Led by the nose

Continuing with our reflections on smell, a fascinating article in the New York Times on lethal smells. Oddly enough, though you have to be a Times subscriber (or pay) to read it there, you can see it here at the IHT for free. Go figger.

The article is by Luca Turin, probably the world's most famous nose, and deals with stinks rather than scents. And the lethality of no smell at all -- some of the most dangerous compounds have no smell at all, such as carbon monoxide, sarin gas (as used in the Tokyo subway attack in 1995) or nuclear waste. Turin writes:

• Consider that on a beautiful stretch of beach near Hartlepool, England, sits a factory that manufactures the smelliest flavors, those that make the instant noodle soup in the office microwave smell of leeks. Next to it is a nuclear power station. When the wind is from the northeast, the guys producing nuclear waste phone to complain about the smell of noodle soup.

Phosgene, according to a 1939 book on gases used in wartime, smelled of hay. Dichlorodiethyl sulphide smells of mustard (hence the name, mustard gas).

More on vile smells over at Scientific American (subscriber only) with an article on how researchers are cleaning up what are called (by Luca Turin, apparently) the "Godzilla of smells" -- a group of compounds called the isonitriles, which can cause you to heave your guts up at the slightest whiff.

Now here's a fine coincidence: the New York Times has a review by John Lanchester (author of the disappointing gourmet murder mystery The Debt to Pleasure) of Luca Turin's book, The Secret of Scent. He makes it sound enthralling:

• Turin has an extraordinary gift for writing about smell. Before he became interested in the science of smell, he was that rare thing, a brilliantly readable perfume critic. He is a biologist by training, based in London after a peripatetic career that eventually led him to the business of fragrance chemistry. He first fell in love with perfume while working in France, via an encounter with a Japanese perfume called Nombre Noir: “halfway between a rose and a violet, but without a trace of the sweetness of either, set instead against an austere, almost saintly background of cigar-box cedar notes. At the same time, it wasn’t dry, and seemed to be glistening with a liquid freshness that made its deep colors glow like a stained-glass window.”

And then what do you know? Up pops a review, in The Guardian this time, of a book by Lanchester himself, and its title? Fragrant Harbour.

To be fair, the book came out in 2002 (which is when the review dates from), and Lanchester's book is about Hong Kong (the title is the English translation of the city's name). So there's no connection between the various strands of this post at all, in reality. But I rather like the way the pieces tumbled out onto the table, giving the illusion of a pattern.

Wodehouse in the house

Someone on a blog I was reading quoted one sentence of PG Wodehouse, and as always happens, I LOLled. Is there now or has there ever been another writer who so consistently has that effect on people?

The someone was John Baker, who maintains a writing blog that's well worth keeping an eye on. What I like best about him is his cat-burglar approach: he's in and out in a matter of minutes, and before you know what's hit you, your mind has been rifled -- or something. That metaphor may require some work. As it happens, a recent post is on metaphor and simile, where he quotes John Cooper Clarke and Alexei Sayle. You have to admire a man with a frame of reference like that.

My point was, too many bloggers go on for too long, probably because they have no editor within or without. And now I'm in danger of infringing my own law.

On this day

Last year on Sour Grapes (there have been no other years on Sour Grapes) I locked myself into the duty of providing one quote every day on a particular theme, and soon found it such an onerous task I almost abandoned it, and was only saved by the ability to pre-write posts and arrange for them to be posted automagically on the day required.

So I'm anxious about the ability or determination of Brian Sholis to keep going on his new blog, Today in Letters. As the name suggests, and as the tagline makes clear, the aim is to provide "letters and diary entries from this day in literary history". It's going great so far, with entries on Alan Bennett, Pushkin, the Goncourts, Faulkner and Proust to name but a few (it's only been going since 8 January). I'll certainly be adding his feed to my feed thingy.

To give a taste, here's just a snippet of a diary extract from Alan Bennett:

• Even the most ordinary remark would be given her own particular twist, and she could be quite camp. Conversation had once turned, as conversation will, to forklift trucks. Feeling that industrial machinery might be remote from Cecil's sphere of interest I said: 'Do you know what a forklift truck is?' She looked at me. 'I do. To my cost.'

