Forse avrei dovuto leggerlo tutto d'un fiato anziché sbocconcellarlo... ma sta di fatto che mi aspettavo qualcosa di più. Scrittura superba, non c'è dubbio. Le riflessioni arrivano ad essere persino poetiche... ma la prospettiva che Levi offre mi pare 'inesatta'.
Testo profondamente riflessivo e introspettivo. Non fosse altro per il fatto che il rapporto con il proprio lavoro (positivo o negativo che sia) per ognuno di noi è un qualcosa che si sente molto in profondità. Si tratta di un romanzo intervista che scolpisce a tutto tondo la figura del protagonista, molto realistica con i suoi pregi e i suoi difetti.
Attraverso l'intervista a questo personaggio, l'argomento lavoro viene sviscerato con delicatezza, passione ed emozione: all'epoca questa cosa poteva essere ottimismo, ma al giorno d'oggi suona tristemente anacronistica. Oggi che il lavoro è diventato schiavitù nelle più varie forme e declinazioni, oggi che vediamo con evidenza che la situazione, rispetto il '78, è peggiorata anziché migliorare, e tuttavia si continua a cercare di prenderci per il naso raccontandoci la vecchia storia che il lavoro nobilita... con queste premesse, il personaggio Faussone finisce per sembrare un po' un marziano. L'amore per il proprio lavoro è qualcosa che può dare felicità, ma avrei voluto leggere qualcosa in più riguardo gli infiniti "se" e "ma" che seguono inevitabilmente a quella riflessione iniziale.
Quattro stelle comunque, per partito preso, a Levi non si potrebbe dare di meno.

La chiave a stella è il primo romanzo “di invenzione” di Primo Levi e gli valse il Premio Strega nel 1979. Trent’anni dopo gli orrori di Auschwitz l’autore torna a interrogarsi sul valore etico del lavoro e lo fa scegliendo non solo di raccontare una storia di fantasia, ma anche ponendosi sotto una luce decisamente ottimista. Le romanzesche avventure che Faussone racconta al narratore sono per la maggior parte tratte da racconti che lo stesso Levi aveva ascoltato e raccolto nel corso dei suoi viaggi come impiegato di una ditta di produzioni di vernici. La professione di chimico, che concorse alla sopravvivenza dell’autore nei campi di sterminio, in un passaggio del romanzo è paragonata dallo stesso a quella di scrittore. Nonostante quindi la chimica abbia giocato un ruolo preponderante nella sua vita, leggendo comprendiamo il desiderio di Levi di abbandonare definitivamente la professione e dedicarsi a tempo pieno alla scrittura. Per quanto invece riguarda il personaggio di Faussone e il suo contributo alla narrazione, è innegabile che a lui Levi abbia assegnato il ruolo di portavoce di quell’etica del lavoro di cui sopra. Denominatore comune di tutte le esperienze raccontate da Faussone è non solo la sincera passione per la propria professione, ma anche l’impegno affinché pure il compito più trascurabile sia eseguito con attenzione e massimo rigore. Nonostante il suo stile linguistico “basso” e colloquiale, in cui termini scurrili si alternano spesso al gergo tecnico degli operai, a modi di dire fantasiosamente rielaborati e a dialettismi piemontesi, Faussone ci ricorda che davvero il lavoro nobilita l’uomo e lo rende libero. Una riflessione, quella che Levi ci propone per bocca del suo personaggio, che oggi come non mai, in un’epoca di lavoro in nero, disoccupazione, sfruttamento, risulta necessaria e attualissima.

I was dubious when my father recommended The Monkey's Wrench - other recommendations had included China Miéville and Michael Chabon, neither of whom have managed to tell a story through which I was willing to suffer, and Primo Levi is best known for works relating to the holocaust, which also is not my cup of tea. I was pleasantly surprised. Levi tells a series of vignettes in the form of conversations between his fictionalized doppelgänger and Fussone, an Italian rigger, mostly on the topic of Fussone's adventures while working on projects around the world.

Levi clearly has a deep and abiding respect for craftsmanship and for those craftsmen who take pride in and love the fruits of their labor, and his writing has a lyrical quality (in translation!) which is rarely encountered on any topic, let alone one as prosaic as working. It's a short work, but quite enjoyable, and I recommend it.

