Books
A sniff at the fifth sense
Published 08 January 2007
A Nosegay
Edited by Lara Feigel Old Street Publishing, 224pp, £11.99
It comes as some surprise that this is the first anthology to compile writings on smell. As Lara Feigel argues in her introduction, the sense is often undervalued: "We have been turning up our noses at smell for centuries." Aristotle called it the most undistinguished of our senses, while Kant wrote it off as the "least rewarding and the most easily dispensable".
If the mission of this book is to awaken us to our olfactory powers, then it is an absolute success. The anthology juxtaposes writings by authors as wide-ranging as Pliny the Elder, Helen Keller, George Orwell, Roald Dahl and Coco Chanel. Though the collection is comprised primarily of literary pieces, these are complemented by the factual and cultural insights
provided by extracts from sciencebased studies, newspaper articles and the internet. One moment the reader may be lost in a reverie inspired by a Shakespearean sonnet, and the next be learning of evidence that dogs can detect cancer from a person's odour.
Painstaking deliberation has obviously been devoted to producing this compendium. It may be surprising that this is the first anthology of its kind, but it would not be surprising if it were the last – I do not see how it could be bettered.
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