i encouraged dwain to read two books by primo leve that i had read a long time ago, at least one of them, the first one. He suggested invisible man by ralph ellison, which i had read forty or 50 years ago. Remembered very little of it. I particularly forgot it was 582 pages long. It's an extraordinary book. And i think il easily argueablly the great american novel and i didn't appreciate it when i was 20 years oldim very glad i read it again.
In his memoir of his time in Auschwitz, Primo Levi describes Jewish prisoners bathing in freezing water without soap--not because they thought it would make them cleaner, but because it helped them hold on to their dignity. For poet and author Dwayne Betts, Levi's description of his fellow inmates' suffering, much like the novelist Ralph Ellison's portrayal of early twentieth-century black life in America, is much more than bearing witness to the darkest impulses of mankind. Rather, Betts tells EconTalk host Russ Roberts, both authors' writing turns experiences of inhumanity into lessons on what it means to be a human being.