Chandler Burr has done a great job at researching Luca Turin. Turin is a man with a sense far beyond the average person’s sense of smell perception. He is able to distinguish a lot of the chemical properties with just a smell. Burr has taken the initiative of researching him and his amazing ability. Turin decides to write a book on describing perfumes and giving his critique based off of his ability of smell. This book sparks through Europe and a lot of Perfume factories and scientists take notice of it. Turin, a professor, gets interested in his ability of smell and comes up with a theory of smell that is against that of other scientists. Turin, being a biologist, is turned down on his theory. The majority of scientists believe that Shape is what allows humans the ability to smell, but Turin believes that shape is not what contributes us to smell. “Nobody knows for sure what makes our noses work the way they do, not even the $20-billion-a-year perfume industry’s legions of chemists, whose jobs depend on appealing to those noses. So what happens when Luca Turin, a likable scientist who happens to possess an unusually sensitive nose, proposes a new theory of smell that promises to unravel the mystery once and for all?”(Publishers Weekly).
The novel is a research book done by Chandler Burr. He uses research to write the novel. The book is told through Turin’s point of view, but written by Burr. Burr, at the end of the novel, explains that he met Turin on a train and later got interested in the subject and wanted to write about his experiences. Burr states, “I happened to meet Luca Turin because the Eurostar from Paris to London was twenty minutes late. We were in line in the Gare du Nord, and we started talking about the finale of Mission: Impossible,” and later adds, “So, I said, he was a physicist then? ‘Biophysicist.’ What was he researching? ‘Smell. And vibration.’ As we got on the train, I asked for details.”(Burr, p.227). He met Turin randomly and then became interested in his fight against vibration and shape.
“I told him when we reached Waterloo that I wanted to write about him, a prospect he greeted with pleasure. It was a friendly beginning to a professional relationship, and during the four subsequent years of reporting, the relationship almost ended several time. Turn at various moments told me with fury that I knew nothing about science, rejected my assessments of him personally and professionally, demanded ‘total control of the manuscript ‘so that,’ he said, ‘if I don’t like a single word in there it doesn’t get published,’ and threatened to withdraw his cooperation entirely from the project.”(Burr, p. 229). Research of a person is an intimate thing. Like Burr stated, Turin wanted complete and total control over the manuscript so that if he didn’t like a certain part of it, then he would diminish the project. Burr researched a man’s story to publish an actual account of his hardships and discoveries so that all could know his struggles of his story.
“A French perfumer, asked to describe a particular scent molecule, declares, “It smells of the woman who neglects herself.” It’s precisely this pungent leap from chemistry to metaphor that Burr negotiates so well in his fascinating and lucid book about the sense of smell.”(New Yorker). Burr does an excellent job at researching Turin to the point that he really conveys Turin’s lifestyle and message. Overall, I liked the book. I found it to be a somewhat of a hard read just because I’m not a science person. I found it to be interesting and I found myself to side with the vibration theory and Luca Turin. I strongly wanted him to win the Nobel Prize and wanted others to stop being so naïve in the book and to accept his theory.
Burr, Chandler. The Emperor of Scent. New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2002.
Publishers Weekly. Reed Business Information, Inc. 2002. http://www.amazon.com/Emperor-Scent-Perfume-Obsession-Mystery/dp/0375507973?tag=word08-20
New Yorker, The. 2005. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/product-description/0375507973/ref=dp_proddesc_0?ie=UTF8&n=283155&s=books&tag=word08-20
