Book
Reviews
Book 22
Burr, Chandler (2002) The
Emporer of Scent – A story of Perfume, Obsession, and the Last Mystery of the
Senses pub. Random House NY 2003
Copyright © Tony Burfield May 2004.
In an age where personality gossip sells books and newspapers, rather than
core news items, this book (by a journalist) captures the present mood rather
well. The subject is one Luca Turin, now the Chief Technical Officer of
Flexitral – a company engaged in making “safe” synthetic aroma molecules
for perfumery applications. But formerly Turin was a biophysics lecturer at the
University College of London where he conceived a theory about the theory of
smell. This involved reviving the discarded vibrational theory of odour
perception – a theory which had been largely superseded by theories which
embraced receptor interactions, which relate more to the chemical shape and
molecular interactions of the odourant. Turin suggested that the nose functions
as a biological spectroscope, firing electrons at odourphores in the nasal space
which make them vibrate and change energy which is measured by the nasal
apparatus, and then communicated to the brain where they are recognised as
odours.
So far so good. But then Turin attempted to
publish his findings as a paper in Nature and it was rejected, and much
discussion of the iniquities of the refereeing process in elite journals, and
the minutiae of the rejection politics involved subsequently takes place in the
book. Whereas most of us would have settled for publication in a less
prestigious journal, we are then plunged in a situation of further
discrimination by fragrance industry moguls who also rejected the idea, and a
Nobel Prize – not to my mind, in the frame anyway – starts to looks out of
reach. Chandler Burr manages to weave all this into corporate plotting, intrigue
and conspiracy theories in order not to rock the aroma world, and so maintain
the status quo - and hey presto! we have a magic formula to sell the tale to a
gullible public.
But lets look at this in more detail. Either Burr
is overawed by Luca Turin right from the start, following their shared train
journey, or Burr has no conception of the inherent & necessary skills of the
average professional working perfumer. A third and more likely explanation would
be that Burr needs to build up his hero’s momentous superpowers to give
impetus to the story. For example in an interview in Perfumer & Flavorist
(Burr 2003), Burr describes how Turin “ had hundreds and hundreds of thousands
(exaggeration surely?) of perfumes catalogued in his head by molecular
structure, historical importance, aesthetic sensibility, performance through
time”. This looseness with words is unwise, in a professional magazine
specifically devoted to the subject – as its readers will immediately spot
that perfumes cannot be classified by molecular structure – but rather by
odour attributes and to some extent by composition. But here we go, letting the
facts interfere with a good story…..
More interesting to me than reading the book has
been seeing the reaction to its widespread appearance on booksellers shelves.
Reviews in the aromatherapy industry have been merely gushing, with little
attempt at analysis (e.g. Sheppard-Hanger 2004), but trade journal Perfumer
& Flavorist created a real first by publishing the transcript of an
interview with Burr about the book (Burr 2003). The appearance of this inclusion
in the magazine is strangely surrealist and out of character with its normal
format, and has become a talking-point. So was it an Emperors New Clothes
situation - did the publishing staff really fall for the absurdities of Burrs
adulations, or did they publish the article as a sort of self-evident cartoon,
who’s buffoonery needed no further comment? Perhaps we will never know. Stu
Borman of Engineering and Chemical News
(Borman 2003) perhaps did the most comprehensive review of the claims in
the book, asking Professor Kenneth Suslick at University of Illinois his opinion
of the matter. Prof. Suslick believes that Burr & Turin “set up a straw
dog” by saying that everyone believes molecular shape alone determines the
mechanism of smell and that Turin’s theory confuses molecular interactions and
molecular vibrations. He also says “there is no conspiracy here except good
scientists disliking bad science”. Err… well that’s pretty clear, then!
What did I think of the book? Its difficult to get
a fresh perspective, being a trade insider, and having already been over-exposed
to Turin’s outpourings & sales patter over the years. However, I found
Burr’s style of writing intensely annoying, being absurdly adolescent &
over-dramatic, and is difficult to imagine the necessary requirements for ego
& vanity of someone who would allow a journalist to write up such
ingratiating and fawning prose about them without feeling embarrassed (and
acutely nauseous). The untested theory of odour and the implied demand of a
Nobel prize in Burr’s promotional material is to my mind quite extraordinary,
and the presumption that the aroma industry should be radically changed because
of the implications of this theory to me are just plain nonsensical and lack any
sense of worldly reality. ….
So now you have to read the book, don’t you?
References:
Borman S. (2003) “Science & Technology
Insights: Intellectual Housework – how “The Emperor of Scent” and a shower
got me steamed up”. Chemical & Engineering News May 26, 2003 p37.
Burr C. (2003) “Industry Insight: The
Provocative Emperor of Scent” Perfumer & Flavorist 28,
(Sept/Oct 2003) 26-29.
Sheppard-Hanger S. (2004) “The Emporer of Scent CB review” International Journal of Aromatherapy Vol 14(1), 54-55.