PhilPaine.com

I can­not smell juniper with­out think­ing of small bones. I have very strong smell mem­o­ries, some­times stronger than visu­al mem­o­ries. I can still call up in my mind the smell of the north rim of the Grand Canyon, the myr­i­ad smells of dif­fer­ent deserts, the scents of tama­rack and black spruce as you get near the Wînipâkw, the smells of the blessed neem trees in Kano, the spring lilacs in Cana­di­an towns, the com­fort­ing scents of fresh­ly-sawn lum­ber, the many smells of snow in dif­fer­ent settings.

Hold that thought, for I must digress.

I just re-read Edgar Pangborn’s A Mir­ror for Observers for the eighth time. The only oth­er nov­el I’ve read as many times is Lewis Carroll’s Through the Look­ing Glass. Reg­u­lar reread­ings of Carroll’s mas­ter­piece would not sur­prise any­one — I’m sure there are peo­ple who have read it dozens of times — but you might find it puz­zling that I would give equal loy­al­ty to a sci­ence fic­tion nov­el writ­ten in 1954, by an author who was respect­ed in his day, but nev­er a high-pro­file celebri­ty in the field. A Mir­ror for Observers is not even his best known book (though it is his best). I read the book in child­hood, and it imprint­ed itself on my mind so vivid­ly that I hard­ly need­ed to reread it, for I could play out every scene in my mind at will. But, at reg­u­lar inter­vals through­out a life­time, I have read it with full atten­tion. Read more »