Customer Reviews

A Natural History of the Senses

5 star:		(49)
4 star:		(16)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Do you remember the day in second grade when your teacher taught the lesson of the five senses? You felt around for some mysterious object in a brown paper bag for touch, you had lemon squeezed on your tongue for taste, you made Styrofoam cup telephones for hearing, you shut your eyes and stumbled around "blind" clinging to the arm of the kid next to you for sight, and you sniffed mothballs for smell. That was about it, subject covered. Now, just imagine if you could learn the lesson over again with the zany fictional teacher Ms. Frizzle of "The Magic Schoolbus" fame, except this time she's teaching adults. Welcome to the world of Diane Ackerman. In a Natural History of The Senses Ms. Ackerman enthusiastically, patiently, and most of all exuberantly reintroduces us to the sensual world from her perspective and shows us how it is so much more alive and kicking than what we learned in grade school.

This book is still broken down into five familiar sections of smell, touch, taste, hearing and vision, but in total it is so chock full of intimate detail of the world the reader can't help but see things in a different light for having read it. It is written with the intelligence of a scholar, the fluidity and grace of a poet, and well, as I've mentioned above the enthusiasm of the one and only Ms. Frizzle (and I mean this as the nicest compliment!) This book will certainly appeal to people who love detail as it is well referenced for those wishing to delve deeper into the literature of the senses. Diane Ackerman shares, teaches and reminds us of some of the most simple things in life. Do you know how a butterfly "tastes" sweetness? Can you explain the electrical significance of the corpuscles strategically placed throughout your own body responsible for great sex? If you are saying "so what?" then I ask that you just give it a try. It is a fun romp of a read that may take you places you haven't been for a long time. A good portion of the book is written in the first person, where the author has juxtaposed what she knows with how she lives, and I believe her detractors would comment that she appears self-absorbed for it. Just get over that and realize at the very last she reminds us life can be steered away from its sometimes predictable, even boring, path by something as seemingly insignificant as adding an extra teaspoon of vanilla to the muffin batter. Who knows, you may even dab some on your pulse points and let the rest of the world wonder why you smell so...exuberant. I'm sure Diane Ackerman would expect nothing less.

When I first read Diane Ackerman's book it opened my eyes, just as these other reviews testify. It does seem to be a book people either love or hate (I have some friends who thought it was sentimental babbling) but that doesn't change how extravagantly Ackerman uses language itself to convey the lush world of the senses. I teach a creative writing course at SFSU and I use the book to promote both that poetic description and the possibilities for experience and awareness the book evokes. An excellent example of the ways poetry can be used to explain science and experience.

After reading a few of Ackerman's New Yorker pieces, as well as The Moon by Whale Light and her contribution to Sisters of the Earth, I knew I would eventually read all of her books. A Natural History of the Senses does not disappoint. It flows like cool water through literature, history, music, politics, philosophy, and poetry. As a writer, I appreciate this book as a resource of my own, a way to deepen my understanding of our sensory appreciation of the world - but also as an example of beautiful writing by a master of the craft.
In a nutshell, I wish Diane Ackerman lived next door to me.

Essayist and poet Diane Ackerman is probably best known for her wonderful New Yorker articles on her investigations of the animal kingdom (including extraordinarily memorable pieces on bats and penguins), most of which have been collected in books. In those acclaimed essays, her idiosyncratic and emotive musings transform the behaviors of other creatures to a human and humane understanding while avoiding anthropomorphic traps.

In "A Natural History of the Senses," Ackerman shifts her considerable observational skills from the animal realm to more familiar human territory. She divides her discussion into the five senses, plus a short section on "synesthesia"; in spite of the book's title, there's not much history involved. Somewhat like her essays on nature, each chapter includes random observations, anecdotes, and thoughts on the various aspects of the topic at hand.

Some of Ackerman's morsels are first-class, and she seems particularly to hit her stride in the section on "Taste." Her distinctive wit is on full display when she discusses the food endured by survivalists, such as a recipe for moose soup: "I particularly like the recipe's opening: 'You've just killed a moose.' It reminds me of recipe I read for stir-fried dog, which began: 'First clean and eviscerate a healthy puppy.'" Her book is a pleasure in such instances, when it reads like a turbo-charged entry of an encyclopedia, explaining "why polar bears are not white" or pondering the aesthetics of full-body tattoos or interviewing a human "nose" for a fragrance manufacturer or investigating the importance of touch for the healthy development of prematurely born infants.

What works for her essays in zoology, however, doesn't always work for a study of our own species; she sometimes writes as if she were explaining our everyday experiences to a race of aliens. Her prose especially sags when she reduces abstractions to a not-very-informative series of metaphors, platitudes, and non-sequiturs: "Sounds thicken the sensory stew of our lives, and we depend on them to help us interpret, communicate with, and express the world around us. Outer space is silent, but on earth almost everything can make a sound. Couples have favorite songs...." Even for a book on the senses, this is all a bit too touchy-feely.

