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Largo
Sport climber
Venice, Ca
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Topic Author's Original Post - Jan 13, 2007 - 10:32am PT
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I never read the fiction in the New Yorker -- or didn't till a climbing story by Primo Levy was featured in a recent issue. Good writer, excellent mag. so I took a shot and read it.
Seems like something written in the 1930s. Couldn't figure out what Primo was really after. Not a bad read but felt like a clone of Conrad's "framed" stories (Heart of Darkness, et al) in set up and tone. Maybe I misssed the soul of the thing??
JL
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bobinc
Trad climber
Portland, Or
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Jan 13, 2007 - 10:42am PT
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Didn't really work for me, either. What caught my eye was the picture of the Hogsback on Mt Hood on page 1. Perhaps it was the translation (nah, that probably wasn't it).
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HighDesertDJ
Trad climber
Arid-zona
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Jan 13, 2007 - 11:08am PT
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I keep slacking on renewing my subscription. Guess I need to go steal the latest issue from my friend's house.
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Hootervillian
climber
the Hooterville World-Guardian
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Jan 13, 2007 - 11:29am PT
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so did the conflicted need to carry the 'cookbook' to be delighted to 'catch it in error' cost Carlo the true taste of Bear Meat?
who goes into the mountains to be able to tell a story
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mooser
Trad climber
seattle
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Jan 13, 2007 - 12:44pm PT
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Isn't/Wasn't Primo Levy the Italian Auschwitz survivor? If so, that would probably be why it sounded 1930s-esque. I think I read a book of his a few years back called (something like) "Life in Auschwitz."
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Rick A
climber
Boulder, Colorado
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Jan 13, 2007 - 01:05pm PT
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Johnny,
I liked it. The story succeeds in describing what most climbers struggle to express to non-climbers: the allure of testing oneself in the mountains.
This sentence seemed to me the key to the story, where the old climber describes his deceased friend from his youth, Carlo:
“I am grateful to Carlo for having deliberately got us into trouble, for [a difficult climb with uncomfortable bivouac] and for the various enterprises, senseless only on the surface, that he involved us in later on, and then for various others, not in the mountains, which I got into on my own, by following his doctrine.”
The “doctrine” is that it’s good to eat the “Bear Meat” of the title, that is, purposefully getting into challenging circumstances and relying on yourself to meet the challenge.
I find the fiction in the New Yorker to be hit and miss, but a couple times a year, there is a real gem.
Rick
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maculated
Trad climber
San Luis Obispo, CA
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Jan 13, 2007 - 01:23pm PT
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Hmm. I have two NYers and a Harpers beckoning. I guess it's a good thing I couldn't rally the troops this weekend.
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Dolomite
climber
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Jan 13, 2007 - 01:24pm PT
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Keep in mind the story is in there more because of who wrote it moreso than because of its "literary" merits. Levi's been dead a while now, and by his own hand (which may be worth considering when thinking about what the thing means). Who knows when he actually wrote it or even whether he considered it "finished" or wanted it published at all. The term "extreme climber" early on suggests it was more recently translated.
Largo is right that it evokes Conrad--not just with its framed structure, but at the end it refers implicitly to Conrad and specifically to the story "Youth."
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bvb
Social climber
flagstaff arizona
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Jan 13, 2007 - 01:53pm PT
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we've been subscribing to the new yorker for decades. along with harpers, it's one of the best rags out there. the poetry, political commentary, 4,000 word features, book and movies reviews, and of course the fiction and nonfiction...there is something in almost every issue that strikes me as brilliant.
haven't gotten to the fiction in question yet.
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Peter Haan
Trad climber
San Francisco, CA
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Jan 13, 2007 - 03:22pm PT
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Primo on his 64th birthday
Interesting discussion. I have to agree with John that this Primo Levi story seems perhaps thin. It was written in 1961 when he was 42, and 16 years had gone by since the war he managed to survive. But apparently he went on to suicide by jumping off the 3rd story landing where he lived, 26 years later. His death forced a re-think by some of his work, which had always maintained the importance of survival and faith. As if his private agonies should have been kept belted down in service of his intellectual tenets. Our story now will be appearing for the first time, translated, in the coming volume, A Tranquil Star.
There are many ardent fans of Levi, as well there should be. His writing, both fiction and nonfiction, has been really important, and the thinking covering the Nazi period is exemplary for its gentle wonder, warmth and humanity. There is some poetry too:
Monday
Is anything sadder than a train
That leaves when it's supposed to,
That has only one voice,
Only one route?
There's nothing sadder.
Except perhaps a cart horse,
Shut between two shafts
And unable even to look sideways.
Its whole life is walking.
And a man
Isn't a man sad?
If he lives in solitude a long time,
If he believes time has run its course,
A man is a sad thing too.
--Primo Levi
January 17, 1946 From Collected Poems, Faber and Faber, London, 1988
So, of course he was a marvelous writer, and survived the impossible in war; but I don’t think this particular story is his most cogent nor his most compelling effort. It treats the now well-worn theme of living close to life’s hot center, in risk and in faith, with veiled references to prior authors. Since we are all climbers here, and some of us do write as well, Primo’s tale is actually a nice basic kindly contribution to a body of literature with which we are extremely familiar already and in which this theme has been elaborated much more successfully and boldly. And by writers with enormously more experience in the mountains. But I am grateful for his work and glad to have read the piece. I think the New Yorker is really important reading for its nonfiction pieces, but yes, the fiction is actually not worth the read.
