New perspective

I've spent the last month almost (eek!) trying to find the aspects of two authors that make them similar enough to be clear - and at times I feel I'm grasping at straws.  The most similar aspect of the two authors is their biography, but I'm writing about their literature.  I've looked at themes, which may be stronger in one author or the other, and I'm left with the feeling that I'm trying to fake my way through the weaker one; I've looked at the development of their writing over the decades, but that turns into something that completely misses the mark; I've tried to put them in direct conversation with each other, since they were contemporaries and have dedicated / addressed each other at various times.  But it seems like I've been trying to force a closer relationship than they feel comfortable with. Which doesn't mean I have to start over; it just means that I have to adjust my vision.

I think I've been taking the wrong approach. One wrote primarily memoir / autobiography / historical truth - as a Holocaust survivor, he found himself overwrought with the imperative to tell the truth for those who did not survive, knowing that his story would contradict the majority of Holocaust stories by the virtue of his survival.  The other wrote fiction of all kinds: starting with neorealist fiction, he moved into the fantastical, the postmodern and the world of metafiction.  The farther he went from reality, the more his critical eye became apparent.  It is, I hope, through these two completely different approaches that I will be able to find a symbiotic relationship; even better, I would like to find the harmony between these two very different melodies. 

The key may very well be the following statement: 

The best way to read fiction is through history, and the best way to read history is through fiction. 

Are the apple and the orange mutually exclusive?

Can they be both at once?

In ricerca delle radici (In Search of Roots), Primo Levi (#3)

Primo Levi, along with other various Italian authors of his time, was asked to compile and anthologize various writings that shaped him as a thinker, writer and man.  He pairs classical and contemporary, scientific books with fictional ones, and somehow it all makes perfect sense. Levi was not solely a writer. He was a chemist first, but always a reader. It was his experiences during the Holocaust that made him become a writer.

The project was unfulfilled by the publishing house (and, incidentally, Primo Levi is one of the only writers to take the task to heart), but the book speaks volumes about how Levi creates himself.  The passages from the books he chooses are not the most recognizable in all cases, but they are all very telling. Levi wrote that the project was not that diffcult for him, at least finding the passages, because they were the ones he had already marked up over and over.

The book is definitely helpful as I go into the dissertation, but it also made me think about the books that I would say have shaped me as a reader.  I've been thinking about it, and when I have an idea I'll share it.