Scrittura scientifica e poetica
Romanzo "pulito" che esalta il lavoro e la dignità che questo regala a chi lo esercita con onestà e passione; in altre parole, esalta la libertà, della persona e della società*. E chi, meglio di Primo Levi, avrebbe potuto capirne i veri significati e le interconnessioni, lui che, persa la libertà, attraverso il suo mestiere ha potuto riacquistarla?
Declina il gusto per il proprio lavoro: sia esso manuale, come quello del ‘montatore’ Faussone, sia esso scientifico e culturale, come quello dell’Autore. Vi ho ritrovato dunque quell’amore e rispetto per il proprio Mestiere in maniera ancor più assoluta e generale di quanto Levi avesse manifestato in n  Il sistema periodicon. Per far questo, infatti, accosta al suo lavoro di chimico, e poi di scrittore, quello di un montatore di gru, di ponti, di strutture metalliche… Perché proprio quello? Trovo azzeccato e brillante il filo che li lega; lui stesso dice al suo interlocutore: il mestiere del chimico assomiglia molto al suo: solo che noi montiamo e smontiamo delle costruzioni molto piccole…. Gustosi appaiono anche i continui confronti tra chi per lavorare ha scelto di usare la "chiave a stella" e chi, invece, la penna (a oltre cinquant’anni P.L. aveva deciso, in piena libertà, di intraprendere la strada del narratore di storie e considerava questo romanzo il suo primo "prodotto" vero).
Ho apprezzato, ancora una volta, il suo scrivere semplice, ma rigoroso e ben costruito, in un certo senso "scientifico". Mi hanno emozionato certe descrizioni vibranti dei luoghi e delle (pur poche) persone che compaiono qua e là, accanto ai protagonisti: quelle delle due buone zie torinesi sono formidabili. Mi è piaciuta la spontaneità del parlare di Faussone, con i suoi modi di dire e le espressioni balenghe: ho ascoltato i suoi racconti pacati e l’ho amato come un amico reale e vivo.
Ma anche in questo romanzo, pur classificato "di fantasia", ho ritrovato, come è naturale, l’Uomo Primo Levi: il suo stile di vita e il suo pensiero, il suo rigore morale, la sua ricchezza di sentimenti e la sua sensibilità… e ho potuto godere di momenti di sincera commozione e di sobria ironia.
D’altra parte, solo se possiede esperienze lo Scrittore può riempire le pagine di un libro e regalare al lettore un momento di stupore o di riso (pag.148); altrimenti lascerebbe solo pagine vuote.

*Il termine «libertà» ha notoriamente molti sensi, ma forse il tipo di libertà più accessibile, più goduto soggettivamente, e più utile al consorzio umano, coincide con l'essere competenti nel proprio lavoro, e quindi nel provare piacere a svolgerlo.

P.S. Ringrazio il consiglio "aNobiiano" di Arwen56 che mi ha fatto scoprire questo libro, in realtà poco conosciuto.

Libertino Faussone is a rigger whose work involves traveling the world to erect large structures such as oil derricks, support towers, and bridges. Faussone, a man who enjoys and takes pride in his work, also fancies himself a storyteller. Primo Levi, who records and then narrates Faussone’s stories, plays a somewhat fictional version of himself. Fausonne’s world is a world of work and his stories are at times humorous, incredible, and detailed.

If you’ve read any Primo Levi, chances are good that you know him mainly as an autobiographical “Holocaust writer,” a label, by the way, which he steadfastly refused. In contrast to most of his works, "The Monkey’s Wrench," is a collection of fictional short stories. And yet, if you’re acquainted with his other works, you may see some commonalities between those and this book.

I’ve read this collection several times now. Many a writer, reader, reviewer, and critic has tried to categorize this book. But "The Monkey’s Wrench" defies all vain attempts at definitive labeling. Certainly, while the collection could be viewed as separate stories involving two characters, one who mostly does the telling and one who mostly does the listening, that determination would be too simplistic and shallow. Others have called the book a novel written as short stories. For me, that feels closer to the truth because of the strong connective threads between each story.