Classic Bennett. The ear is faultlessly tuned, but there's not only the found art of the lady's remarks, there's also that "as conversation will" which reminds you he was a colleague of Peter Cook.

Writers pick their favourites

What do you get when 125 of today's writers are asked to nominate their best books of all time? The answer is, something like the unwieldy 544-title list included in The Top Ten: Writers Pick Their Favorite Books, on sale now. If you buy the book, you get a more detailed breakdown of who chose what, as well as some advocacy from some writers for their picks. But in the absence of an actual copy, some observations about the list itself:

• Overwhelmingly American, which is only to be expected since the writers list is, too. From a European point of view, most of the Big Names are included, but aren't they being slightly over-represented? Some of these titles are minor works. Who would put them in their all-time favourites list? Is this suspicion a reflection of my ignorance of the field of American writing? Or are American writers being either chauvinistic or provincial? Only someone more familiar with AmLit can say.
  
• Of the foreign writers listed, the French seem to me to prevail over all other combined. With only one or two exceptions, this involves classic authors: Proust, Zola, Balzac and Flaubert. I was again surprised to see dodgy listings in Flaubert's case (A Simple Heart?) and the inclusion of The Three Musketeers (I cannot imagine anyone who managed to finish this book also enjoying it). The first of those anomalies is explained by the presence on the panel of Julian Barnes. The second has no explanation: perhaps the writer who voted has had his memory affected by seeing one of the several film versions, let's hope the one with Olly Reed.
  
• So does nobody read modern literature in translation at all? There's one nod to Nobel winner Orhan Pamuk. The most recent French novel I can see is one of the Marguerites, Duras or Yourcenar. Borges and Garcia Marquez get a mention, neither of them terribly recent.
  
• A certain amount of log-rolling. This always comes up when writers nominate their favourites, and gives great pleasure every year when Private Eye magazine reveals the back-scratching that's been going on in the year-end choices. Most unscientifically, I have controlled for the fact that these are prominent contemporary writers, and must therefore be held in some regard. But really, how else do you explain the presence of two titles by John Banville, who also happens to be on the panel? Who was trying to suck up to Chuck Palahniuk, author of the execrable Fight Club? And while Margaret Atwood's Handmaid's Tale can justifiably be described as a major novel, who in their right mind would vote for Oryx and Crake, which was just rubbish?
• There's probably a bit of national favouritism too. I was amazed to see two titles by Alisdair Gray: 1982, Janine, a very slight romance; and Lanark, an trilogy whose influence was greater than its sales, in that dead-end that was English provincial magical realism, when everyone decided they were going to do a Midnight's Children for whatever their own personal backwater was. I was also taken aback to see the far more deserving Sunset Song, by Lewis Grassic Gibbon. There are to my knowledge two Scottish authors on the panel: Ian Rankin of the Rebus mysteries, and AL Kennedy. Mystery solved. Likewise, I'd imagine most of the French excesses are Julian Barnes' fault.
  
• I'm not sure I'm in favour of the wholesale ignoring of boundaries in this list. Novels are intertwined with poems like The Divine Comedy and Don Juan, which in turn are mixing with plays by Pinter and Shakespeare, which rub shoulders with short stories by Alice Munro, Raymond Carver and Anton Chekhov. Anthony Powell has his entire Dance to the Music of Time cycle represented in one entry, while Anthony Trollope has to make do with The Last Chronicle of Barset representing his first great cycle, and Phineas Finn the second. It simply makes no sense to separate one of the parts out from the whole.
  
• Pedantic it may be, but I would urge compilers of such lists to do a better job of proof-reading. And while typos are one thing, there's simply no excuse for getting Guy de Maupassant's name wrong. Henri was his proper first name as far as the parish register is concerned, but there's not a soul in the world who knows him by that name.

You can also post your own Top Ten, if you like, and read what others have suggested. There's no clear consensus, with Anna Karenina and War and Peace topping the charts, but not by many votes. There are also a lot of titles mentioned that the professionals didn't vote for. All of this is a Good Thing. There's no need for too much uniformity.

