Interesting Emendations: James Wood's "Job Existed: Primo Levi"

James Wood’s brilliant “Job Existed: Primo Levi,” included in his new collection Serious Noticing, originally appeared in The New Yorker (September 28, 2015), under the title “The Art of Witness.” Comparing the two versions, I see many differences: 

New Yorker	Serious Noticing
How could it be anything but heroic to have entered Hell and not been swallowed up?	How could it be anything but heroic to have entered hellmouth and not been swallowed up?
To have witnessed it with such delicate lucidity, such reserves of irony and even equanimity?	To have witnessed it with such lucidity, such reserves of irony and even equanimity?
That edition praises the text as “a lasting testament to the indestructibility of the human spirit,” though Levi often emphasized how quickly and efficiently the camps could destroy the human spirit.	That same edition praises the text as “a lasting testament to the indestructibility of the human spirit,” though Levi often emphasized how quickly and efficiently the camps could destroy the human spirit.
Another survivor, the writer Jean Améry, mistaking comprehension for concession, disapprovingly called Levi “the pardoner,” though Levi repeatedly argued that he was interested in justice, not in indiscriminate forgiveness.	A fellow survivor, the writer Jean Améry, mistaking comprehension for concession, disapprovingly called Levi “the pardoner,” though Levi repeatedly argued that he was interested in justice, not in indiscriminate forgiveness.
A German official who had encountered Levi in the camp laboratory found in “If This Is a Man” an “overcoming of Judaism, a fulfillment of the Christian precept to love one’s enemies, and a testimony of faith in Man.”	A German correspondent, an official who had encountered Levi in the camp, applauded If This Is Man, and found in it“an “overcoming of Judaism, a fulfillment of the Christian precept to love one’s enemies, and a testimony of faith in Man.”
He married a woman, Lucia Morpurgo, from his own class and background, and died in the same Turin apartment building in which he had been born.	He married a woman, Lucia Morpurgo, from the same class and background he was born into, and died in the same Turin apartment building in which he had been born.
The publication of “The Complete Works of Primo Levi” (Liveright), in three volumes, represents a monumental and noble endeavor on the part of its publisher, its general editor, Ann Goldstein, and the many translators who have produced new versions of Levi’s work. Although his best-known work has already benefitted from fine English translation, it’s a gift to have nearly all his writing gathered together, along with work that has not before been published in English (notably, a cache of uncollected essays, written between 1949 and 1987).	[Deleted]
Levi gives ebullient life to this comfortable, sometimes eccentric world in “The Periodic Table”—a memoir, a history, an essay in elegy, and the best example of his variousliterary talents.	Levi gives ebullient life to this comfortable, sometimes eccentric world in “The Periodic Table”—a memoir, a history, an essay in elegy, and the best example of his different literary talents.
From an early age, Levi appears to have possessed many of the qualities of his later prose—meticulousness, curiosity, furious discretion, orderliness to the point of priggishness. In primary school, he was top of his class (his schoolmates cheered him on with “Primo Levi Primo!”). As a teen-ager at the Liceo D’Azeglio, Turin’s leading classical academy, he stood out for his cleverness, his smallness, and his Jewishness. He was bullied, and his health deteriorated. His English biographer Ian Thomson suggests that Levi developed a sense of himself as physically and sexually inadequate, and that his subsequent devotion to robust athletic pursuits, such as mountaineering and skiing, represented a self-improvement project. Thomson notes that, in later life, he recalled his mistreatment at school as “uniquely anti-Semitic,” and adds, “How far this impression was coloured by Levi’s eventual persecution is hard to tell.” But perhaps Thomson has it the wrong way round. Perhaps Levi’s extraordinary resilience in Auschwitz had something to do with a hardened determination not to be persecuted again.	[Deleted and replaced by a completely new paragraph that begins, “But even in this first, light-hearted chapter, Levi announces his theme....”]
On the basis of the first chapter of “The Periodic Table” alone, you know that you are in the hands of a true writer, someone equipped with an avaricious and indexical memory, who knows how to animate his details, stage his scenes, and ration his anecdotes.	If you had not read anything else by Primo Levi, you would know,on the basis of the first chapter of The Periodic Table, that you are in the hands of a true writer, someone equipped with an avaricious and indexical memory, who knows how to animate his details, stage his scenes, and ration his anecdotes.
Throughout, there are wittily pragmatic, original descriptions of minerals, gases, and metals, as in this description of zinc: “Zinc, zinco, Zink: laundry tubs are made of it, it’s an element that doesn’t say much to the imagination, it’s gray and its salts are colorless, it’s not toxic, it doesn’t provide gaudy chromatic reactions—in other words, it’s a boring element.”	Throughout, there are wittily pragmatic, cleverly original descriptions of minerals, gases, and metals, as in this description of zinc: “Zinc, zinco, Zink: laundry tubs are made of it, it’s an element that doesn’t say much to the imagination, it’s gray and its salts are colorless, it’s not toxic, it doesn’t provide gaudy chromatic reactions—in other words, it’s a boring element.”
Repeatedly, Levi tolls his bell of departure: these vivid human beings existed, and then they were gone. But,above all, they existed.	Repeatedly, Levi tolls his bell of departure: they existed, and then they disappeared. But above all, they existed.