I believe this book is about work, the nature of work, the value of work, and the value of human connectedness through work. But Levi is a deep thinker and writer and to relegate these stories strictly to professional work is too gross of a determination. Upon every reading, I come away with more insight on human nature than I did before because these stories continue to be a well-spring of knowledge, truth, humor and fun.

Tatsächlich eine literarisch hochstehende Berschreibung der Arbeitswelt, wie es im Klappentext geschrieben steht, und nette geschichten von einem streckenweise lyrischen Ingenieur. Trotzdem nach ungefähr der Hälfte weggelegt und keine Lust bekommen, es wieder in die Hand zu nehmen.

review of
Primo Levi's The Monkey's Wrench
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - July 24, 2016

This review is cut off midway. read the whole thing here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/...

I got interested in reading something by Primo Levi when I was preparing for an international Skype conference that I was coorganizing called “Лiмpolysemiя (Limpolysemia)”. Since the event revolved around my friends in the us@ & the Netherlands interacting with Monty Cantsin's friends in Minsk in Belarus I was researching Belarus, a country I knew next to nothing about.

I got media out of the public library relevant to the subject & that included Davide Ferrario's movie "Primo Levi's Journey" about this Italian author's post-release-from-concentration-camp ordeals as he traveled thru Europe trying to get back to Italy. Part of Levi's travels took him thru Belarus & the movie showed the Belarus contemporary w/ the movie's making.

I knew next to nothing about Levi's writing so I was glad to find something by him. I didn't have any particular expectations. As it turned out, I found this to be genius. In my GoodReads bk categories there's one called "Working Class Intellectuals". I'm in there, as is the author of the great Australian bullock-driver novel Such is Life, Tom Collins (Joseph Furphy). Levi will be in this select few too. From my perspective, that's a great honor but Levi's dead so he won't get the chance to appreciate that.

The Monkey's Wrench is mostly stories about working told to the author's stand-in by a guy described on the back of the bk as a "construction worker". Actually, "construction worker" doesn't really do it. In the bk he self-describes as a "rigger" but I'd like to know what the original Italian is. Having worked construction myself & having worked w/ riggers, it seems to me that "ironworker" might be closest to describing the guy's skills. Even so, he's no beginner ironworker, he's tops in his field.

This particular worker is in demand all over the world - so the stories have a wonderful range of locale. In one case, he circumspectly describes where a job was by saying:

"["]You know: a country where if you steal something they chop off your hand in the square, left hand or right, depending on how much you stole, and maybe an ear, too, but all with anesthetic and topflight surgeons, who can stop the bleeding in a second.["]" - p 9

Now, of course, for most of my life I've 'known' that getting a hand chopped off for stealing is an Arabic thing. To say that this is overkill is an understatement. I always thought that Arabs ate w/ one hand & wiped their ass w/ the other & that the hand cut off wd be the eating hand so that the 2 functions wd be performed by the shit-wiping hand. I have no idea whether that's actually based in truth or not or whether it's some racist slur or whatever. SO, I asked the online Gods: "where are hands chopped off for stealing?" & that yielded some pretty nasty results:

"n  Hududn (Arabic: حدود Ḥudūd, also transliterated hadud, hudood; singular hadd, حد, literal meaning "limit", or "restriction") is an Islamic concept: punishments which under Islamic law (Shariah) are mandated and fixed by God. The Shariah divided offenses into those against God and those against man. Crimes against God violated His Hudud, or 'boundaries'. These punishments were specified by the Quran, and in some instances by the Sunnah. They are namely for adultery, fornication, accusing someone of illicit sex but failing to present four male Muslim eyewitnesses, apostasy (opinion is not unanimous on this crime.), consuming intoxicants, outrage (e.g. rebellion against the lawful Caliph, other forms of mischief against the Muslim state, or highway robbery), robbery and theft. Hudud offenses are overturned by the slightest of doubts (shubuhat). These punishments were rarely applied in pre-modern Islam.

"These punishments range from public lashing to publicly stoning to death, amputation of hands and crucifixion. The crimes against hudud cannot be pardoned by the victim or by the state, and the punishments must be carried out in public. However, the evidentiary standards for these punishments were often impossibly high, and were thus infrequently implemented in practice. Moreover, Muhammad ordered Muslim judges to 'ward off the Hudud by ambiguities.' The severe Hudud punishments were meant to convey the gravity of those offenses against God and to deter, not to be carried out. If a thief refused to confess, or if a confessed adulterer retracted his confession, the Hudud punishments would be waived.

