When my dad shines his shoes on the kitchen table, the scent of the shoe polish takes him back 50 years to his childhood in Pittsburgh. Yet when I press my nose into the leather, I feel nothing.
— Jacob LaMendola made a short film about anosmia; you can find it at the New York Times. Hat tip to Kevin!
As she recovered from a broken pelvis, a fractured skull and other injuries, she realized that one of her grand passions, relishing the taste and fragrance of food, had evaporated from her life. Head trauma from the accident had led to nerve damage, and Ms. Birnbaum, months away from enrolling in the Culinary Institute of America, couldn’t smell a thing.
— Read more at The Cook Who Couldn’t Taste at the New York Times. Hat tip to Kevin!
Pavia Rosati misses the rain on Second Avenue. She misses the crisp fall air on a busy street. She misses her Hermès perfume, Jardin sur le Nil.
— Ms. Rosati has anosmia. From Missing the Fragrance of Everyday Life, part of the Realm of the Senses series at the New York Times' Lens blog.
In Remembering Smell, Bonnie Blodgett interlaces her own frightening story of smell loss with a primer on the olfactory system and olfactory disorders of all kinds, from phantosmia to anosmia. Her title foreshadows the many connections between smell and memory explored in the book. Part personal memoir, part investigation of the relationship between smell and brain function, the book also offers an elegy or memorial to the lost sense of smell.
Instead of posting a review this month, I invite you to join in an on-line book club.
To get you started, I’ll begin with a few topics and questions that came to mind as I was reading. Feel free to ask your own questions and to open up new topics…
Imagine, if you can, being rendered incapable of differentiating between Vegemite on toast and caviar canapes. Imagine being impotent to the most cursory of culinary pleasures, like the tomato in tomato soup or the apple in apple pie. Or oblivious to the flavour and character in a glass of fine wine.
— Peter Lowndes talks about his adventures with anosmia in Losing my senses at The Age.