Pagis’s poem means: “Job did exist, because Job was in the death camps. Suffering is not the most terrible thing; worse is to have the reality of one’s suffering erased.” In just this way, Levi’s writing insists that Job existed and was not a parable. His clarity is ontological and moral: these things happened, a victim witnessed them, and they must never be erased or forgotten. There are many such facts in Levi’s books of testament. The reader is quickly introduced to the principle of scarcity, in which everything—every detail, object, and fact—becomes essential, for everything will be stolen: wire, rags, paper, bowl, a spoon, bread.	I think that Pagis’s poem defiantly means: “Job did exist, because Job was in the death camps. The most terrible thing is not suffering: it is to have the reality of one’s suffering erased.” In just this way, Levi’s writing insists that Job existed and was not a parable. His famous clarity is ontological and moral: these things happened, a victim witnessed them, and they must never be erased or forgotten. There are many such facts in Levi’s books of testament. The reader is quickly introduced to the principle of scarcity, in which everything,every detail, object, and fact, becomes essential, for everything will be stolen – wire, rags, paper, bowl, a spoon, bread.
Many of these horrifying facts can be found in testimony by other witnesses.  What is different about Levi’s work is bound up with his uncommon ability to tell a story. It is striking how much writing by survivors does not quitetell a story; it has often been poetic (Paul Celan, Dan Pagis, Yehiel De-Nur), or analytical, reportorial, anthropological, philosophical (Jean Améry, Germaine Tillion, Eugen Kogon, Viktor Frankl).	Yet many of these horrifying facts can be found in testimony by other witnesses of the horror. What is different about Levi’s work is bound up with his uncommon ability to tell a story. It is striking how much writing by survivors does not tell a story, quite; it has often been poetic (Paul Celan, Dan Pagis, Yehiel De-Nur), or analytic, reportorial, anthropological, philosophical (Jean Améry, Germaine Tillion, Eugen Kogon, Viktor Frankl).
Along with this scientific mastering of the information comes something like a wariness of narrative naïveté	Along with this scientific mastering of the information comes something like a wariness of narrative naivety
Levi’s prose has a tone of similar command, and in his last book, “The Drowned and the Saved,” he became such an analyst, grouping material by theme rather than telling stories. Nor did he always tell his stories in conventional sequential fashion. But “If This Is a Man” and “The Truce” are powerful because they do not disdain story.	Levi’s prose has a tone of similar command (its composure, its reticence, its order), and in his last book, The Drowned and the Saved, he became such an analyst, grouping material by theme rather than by telling stories about it. Nor did he always tell his stories in conventional sequential fashion. But at the simplest level, If This Is a Man and The Truce are powerful because they do not disdain story.
He introduces thirst like this: “Will they give us something to drink? No, they line us up again, lead us to a huge square.” He first mentions the now infamous refrain “The only way out is through the chimney” thus: “What does it mean? We’ll soon learn very well what it means.” To register his discoveries, he often breaks from thepast tense into a diaristic present.	Unlike Frankl, for instance, Leviintroduces thirst like this: “Will they give us something to drink? No, they line us up again, lead us to a huge square.” He first mentions the now infamous refrain “The only way out is through the chimney” thus: “What does it mean? We’ll soon learn very well what it means.” To register his ghastly novelties, he often breaks from past tense into a diaristic present.
The result is a kind of ethics, when the writer is constantly registering the moral (which is to say, in this case, the immoral) novelty of the details he encounters. That is why every reader who has opened “If This Is a Man” feels impelled to continue reading it, despite the horror of the material. Levi seems to join us in our incomprehension, which is both a narrative astonishment and a moral astonishment. The victims’ ignorance of the name “Auschwitz” tells us everything, actually and symbolically. For Levi, “Auschwitz” had not, until this moment, existed. It had to be invented, and it had to be introduced into his life. Evil is not the absence of the good, as theology and philosophy have sometimes maintained. It is the invention of the bad: Job existed and was not a parable. Levi registers the same astonishment when first hit by a German officer—“a profound amazement: how can one strike a man without anger?” Or when, driven by thirst, he breaks off an icicle only to have it snatched away by a guard. “Why?” Levi asks. To which comes the answer “Hier ist kein warum” (“Here there is no why”). Or when Alex the Kapo, a professional criminal who has been given limited power over other prisoners, wipes his greasy hand on Levi’s shoulder, as if the other man were not a man. Or when Levi, who was fortunate enough to be chosen to work as a chemist, in the Buna laboratory, comes face to face with his chemistry examiner, Dr. Pannwitz, who raises his eyes to glance at his victim: “That look did not pass between two men; and if I knew how to explain fully the nature of that look, exchanged as if through the glass wall of an aquarium between two beings who inhabit different worlds, I would also be able to explain the essence of the great insanity of the Third Reich.”	