"In most Muslim nations in modern times public stoning and execution are relatively uncommon, although they are found in Muslim nations that follow a strict interpretation of sharia, such as Saudi Arabia and Iran." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hudud

Now that's the relatively unsensational article. The 1st Google hits are all about ISIS, today's boogeyman, cutting off hands in public. Now, to be fair, there is a website titled "Common Misconceptions About Islam, Muslims and The Quran". This website includes the following:

"The male thief, and the female thief, you shall mark, cut, or cut-off their hands/means as a recompense for what they earned, and to serve as a deterrent from God. God is Noble, Wise. Whoever repents after his wrongdoing and makes amends, then God will relent on him. Truly, God is Forgiving, Merciful. [5:38-39]

"The above verses are commonly translated to mean physical cutting off the thief's hand or hands, however whilst this understanding is a theoretical possibility, when all the information is reviewed it is only one of several possibilities, hence the above translation. Firstly, it should be noted that the verse makes clear whoever commits theft but repents after and makes amends, then this is acceptable to God, thus no punishment can be administered in this case. This of course would only apply to those who do this before they have to be tried and found guilty." - http://misconceptions-about-islam.com...

NOW, I've sd it before & I'll say it again, "God" is a myth created by unscrupulous people to justify all sorts of crimes. "Divine Rights" was used by Christinanes to justify imperialism & slavery. Muslims are using God to justify all kinds of horror. I'm an atheist & I've never killed anyone. If I ever do I don't think I'll be saying "God told me to" or "The government told me to". I think there's more integrity in saying "I hated that piece of shit" or whatever. Take responsibility people.

Anyway, the point is that both Christinanity & Islam, the 2 biggest gangs in the world today, are originally desert religions. In a desert, resources are limited. Stealing something might be a much bigger deal than taking a piece of meat from a supermarket in middle-class America. But cutting off a person's hand?! Even in a desert that strikes me as excessive - unless MAYBE the theft directly results in another person's starving or something like that. The problem here is that this desert mentality is then applied to the rest of the world, wch, in case you haven't noticed, isn't a desert. Unfortunately, if the Christinane & Islam have their way, the rest of the world will be a desert w/ a bunch of megalomaniacal patriarchs terrorizing anyone who doesn't agree w/ them. Watch yr asses, folks, religion is not harmless. END OF DIGRESSION.

In the same story, a curse is used for labor purposes. I wdn't've thought of that one.

"There had been two or three strikes, and the boss hadn't yielded an inch, because business was slow anyhow. Then there was the idea of getting physical with him, if you follow me. To get even.

""What do you mean by getting physical?"

"Faussone patiently explained that it was like putting a curse on someone, giving him the evil eye, a spell. "Maybe not to kill him. On the contrary, there they surely didn't want him to die, because his little brother was worse than he was.["]" - p 11

Faussone's stories about rigging as told by Primo Levi's avatar deeply impressed me w/ their loving technical details. These are stories told about work by someone who actually knows what he's talking about & the descriptions are utterly wonderful. I've never read anything about work so beautifully written before:

"When the bottom of the frame was on the base, we sent the smaller crane home, and the big one stretched its arm out all the way, with the tower dangling from it, and little by little it straightened up. And even for me—and I've seen my share of cranes—it was a beautiful sight, also because you could hear the engine purring calmly, as if to say for him too, it was child's play. It lowered its burden right on the spot, with the holes right on the bolts, and we tightened them, had a drink, and went off." - p 17

Levi's stories are convincingly told from the POV of someone who knows his shit & loves being able to make difficult jobs go right. Of course, all sorts of tantalizing details come to light:

"On the other hand, of he cared to know, I could give him some information about the origin of the name. Mr. Derrick, a man of parts, conscientious and devout, lived in London in the seventeenth century and for many years was hangman for their Britannic Majesties, he was so conscientious and so enamored of his profession that he constantly pondered ways to perfect his instruments. Toward the end of his career he developed a new model gallows, a tall, slender tower, thanks to which the man hanged, "High and close," could be seen from a distance. This was called the Derrick gallows, and then, more familiarly, derrick. Later the term came to cover analogous structures, all in trestle form, destined to humbler uses. In this way Mr. Derrick achieved that special and very rare form of immortality that consists in the loss of the capital letter at the beginning of one's surname: an honor shared by no more than a dozen illustrious men of all time." - p 31

The reader is referred to Errol Morris's documentary entitled "Mr. Death".

