodic Table's stories is what is prob­ably an ap­prop­riate res­ponse to un­cer­tain­ties like my own: "what [is] the point of being twenty if you [can't] per­mit your­self the luxury of tak­ing the wrong route."
 

Maybe others also with "neo­phyte's enthus­iasms" have found or will find The Periodic Table sim­il­arly com­pel­ling. People find ref­lected pieces of them­selves in books, and can move these like­nesses ar­ound, like an aba­cus, to try to com­pre­hend the mean­ing of things that hap­pened or are hap­pen­ing or will hap­pen. I won­der if this is not what biol­ogy is, as well? To me it seems an echo, except it's pieces of data that are moved ar­ound ins­tead.
 

A linked quest­ion: Why are so few sci­en­tists also wri­ters of fic­tion? Realis­tically lack of time, but the two pro­fes­sions share the same goal of under­stand­ing life, not to men­tion shared skill sets and sens­ibil­ities. Levi writes admir­ingly of early chem­ists as sci­en­tists "who con­fron­ted ma­tter without aids, with their brains and hands, rea­son and imag­ina­tion." This evokes the ele­gant Crick paper that est­ab­lished the trip­let nat­ure of the gen­etic code, but I think it is eq­ually ap­plic­able to writers of fic­tion. Fic­tion tries to make sense of the world, as does biol­ogy. They ap­proach the quest from dif­ferent but com­plem­ent­ary angles. (So in res­ponse to the Talmudic Question we had a couple weeks ago, on biol­og­ists lack­ing a water­tight def­ini­tion of life: no, biol­ogy is assur­edly not a 'les­ser sci­ence.')
 

Figure 2. The book, some tea, and some rain (a trifecta). Source: Janie Kim

During the past couple months I've been seek­ing out fic­tion written by people with sci­ent­ific back­grounds – speci­fic­ally, the kind of fic­tion that's broadly categ­orized (for bet­ter or for worse) as "liter­ary fic­tion," the kind of fic­tion that peers at people and asks the often not-so-comfortable "why" and "how" ques­tions about their rel­ation­ships and thoughts and behav­iors. Such stories auth­ored by sci­entists, as a col­lec­tive body of work, are fas­cin­ating to me. There seems to so freq­uently be mom­ents of ext­raord­in­ary elo­quence in det­ailing people's rel­ation­ships with the nat­ural world and so much det­ail hid­den in what is not ex­pli­citly said (things "bet­ween the lines") that mir­rors sens­ibil­ities in sci­ence. There is freq­uently a "very sci­entist" des­ire or com­pul­sion to rat­ion­alize even things that often can­not be ration­al­ized, like emo­tions. Sci­en­tific prin­ciples and ways of rea­son­ing and ques­tion­ing show up in ex­plor­ations of per­son­hood. And, the stories' plots seem to have the chor­eog­raphy of hard-earned open-ended answers.
 

Maybe this is con­firma­tion bias? In any case, here are some other great stories by sci­entist types: stories by Yiyun Li (who has a bach­elor's degree in cell biol­ogy and a mas­ter's in im­mun­ology); Real Life by Brandon Taylor (who was a bio­chem­istry PhD stu­dent before switch­ing to an MFA prog­ram); Chemistry by Weike Wang (bach­elor's in chem­istry and PhD in pub­lic health); Conser­vation of Shadows by Yoon Ha Lee (deg­rees in math­ematics); works by Barbara Kingsolver (deg­rees in biol­ogy); and as men­tioned, Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov (ent­omol­ogist spe­ciali­zing in but­ter­flies).
 

If any­one has more rec­om­men­da­tions, I would love to hear and read.