On its own, Levi’s talent for narrative might amount to little more than a trivial literary preference. But a charged relation to novelty becomes important, becomes a kind of ethics, when the writer is constantly registering the moral (which is to say, in this case, the immoral)novelty of the details he encounters. That is why every reader who has opened If This Is a Manfeels impelled to continue reading it, despite the horror of the material. Levi seems to join us in our incomprehension, which is both a narrative astonishment – how is this possible? what horror is next? –  and a moral astonishment: not just at the existence of evil, but at the fact that such evil has been made new, introduced into the writer’s world. Levi’s writing thus has the form of continuous moral introduction. It is why the victims’ ignorance of the name “Auschwitz” is not a small detail. On the contrary, it tells us everything, actually and symbolically. For Levi, “Auschwitz” had not, until this moment, existed. It had to be invented, and it had to be introduced into his life. Evil is not the absence of the good, as theology and philosophy have sometimes maintained. It is the invention of the bad: Job existed and was not a parable. Levi registers the same astonishment when first hit by a German officer—“a profound amazement: how can one strike a man without anger?” It had never happened before. This moral astonishment is felt in some of the book’s more celebrated moments, too– when, driven by thirst, he breaks off an icicle only to have it snatched away by a guard, and asks “Why?” To which comes the answer “Hier ist kein warum” (“Here there is no why”). Or when Alex the Kapo, a common criminal, but given limited power over other prisoners, thoughtlessly wipes his greasy hand on Levi’s shoulder, as if the other man were not a man. Or when Levi, who was fortunate enough to be chosen to work as a chemist, in the Buna laboratory, comes face to face with his German examiner, Dr. Pannwitz, a cold official who raises his eyes to glance at his victim. It is just that, a glance, but Levi has not experienced its like before: “That look did not pass between two men; and if I knew how to explain fully the nature of that look, exchanged as if through the glass wall of an aquarium between two beings who inhabit different worlds, I would also be able to explain the essence of the great insanity of the Third Reich.”
Both “If This Is a Man” and “The Truce” contain beautiful portraits of goodness and charity, and it is not the punishers and sadists but the life-givers—the fortifiers, the endurers, the men and women who sustained Levi in his struggle to survive—who burst out of these pages.	Both “If This Is a Man” and “The Truce” contain beautiful portraits of goodness and charity, and it is not the punishers and sadists but the life-givers, the fortifiers, the endurers, the men and women who sustained Levi in his struggle to survive,who burst out of these pages.
You can feel this emphasis on moral resistance in every sentence Levi wrote: his prose is a form of keeping his boots shined and his posture proudly upright. It is a style that seems at first windowpane clear but is actually full of undulating strategies.	You can feel this emphasis on moral resistance in every sentence Levi wrote: his prose is a form of keeping his boots shined and his posture proudly upright. It is a style that seems at first to be as lucid as glass – an Orwellian windowpane – but which is actually full of undulating strategies.
For surely the power of these impeccable words, as so often in Levi, is moral. First, they register their contamination by what befell them (the “adventure,” we think, should not be called that; it must be described as an “ordeal”); and then they dryly repel that contamination (no, we will insist on calling the experience, with full ironic power, an “adventure”).	For surely the power of these impeccable words is moral. First, they register their contamination by what befell them (the “adventure,” we think, should not be called that, it should be described as an “ordeal”); and then they gloriously repel that contamination (no, we will insist in calling the experience, with full ironic power, an “adventure”).
On the morning of April 11, 1987, this healthily humane man, age sixty-seven, walked out of his fourth-floor apartment and either fell or threw himself over the bannister of the building’s staircase. The act, if suicide, appeared to undo the suture of his survival. Some people were outraged; others refused to see it as suicide. The implication, not quite spoken, was uncomfortably close to dismay that the Nazis had won after all. “Primo Levi died at Auschwitz forty years later,” Elie Wiesel said. Yet Levi was a survivor who committed suicide, not a suicide who failed to survive. He himself had seemed to argue against such morbidity, in his chapter on Jean Améry in “The Drowned and the Saved.” Améry, who killed himself at the age of sixty-five, said that in Auschwitz he thought a great deal about dying; rathertartly, Levi replied that in the camp he was too busy for such perturbation. “The business of living is the best defense against death, and not only in the camps.”	Yet on the morning of 11 April 1987, this healthily humane man walked out of his third-floorapartment and either fell or threw himself over the bannister of the building’s staircase. The act, if suicide, appeared to undo the suture of his survival. Some people were outraged, others refused to see it as suicide. The implication, not quite spoken, was uncomfortably close to dismay that the Nazis had won after all. “Primo Levi died at Auschwitz forty years later,” said Elie Wiesel. Wiesel must, in one essential way, be right. But to lament that the Nazis have won every time a survivor of the Holocaust commits suicide is truly a concession that the Nazis have won. Yet Levi was a survivor who committed suicide, not a suicide who failed to survive. He himself had seemed to argue against such morbidity, in his chapter on Jean Améry in The Drowned and the Saved. Améry, who killed himself at the age of sixty-seven, said that in Auschwitz he thought a great deal about dying; tartly, and with characteristic irony, Levi replied that in the camp he was too busy for such perturbation. “The aims of life are the best defence against death: and not only in the Lager.”
For, above all, Job existed and was not a parable.	For above all, Job existed and was not a parable.