In one story an ape, interchangeably referred to as a monkey, gets interested in the ironworker's job & starts to imitate him & the ironworkers imitates the ape as well:

""He was curious. He used to come and watch me work, and first thing he did, he showed me something. I told you, it rained all the time: well, he sat down to take the rain in a special way, with his knees raised, his head on his knees, and his hands clasped over his head. I noticed how in that position he had his hair all slicked downward, so he hardly got wet at all: the water ran off his elbows and his behind, and his belly and his face stayed dry. I tried it myself, taking a bit of rest between bolts; and I must say that if you don't have an umbrella that's the best solution."" - p 33

I reckon every job involves some complaining & Levi has Faussone do a good job of that too:

""Hmph, maybe I got kind of sidetracked by the details, but I swear it was a crazy job. First of all, I don't like to say it, but the local workers were all dopes: maybe they were good at swinging at hoe, but I wouldn't swear to that, either, because they seemed more in the loafer category; they were reporting sick every minute. But the material was the worst: the bolts you could find there, first there wasn't much assortment, and second they would make a dog vomit." - p 41

Comparing the writer's job to the ironworker's:

"I had to grant him that to work sitting down, in a heated place and at ground level, is quite an advantage; but, aside from this, assuming I could speak in the name of actual writers, we have our bad days, too. In fact, we have them more often, because its' easier to see if a piece of metal structure is "right on the bubble" than a written page; so you can write a page with enthusiasm, or even a whole book, and then you realize it won't do, that it's a botch, silly, unoriginal, incomplete, excessive, futile; and then you turn sad, and you start getting ideas like the ones he had that evening, namely you think of changing jobs" - p 48

The Italian version of this was 1st published in 1978 so I found the following somewhat precocious:

"Sure, I'm young still, but I've been in some tight spots and it was always because of oil. They never find oil in great places, say at San Remo or on the Costa Brava. Not on your life. It's always in lousy, godforsaken places. The worst things that happened to me happened because they were looking for oil. And, to tell you the truth, my heart wasn't even in it, because everybody knows, after all, that the stuff id about to run out, so it's not worth the trouble." - p 54

Think of all the trouble around oil in the ensuing 38 yrs!

One of Levi's writerly touches that I like is the way he has his character describe something in terms of the environment evoked as visible to the speaker but not to the reader:

"Weell say that one was twenty meters high, and it seemed pretty high to me; but this one. not even finished, lying there, was two hundred and fifty meters long, like from here to that green fence over there, like from Piazza Castello, to give you an idea." - p 57

Faussone has a revolutionary philosophy born out of the practical common sense gleaned from having to deal w/ practical matters of some complexity:

"["]And if governments worked the same way, then there wouldn't be any need of armies in the first place because there wouldn't be any need for wars, and the people with common sense would work everything out."

"The way people think when they venture to spout opinions outside their own field! I tried cautiously to make him aware of the subversive, indeed revolutionary force lurking behind these words of his. Assign responsibility according to skill?" - p 65

This is a convincingly written bk b/c it makes me think that Levi has been there, has been in the work environments he describes:

"But you mustn't think we just stood there and pushed by guesswork: there was a control booth, nice and heated, and there was even a Coke machine, closed-circuit television, and a phone link with the men working the jacks. All you had to do was press a button and you could see on the TV screen whether everything was aligned. Oh, I almost forgot: between the jacks and the sledges there were also pizeometric cells, with their dials in the booth, so you could see the stress at any moment." - p 67

Such writing isn't straight out of a tech manual or details like the Coke machine might not be in there. SO, we have the realism in size described in terms of the narrator's implied physical environment, in the presence of the Coke machine, & in the all-too-human lapses of memory:

"["]instead of cats we looked more like animals—I can't remember their names—that you see in the zoo: they have an idiot face, they laugh all the time, their paws end in hooks, and they move slowly, clinging to branches, their heads hanging down." - p 72

A hyena-sloth?! The Monkey's Wrench is a paean to labor, very skillfully written from someone who obviously worked hard at many levels his whole life:

"There also exists a rhetoric on the opposite side, however, not cynical, but profoundly stupid, which tends to denigrate labor, to depict it as base, as if labor, our own or others', were something we could do without, not only in Utopia, but here, today; as if anyone who knows how to work were, by definition, a servant, and as if, on the contrary, someone who doesn't know how to work, or knows little, or doesn't want to, were for that very reason a free man."