My own list would be a lot less adventurous, and far more provincial: one continent represented, with one exception. Two works only from the 20th century, six from the 19th, one from the 17th and one from the 16th. Pathetic.

I should say that I abhor such lists, because literature is not a beauty contest. You'll point out, quite rightly, that nor is beauty. And here's the list I drew up:

Labyrinths
Middlemarch
Great Expectations
The Barchester Chronicles
The Diary of Samuel Pepys
The Short Stories of Anton Chekhov
Thérèse Raquin
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Pride and Prejudice
The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini

Try it yourself. A most infuriating exercise.

Art for Art's Sake

Here is a list of all the books Art Garfunkel has read since 1968. Yes, that Art Garfunkel, of Simon and Garfunkel, and Bad Timing, and Bright Eyes. There are 967 of them, bringing us up to January 2006 or an average of 26 books a year, or one every two weeks. That's not a particularly voracious schedule, despite what the website says. Let's face it: in his years with Paul Simon he never really had much to do, did he? Get up and sing, erm, that's it.

He also provides a list of 135 favourites here, which seems like rather a lot. The list includes some I'd agree with wholeheartedly: The Sorrows of Young Werther, Pride and Prejudice, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Vanity Fair, Middlemarch, Bleak House, The Red and the Black, Tales from Shakespeare, Perfume and Post Office. His list is clearly not only longer than mine would be, but visibly broader and perhaps even deeper.

It's a very presentable list, but is it too contrived? Did he really read all of those books? We'll never know, and that's in the nature of such lists. You have to at least admire his industry and dedication in keeping the list going, or making it look as if he had. In the end, it doesn't matter. It's an entertaining browse in itself. One or two things on there that might be worth looking up, had we but world enough, and time.

So, gentle reader: what would be on your list of 135 favourite reads of the last 37.5 years?

The power of jargon

Robert Fisk has a bit of a rant in The Independent about the rise of jargon and the corruption of words.

Key paragraph:

• Some newly popular phrases, such as "tipping point" - used about Middle East conflicts when the bad guys are about to lose - or "big picture" - when moralists have to be reminded of the greater good - are merely fashionable. Others are simply odd. I always mixed up "bonding" with "bondage" and "quality time" with a popular assortment of toffees. I used to think that "increase" was a perfectly acceptable word until I discovered that in the military sex-speak of the Pentagon, Iraq would endure a "spike" of violence until a "surge" of extra troops arrived in Baghdad.

Okay, it's a pretty tired and overworked subject, but Fisk gives it his own spin.

Admitted a sizar?

Banging on about Pepys once more, but yesterday's Life of the Day from the Dictionary of National Biography was his, and included a paragraph on his education:

• St Paul's gave Pepys a leaving exhibition in 1650, and on 21 June he entered his name at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where his uncle John Pepys LLD was a fellow. Several members of the family had distinguished themselves in the law, and Samuel seemed to be headed in the same direction. But it was at Magdalene that he was admitted a sizar on 1 October, and where he took up residence on 5 March 1651. On 3 April he was advanced to a scholarship on the foundation of John Spendluffe. Perhaps an invitation came from the new master, John Sadler, a neighbour of the Pepyses in Salisbury Court; another influence may have been Samuel Morland, who became Pepys's tutor, and who knew the Montagus. Whatever the circumstances, it was a move which Pepys and the college only once had occasion to regret (when he was reprimanded for drunkenness in hall on the night of 20 October 1653). Pepys retained fond memories of the college beer and the 'town tart'; he also made many lasting friendships. In the first year he kept with Robert Sawyer, a third-year man and a future attorney-general. Richard Cumberland, later bishop of Peterborough, had been a contemporary of Pepys at St Paul's, but it was at Magdalene that they became close friends. On 4 October 1653 Pepys was elected to a Smith scholarship. He took his BA in March 1654, recording his new status in a book of cabalistic hokum which had taken his fancy. After he left Cambridge Pepys regularly visited his old college; he proceeded MA on 26 June 1660.

So how many of those terms in orange were you familiar with?