Dr. Ally/Allie Louks

And so...

it meant that it created really interesting writing.

It became kind of synesthetic and evocative.

And then once I was interested in smell, I started seeing it everywhere.

Like whenever I was reading, it was kind of like suddenly jumping out at me, whereas before I probably would have just not really noticed like most other people when they read.

And the first book that

I really started working on at length in relation to smell was Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov.

And I mean, most people who have read Lolita would not really be aware of the smell content in that book.

But I promise if you were to go away and reread it or read it for the first time with smell in mind, you would realize that is absolutely fundamental to the story.

Really?

Like what types of things jumped out to you?

So initially, like within the first few pages, we discover that Humbert Humbert, this horrible...

fiendish narrator was actually a perfume advertiser no as in his previous career it says that he worked in advertising for his uncle's perfume company no way um

And what I suggest when I talk about Lolita and when I write about it is that actually the whole novel becomes a kind of perfume advertisement for Dolores and for the kind of the nymphic creature that Humbert Humbert kind of creates in his head as this demonic race of little girls who have this incredible magical power.

Gross.

And when I wrote my undergraduate dissertation on Lolita and I actually included little smell samples.

Oh, that's amazing.

For each of the sections of the thesis based on the smells in the novel.

So I'll give you a couple of examples.

One of the things that Humbert Humbert says of Dolores Hayes is that she smells like chestnuts, roses and peppermint.