Primo Levi: If This is a Man and the Truce

If This is a Man. The Truce, by Primo Levi

 It is in the midst of utter desolation that the Levi discovers the real meaning of his predicament:

‘That precisely because the lager was a great machine to reduce us to beasts, we must not become beasts; that even in this place one can survive, and therefore one must want to survive to tell the story to bear witness; that to survive we must force ourselves to save at least the skeleton, the scaffolding, the form of civilization [...] We still possess one power, the power to refuse our consent.’

Indeed, Levi not only survives Auschwitz, but through his profound morality, was able to embody the personal and collective suffering of the Jewish Race. In turn, he became a champion for all the world. One of the truly great writers and emancipators of the modern era, who was able to raise the banner of freedom at all costs. Before this status however, he must content, with the nightmare world he found himself within. 

‘In an instant, our women, our parents, our children disappeared,’ and ‘for the first time we became aware, that our language lacks words to express this offense, the demolition of man. In a moment of prophetic intuition, the reality was revealed to us: We had reached the bottom. It is is not possible to sink lower than this.' ‘Imagine now a man deprived of everyone he loves, and at the same time of his house, habits, his clothes, in short of everything he possesses: He will be a hollow man reduced to suffering and needs, forgetful of his dignity and restraint.’

Levi lost everything within Auschwitz. He became an shell of a man, beset with hunger, sickness and despair. Nevertheless, he believed his suffering had value. That ‘no human experience is without meaning or unworthy of analysis.’  Furthermore by reflecting on the experience he was able to understand why the Holocaust occurred in the first place.

‘For those survivors remembering is a duty. They do not want to forget, because they understand that their experiences were not meaningless, that the camps were not an accident, an unforeseen happening. The nazi camps were the apex the culmination of fascism in Europe’ In the Truce he goes further stating, ‘we felt we had something to say, enormous things to say to every German [...] We felt an urgent need to settle our accounts. to ask them to explain and comment [...] they ought as a sacred duty to listen, to learn everything immediately from us.’ 

Of course this intellectual analysis doesn’t help in the camp itself, and Levi has to wrestle with the fundamental problem of why some men lived and others died. For him, the camp can be separated into a dichotomy of the ‘drowned and saved.’ Those who survive do so because they possess strength, cunning and treachery. The survivor ‘will become stronger, and so will be feared, and he who is feared, is ipso facto, a candidate for survival.’ Those that die, do so because they are weaker, ‘to sink is the easiest of matters [....] [men] who finished in the gas chambers have the same story or more exactly have no story; they followed the slope down to the bottom like streams that run down to the sea.’

 Camp life is a microcosm of wider society, only without the necessary safe guards . The old law of jungle comes into play, man in a state of nature, bound to the principles of evolution, where one beast devours the other. Levi quite rightly asks, ‘is this a man?’ for when humanity is reduced to raw hunger and blind necessity, disturbing visions emerge. Nevertheless, Levi is able to see past this flaw  to the integrity beneath. In The Truce particularly, we learn of the gradual adjustment to living on the outside, and a life that offers a better future. 

While not a pleasant read ‘If This is a Man’ is a truly important book, for not only does it bear witness to such terrible events, but also shows with the moral clarity of a genius, why and how such experiences came to be. Levi shows, that literature is not redundant, that the world is not a dream, and life not a metaphysical event. That through all the bloodshed, we still share our common ground.  That kindness, tolerance and the idea of freedom, renew the world and a world that is as real as it gets. And as such, there is always a need for men to tell such stories, for suffering precedes wisdom.

Mike Tyson: The Undisputed Truth, My Autobiography

Mike Tyson: The Undisputed Truth

Let me start with a confession. I think Mike Tyson is a great guy, and to me, he’s an inspiration and role-model. I have always been drawn to those men who have lived chaotic, extreme, and often destructive lives. Those people who have plummeted to the depths of despair, but also the peaks of exaltation. Those individuals who have lived a reckless lifestyle, hurtling towards their own demise, and don’t care to stop it. I’m not sure what that says about myself, but it’s like Jack Kerouac said: ‘The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars!’

With that being said Mike Tyson fits the criteria. A man of all qualities: Heavyweight champion, convicted rapist, street thug, psychiatric patient, and Hall of Fame Boxer. He has lived an interesting life to say the least. What struck me most about Tyson is recent years is how much he has changed, and how he is now simply, a good man. Considering his background, and where he came from, this is an astonishing, if not a superhuman feat.