[..]

"We can and must fight to see that the fruit of labor remains in the hands of those who work, and that work does not turn into punishment" - p 80

Now, b/c I'm not independently wealthy, b/c I'm not the recipient of inherited wealth, I've worked since I was a teenager. In addition to having to support myself, I've also worked even harder to create the things that I've imagined, that I think are important, that please me, that're the fruits of my imagination: the 437 movies I've made so far, the hundreds of (d) compositions, the over-412 'performances', the 192 audio publications, the 583 printed matter / online publications, & more, always more..

The work I've had to do for money has often not compensated me to my satisfaction, & this work is a punishment of sorts for not being born rich, for not being a thief. Despite all that, I have learned things from working, from working for money ie, that I probably wdn't've learned otherwise, that I'm glad to know. I've learned to use tools that I wdn't have access to at home, in a more domestic environment - tools like a pallet-jack or a Big Joe, like a biscuit-joiner or a panel-saw, 35 mm projectors or 32-pair punch-down tools.

While there are good reasons to resent the work that one does for too little pay to make money for those who are privileged rather than intelligent, there're also good reasons to build up one's own self-respect thru practical knowledge & skill acquired.

Demonstrating Levi's point, I think of the all-too-many times in my life when I've been treated like a subhuman for actually doing work by people too stupid to be able to do what I was doing & too privileged to ever have to.

EG: Once I was building a collaborative installation. The part that I was building had been entirely conceived of by me & was being entirely built by me. My collaborator, who certainly did have ideas & skills but who often lacked get-up-&-go (except to go away from where the work was to be done), was standing around not doing much of anything while I was up on a ladder installing something in the ceiling.

An apparently well-to-do woman came into the room & started to babble effusively about 'my collaborator's installation'. It didn't apparently occur to her that the person who was actually doing the work might also be the person who'd conceived of most of the installation. B/c I was actually working, instead of just standing around, it seemed to be taken for granted that I was just the 'hired help', a mere functionary of barely human nature.

I'm further reminded of a job I had where I designed & built event props along w/ other working stiffs. We'd do all the work & then the owner of the company wd get all the compliments from people for the beautiful job 'he'd done'. He hadn't done anything much beyond be the son of a judge. But to those praising him, the people who'd done the actual work were just morlocks - best kept unseen.

Another rich friend of mine w/ substantial inherited wealth once talked about an electronic musical instrument that 'he'd built'. I asked him if he'd actually built it & it came out that, no, he'd pd someone else to build it. That's a common trick of the wealthy - to take credit for work done by others. When you buy a car do you say that you built it?

The rich people who denigrate labor do so to create the myth that it's 'beneath them' when, in actuality, it's beyond them. Such a myth helps justify underpayment & over-profiteering - hence Levi's point that the "the fruit of labor remains in the hands of those who work". If that were to be the case, my millionaire friend wd have a helluva time feeding his family & I'd be sitting pretty.

In riferimento all'edizione, penso di potermi definire soddisfatta. Viene fornita una brevissima nota del redattore ad inizio libro, e alla fine sia un articolo di Corrado Stajano apparso su "Il Messaggero", che un breve estratto da un altro scritto di Levi, dedicato al tema dell'essere chimico e scrittore. Infine, viene fornita una breve cronologia della vita e delle opere dell'autore.