You can see from the above table that most of the differences are stylistic. But there are a few substantive discrepancies, too. I find the formal changes fascinating. Obviously, Wood is not a follower of William Strunk’s famous “Omit needless words” principle of composition (see Strunk and White, The Elements of Style, 1972). And why should we be surprised at that? In his wonderful “The Fun Stuff: Homage to Keith Moon” (included in Serious Noticing), he defines an “ideal sentence” as “a long, passionate onrush, formally controlled and joyously messy, propulsive but digressively self-interrupted, attired but dishevelled, careful and lawless, right and wrong.” Wood’s sentences in “Job Existed: Primo Levi” aren’t like that, but many of them could be more concise. For example, in the Serious Noticing version, he writes, 

Levi seems to join us in our incomprehension, which is both a narrative astonishment – how is this possible? what horror is next? –  and a moral astonishment: not just at the existence of evil, but at the fact that such evil has been made new, introduced into the writer’s world.

The New Yorker version is much crisper:

Levi seems to join us in our incomprehension, which is both a narrative astonishment and a moral astonishment.

Another example: in the Serious Noticing version, Wood writes,

If you had not read anything else by Primo Levi, you would know, on the basis of the first chapter of The Periodic Table, that you are in the hands of a true writer…. 

Again, The New Yorker version is more succinct:

On the basis of the first chapter of “The Periodic Table” alone, you know that you are in the hands of a true writer…. 

Even more interesting (to me, at least), are the differences in word choices. For instance, in the New Yorker piece, Wood writes, “First, they register their contamination by what befell them (the “adventure,” we think, should not be called that; it must be described as an “ordeal”); and then they dryly repel that contamination …” (emphasis added). But in Serious Noticing, he says, “First, they register their contamination by what befell them (the “adventure,” we think, should not be called that, it should be described as an “ordeal”); and then they gloriously repel that contamination …” (emphasis added).

Another example: In the New Yorker piece, he writes, “To register his discoveries, he often breaks from the past tense into a diaristic present” (emphasis added). However, in Serious Noticing, he says, “To register his ghastly novelties, he often breaks from past tense into a diaristic present” (emphasis added).

I find the factual discrepancies between the two versions regarding the floor level from which Levi fell/jumped to his death, Jean Améry’s age when he committed suicide, and the exact wording of the famous quote from Levi’s The Drowned and the Saved (all highlighted in red in the above table) puzzling. Wood had the benefit of The New Yorker’s vaunted fact-checkers, yet in republishing his piece in Serious Noticing, he chose to ignore their work. As a result, “Job Existed: Primo Levi” is marred by two factual errors and a questionable translation of one of Levi’s key sentences.

From my comparison of the New Yorker and Serious Noticing versions of “Job Existed: Primo Levi,” I conclude that Wood disregards New Yorker editing and fact-checking.