Writer’s Book Review: A Natural History of the Senses
Usually, when someone reviews a book, the book is new. This review, however, is for a book that is nearly 20 years old, yet the content is as fresh, invigorating, inspiring and timeless.
I first read Diane Ackerman’s A Natural History of the Senses in a writing class in my sophmore year of college. I rediscovered the book when I was looking for something engaging to read my daugher when she was a newborn (I’m not a fan of overly-simplistic, syrupy children’s books).
The idea behind the book is to help writers engage their senses, individually at first and then simultaneously later, in order to awaken them to the fascinating minutae around them. And in so doing, infuse the writer with the amunition needed to bring flat prose to life.
Ackerman divides her book into six sections: Smell, Touch, Taste, Hearing, Vision and Synesthesia (when your senses are conflated, making you hear color or taste sound, etc.). Each section is filled with mini-essays in which Ackerman explores the nature of each sense and how it developed. It’s cliche to say it, but it’s true: Her prose is incredibly poetic. Here’s an excerpt from one of my favorite chapters:
Our sense of smell can be extraordinarily precise, yet it’s almost impossible to describe how something smells to someone who hasn’t smelled it. The smell of glossy pages of a new book, for example, or the first solvent-damp sheets from a mimeograph machine, or a dead body, or the subltle differences in odors given off by flowers like bee balm, dogwood, or lilac. Smell is the mute sense, the one without words. Lacking vocabulary, we are left tounge-tied, groping for words in a sea of inarticulate pleasure and exaltation. We see only when there is light enough, we taste only when we put things into our mouths, touch only when we make contact with someone or something, hear only sounds that are loud enough. But we smell always and will every breath. Cover your eyes and you will stop seeing, cover your ears and you will stop hearing, but if you cover your nose and try to stop smelling, you will die.
I’m a fan of how Ackerman’s words seemingly flow so easily together, the way her writing just appears so naturally that when you read her you think, “Yeah, that’s so clear.” When you read this book, you’ll be so engaged by what she has to say, you’ll be so in touch with your senses, so engrossed with the pure sensualism that is our human sensory experience that your writing will feel transformed.
Tags: Book Reviews, creative writing