He grew up in the Brownsville slums of Brooklyn New York. ‘It was a very horrific, tough and a gruesome kind of place [...] Cops were always driving by with their sirens on; ambulances always coming to pick someone up; guns going off, people getting stabbed [...] I never really felt safe on those streets.’ He had no father in childhood, his mother died when he was 16, his sister died when he was 24, and on top of that, he saw many friends brutally slain in gang violence. It was definitely a hard knock life. Surprisingly, Tyson was bulled. He says ‘I still feel like a coward to this day because of that bullying.’ ‘I knew that the demons from my childhood were on my trail everywhere I went [...] that little boy that had been bullied, brutalized and abused.’ After getting involved in gangs, and armed robbery, he ends up in the juvenile penitentiary, where he takes up boxing with legendary trainer Cus d’Amato. What follows is a superstar rise to the top of professional boxing. 

However, tragedy struck when Cus D’Amato died just before Tyson became the youngest heavyweight champion. For Tyson, this was like loosing a father, and the only person who ever loved him. He states ‘By the time I won the belt I was truly a wrecked soul.’ From here on out, Tyson lived reckless lifestyle, and in all honesty, it’s miraculous he survived at all. He says: ‘So what did I care if I died. I never had no fucking life. What did I have to look forward to?’ It is too difficult to pull out individual stories, due to the sheer number of them. Tyson’s excess lifestyle involved, coke, crack, cannabis, orgies, alcohol, 42 girlfriends, sex addiction, and bipolar disorder. Not to mention rape, prison, lawsuits and biting.

We all know the story from there. When talking about the Lennox Lewis fight, Tyson is honest: ‘All those years of snorting coke and drinking and smoking weed and screwing around with massive amounts of women had finally taken their toll [...] Iron Mike had brought me too much pain, too many lawsuits, too much hate from the public, the stigma I was a rapist [...] Each punch I took from Lewis, chipped away at that pose, that persona. And I was a willing participant in its destruction.’  A rather ignominious end for one of the greatest fighters who ever lived, but I’m more interested in Tyson outside the ring, and after years of self-destruction, his gradual recovery.

He says: ‘One day I woke up and said to myself, I ain’t going to do this shit no more. I wanted to be awake, I want to be of service. I wanted to be a player in the game of life, functioning with all your marbles and responding to the best of your ability.’ ‘its not always a happy ending when you talk about recovery, but when endings our happy, they’re almost a godsend. People are going to die in our family, they’re going to run away and get high and OD. [...] Getting involved in the recovery program was one of the greatest things that ever happened to me. These are great people and they never get enough credit from our society.’

 Unfortunately in 2009, Mike Tyson suffered another loss this time his baby daughter Exodus in a freak accident on a treadmill. Tyson states: ‘Loosing exodus was the most bitter and helpless feeling I ever had in my life. [...] Its been four years now and I still don’t know how I’m going to survive this.’ One never completely recovers, and so it is inevitable, that Tyson still suffers the despair and emptiness of his early years. However there is a new commitment to at least try to be a better man. He’s now more reflective now: ‘I’m glad I’m not that guy anymore [...] Doing good feels better than doing bad. Believe me I should know. I’ve gotten away with doing a lot of bad things. Theres no satisfaction in that, only in doing good. [...] I still have a lot of work to do. I have to try and love myself. I’m learning to live in this world, and be happy.’

Tyson’s early life was dysfunctional to say the least, and those feelings accumulated at such a vulnerable age don’t just go away. On bad days, the boxer muses: ‘I’ve been betrayed so much in my life that I don’t trust people now. When people make you feel incapable of being loved, you keep those feelings and they never go away. And when you feel incapable of being loved, then you want to hurt people and do bad things. [...] It doesn’t mean anything to anybody but when you come from sewage it means a lot [...] I just know I’m going to hell. And I was born in hell.’ 

Despite this grim tug of war between two faces of the same soul, Tyson is now relatively stable in no small part to his family. The story ends with him reading his favourite Napoleon letter addressed Josephine, but its not what you think. “‘you are my second, a better self, you are my virtue, you are my merit, you are my hope, my heaven, my intercessor, you are my guardian angel, how I love you so’ Tyson then says. ‘I read that out loud and then Kiki and I cry together. Ain’t that something?

 It really is! From ghetto rugrat and armed criminal, to Mike Tyson husband and father. As Charles Dickens said ‘Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts.’ I would vouch to say it is now quite obvious, that Tyson’s rage really stems from his vulnerability and suffering. ‘That shame of being poor, gave me more pain than anything in my life.’ In such a case, I think we can forgive him for his other behaviour. 

So for me, this was truly an amazing book and one I am very grateful for. To see someone like Mike Tyson, redeem all that anger, despair and addiction into something good, is in my mind amazing. Apart from that, Tyson is a born storyteller, and an eccentric, hilarious guy. What shines through more than anything else though is his warmth and humanity. For me this makes it the best book I’ve read in probably the whole year!