Sebbene in genere, quando si parli di romanzi, mi piaccia stilare un elenco dei principali pregi e difetti di ciò che ho appena letto, farlo con Primo Levi non mi sembra adatto. Stando a quanto ho letto finora, le sue opere espongono sempre il suo pensiero con chiarezza. La padronanza della lingua è esemplare, anche quando si tratta di mettere per iscritto "un linguaggio Fiat degradato, povero di vocaboli, con un impasto di metafore prese dal mondo dell'industria". Si può essere o non essere d'accordo col suo pensiero, ma non si può considerare le sue scelte di stili inefficaci.
La tematica dell'amore per il lavoro, poi, risulta essere oggi di grande attualità. A mio modo di vedere, Levi era un chimico anche quando scriveva: smontava concetti anche complessi, per presentarli ridotti ai minimi termini, essenziali ed il più possibile comprensibili.

Il mio unico consiglio è quello di leggere La chiave a stella, cercare di capire il pensiero di Levi e farsi una propria idea in merito.

I bought this after hearing potter Edmund de Waal talk about how The Wrench had inspired and validated his choice of a career where he makes things with his hands (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00zdh3v). It's structured simply, as a series of stories told by a rigger to a chemist as they share 'dead time' on their respective assignments in 1970s Russia. The stories are about work building cranes, derricks, bridges and similar structures in various corners of the world. The trials of working with inhospitable clients, climates and co-workers, plus the conflicts of taking pride in work without copping the blame when things go wrong. Without being able to put my finger on the attractions of these stories, I devoured them (I was supposed to be reading and reviewing another book at the time). That they made me think of my father's early career as a civil engineer may have had something to do with it.

3,5*
È la storia delle "storie" di Faussone, montatore di gru in tutto il mondo. Avendo girato il mondo dai deserti ai ghiacciai Tino ha molto sa raccontare, ma la storia che mi ha preso di più è l'ultima, quella sulle acciughe nel nostro narratore, che alla fine ha smesso di ascoltare e ha iniziato a raccontare. Sarebbe stato belle "ascoltare" qualche altra storia di Primo il chimico.

beautifully written but I cannot read through. Seem to be treating as selection of short stories and dipping in periodically

Review of The wrench by Primo Levi published by Abacus Books (1988)
Reviewer W.P.Palmer

Some years ago I reviewed another of Levi's books, The Periodic Table (Palmer, 1988), (now in my Amazon reviews). I was so impressed with his writing for its relevance to us as science teachers, that I will now review another of his books. The Wrench is a collection of stories, some of which relate to chemistry, but this time there is Faussone, a rigger, the man of action or "Homo faber" and the author (Levi), the chemist who is the thinker and narrator. They meet in a factory in a distant country, and are thrown together through the common language and common experience of being Italian. They start to converse and tell each other stories in the mess: we are the privileged listeners. Again as in The Periodic Table a number of the stories seem autobiographical and they gain realism and coherence from this personal input, whilst others are about the hard tough life of being a rigger, a man who personally puts together large cranes partly through his physical strength, but also through his knowledge skill and experience. Faussone is an expert in his field. Later in the book the two men start to relate to the other's experience of life and the analogies are then of great interest to chemists. The chemist in synthesizing new molecules acts like a rigger. In fact Levi says:-

But we are still blind... . blind and we don't have those tweezers we often dream of at night, the way a thirsty man dreams of springs, that would allow us to pick up a segment, hold it firm and straight, and paste it in the right direction on the segment that has already been assembled. If we had those tweezers (and it's possible that, one day, we will), we would have managed to create some wonderful things But for the present we don't have those tweezers, and when we come right down to it, we're bad riggers.
(The Wrench, p.144)

It is interesting to note that Von Baeyer in his recent book (Von Baeyer, 1992) needs to use the analogy in this passage to differentiate the aims of chemists and physicists in investigating the fine structure of matter. In other words, Levi manages to express in his novels something about the nature of chemistry and chemists that it is difficult to explain in any other way. It is for that reason that I believe that this novel is of importance in the education of any science teacher or scientist.

REFERENCES
Palmer, W.P. 1988 Review of The Periodic Table by Primo Levi, in The Australian Science Teachers' Journal, Vol. 34, No. 2 (May), pp.91-92.
Von Baeyer, H.C. (1992). Taming the atom: the emergence of the visible Microworld. London: Viking/Penguin Books Ltd, p.129.

BILL PALMER
Originally published as Palmer W. P. (1994). A Review of 'The Sixth Day' &' The Wrench' both by Primo Levi, Abacus Books, The Australian Science Teachers' Journal Issue 133, Vol 40, No 2, pp.81-82