Similarly, she has a tick of expanding a concept with a prose list of synonyms and puns that reduces our senses to the stimulations found in a thesaurus. Her several paragraphs on how "our language is steeped in visual imagery," for example, contain an interminable number of sentences similar to the following: "We quickly see through people whose characters are transparent. And, heaven knows, we learn for enlightenment.... Ideas dawn on us, if we're bright enough, not dim-witted, especially if we're visionary." I'm not sure I "see" the point of these lengthy and repetitive passages.

Overall, the book is certainly worth mining for its liberally scattered gems, but at times I found it tedious and simplistic as a cover-to-cover read.

The best writing I have ever read. Totally engaging essays that will not only teach you more than you ever thought there was to know about our five senses (and more!) but will also make you laugh out loud because the writing is that good. Your world will never be the same again--or should I say, you will never see your world the same way. You will forever be more aware of the stunning intricacy, simplicity, and beauty of life that surrounds us.

This is an entirely personal response, but this is one of the most important books I've read. For anyone who tries to live actively through their senses, experiencing the world around them and incorporating a sense memory, this book will satisfy powerful, intuitive feelings. It has just enough science to explain and fascinate, the rest is clear, resonant stories of sensual experience. There is a lucid, sincere and powerful feeling of sheer joy about that book, the joy Ackerman finds in her own experience and her pleasure and sharing, but the book never tips into the sentimental.

Imagine having a witty and informed guided tour of one's own sensory apparatus! That is what Ackerman offers. By turns intensely intellectual and cybaritic, the result is an irresistable romp through the world of newly magnified familiarities.

Some gems: chocolate as "an emotional food" (p. 154). "Hands are messengers of emotion" (p. 118). "The tongue is like a kingdom divided into principalities according to sensory talent" (p. 139).

And on page 20: "Smell was the first of our senses, and it was so successful that in time the small lump of olfactory tissue atop the nerve cord grew into a brain. Our cerebral hemispheres were originally buds from the olfactory stalks. We THINK because we SMELLED."

Highly recommended. A terrific mental flight while trying to endure air travel!

This is such a delight of a book! Diane Ackerman takes the time to stop and smell the roses... well smell, touch, taste, hear and see the rose. Even though the five senses are our only way of knowing the world for the most part we just take them for granted-but no more!

Taking each of these senses in turn Ackerman delves into every aspect imaginable of that sense- cultural, psychological and historical. While usually few things frustrate me more than an unfocused writer that is not the case in this work. Ackerman is not so much trying to head anywhere, as she is trying to explore these topics, so her meanderings are delightful rather than aggravating.

The single most impressive thing about this book is how researched it seems to be. While Ackerman's insights and style certainly are not insignificant the enlightening (and sometimes strange) facts that fill this book make it so enjoyable to spend a lazy afternoon with. This was my first book by Diane Ackerman but it will certainly not be my last!

Do not confuse this book for science or hard fact. 'A Natural History of the Senses' is a well done book of lyrical prose that is meant to be relaxed with and enjoyed. Diane Ackerman is quite possibly a lyrical stylist that, much like any past writer, uses the conciousness of her time to bring alive the beliefs, feelings, and concerns that she and others face in their lifetime. Using delightful and fascinating information integrated with insight and stunning language, she makes one become more aware of the senses that we sometimes take for granted.

Taking inventory of the five senses may at first seem a simple and scientific theme perhaps better suited to a book meant for junior high, but there's nothing prosaic about this epic work of staggering proportions. Ms. Ackerman manages to smoosh in such a diverse array of beguiling facts about our sensibilities and the world within which we perceive them, and with such lyrical splendor, that reading this book is a grand sensory carnival in itself.

Because the senses are both natural and cultural--we share them with animals, but they also form the bases of human institutions--she glides smoothly from, say, the mating habits of mice to the activities of the international perfume industry. Wondrous sounds and rich imagery are made available to us on molecular, diagnostic, and even galactic levels. Why do leaves change hues in the fall? What makes crocodiles dance? What would the world sound like if we could hear all its frequencies? How do we feel pain? What do our pheromones try to tell us? How would Helen Keller 'hear' a symphony? What have scientists learned from people who are missing one or more of the senses?

This is no pedestrian treatise. Some readers may find the prose extravagant--and to them my advice would be to read the book in fits and starts, not in one weekend sitting--but like Stephen Gould or Annie Dillard or other such maestro raconteurs of science and nature, Ackerman comes across as an adventurous soul who seems to experience nature firsthand and then describe it with an eager enthusiasm that is both personal and learned. As readers, we simply savor the companionship on a sparkling journey. This remains one of my most dog-eared and gifted books of all time. Get it pronto if you don't already have one, and be prepared to be mesmerized.