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J. Werlin
climber
Cedaredge
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Jan 13, 2007 - 04:18pm PT
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JL--
Didn't do much for me either. My least favorite kind of "frame"--the reader twice removed from the story. Found myself skimming near the end to just get through it.
In my opinion, the New Yorker's fiction has gotten fresher and more diverse since the changing of the fiction editors a couple (?) years ago.
Below are a couple of my favorites. (Actually tore these out and stuffed them in my bookcase.) The second of these two reminds me a bit of your own dynamic story telling style.
http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/content/articles/041018fi_fiction
http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/content/articles/041122fi_fiction
Thanks for your literary posts Largo. Used copies of Plain Tales from the HIlls (1899 edition!), Tales of the South Pacific, and The Book of Sand (read Labyrinths at least twice) recently arrived in my mailbox thanks to your reccomendation in another post.
Peter H. -- excellent post. Enjoyed the poem.
-JW
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Largo
Sport climber
Venice, Ca
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Topic Author's Reply - Jan 13, 2007 - 07:14pm PT
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"Thanks for your literary posts Largo. Used copies of Plain Tales from the HIlls (1899 edition!), Tales of the South Pacific, and The Book of Sand (read Labyrinths at least twice) recently arrived in my mailbox thanks to your reccomendation in another post."
The above mentioned story collections were written between 110 and 30 years ago so they largely pre-date Levi's yarn, hence the 43 year gap between then (Peter pointed out the Levi story was written in 1962) and now cannot explain away the narrative problems, which may only fascinate a writer or academic. I agree with Ricky A. that the ideas in the story are worth knowing, but what Primo never accomplished was to capture a flesh and blood character you culd feel in your guts (as the story collections above did so well). The quasi-arch, impersonal delivery used in the Levi story is helpful in fashioning a shadow crawler like Kurtz. It's also useful in smuggling philosophical and existential ideas into faux narratives. But a realized story is about characters and the more one can feel them as humans in the round, with powerful hopes, regrets and desires, the less the story feels told and the more it feels like a live thing. And IMO, this last issue is crucial in understanding both the story and Primo Levi.
Shortly after his death (most biographers agree it was by suicide), Elie Wiesel said at the time that "Primo Levi died at Auschwitz forty years later." Almost certainly Levi suffered from what in today's world is called shock trauma, which left untreated can devastate the soul of a saint. It blots out our living daylight and while the essence of a genius like Levy can here and there burst through the psychic wilderness, trauma impersonalizes, deadens and destroys, and in this case renders an impersonal style full of rich ideas but at the center feels torpid, melancholic and lacking the spark that apparently died in the camps.
JL
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Peter Haan
Trad climber
San Francisco, CA
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Jan 13, 2007 - 10:24pm PT
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Awesome John!
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bvb
Social climber
flagstaff arizona
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Jan 13, 2007 - 11:05pm PT
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i've read robert bly's "iron john", thought it was a tasteless departure from his brilliant early work.
what is this "awesome john!" of which you speak????
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Knoxville
climber
San Francisco
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Jan 13, 2007 - 11:43pm PT
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I would highly recommend the "Iron" chapter from Levi's _The Periodic Table_. Actually, I would recommend the entire book to anyone but especially to any humanistically-inclined scientists. But "Iron" deals with Levi's mountaineering.
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dmalloy
Trad climber
eastside
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Jan 14, 2007 - 12:30am PT
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I second the recommendation of The Periodic Table. It has been a few years since I read it and I remember thinking that it had a few glaring flaws, but I found it to be powerful, enjoyable and surprising.
Levi and his compatriot Italo Calvino both rock. I was briefly able to read Calvino in the original language many years ago and that was really something - I would recommend translations of his works as good examples of "untethered" fiction, with some of the same things I enjoy about Rushdie or Garcia Marquez.
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JuanDeFuca
Big Wall climber
Stoney Point
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Jan 14, 2007 - 12:47am PT
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I visited a Nazi death camp, saw the gas chambers. It was one of the most disturbing things I ever saw.
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Rocky5000
Trad climber
Falls Church, VA
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Jan 14, 2007 - 01:07am PT
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I liked it, not on literary terms as a well-rounded piece of fiction, but just as a statement of existential triumph, however minor, however brief, in the face of death. Despair may have crushed him in the end, but there was a time when he was master of his world.
"...the taste of being strong and free, which means free to make mistakes; the taste of feeling young in the mountains, of being your own master, which means master of the world."
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maculated
Trad climber
San Luis Obispo, CA
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Jan 14, 2007 - 01:12am PT
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Read it this afternoon. Can't say I loved it. Reminds me of the overinflation that happens at campfires with regularity . . . discussion of the climber as "other." As the subset of the population who "gets it." I liked the phrase "tasting the bear meat." Way better than "epic."
It also had the fault of weak endings. It's my pet peeve as I can't end stories well myself.
It did put a lot of good words to the experience, but there's other good work out there that covers the same thing. Interesting backstory on the author and his framing his life view with mountaineering.
Since Beevb brought it up, one of my favorite editorials from Harpers a few months ago. Every time I type in the words to find it online, I get heebie jeebies that the Feds are gonna get me. I HAVE been searched everytime I've been to an airport so far. Google KNOWS.
http://www.harpers.org/OnSimpleHumanDecency=1149635660.html
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