One of the greatest honors in Catholic school was being tapped to go down to the school office to pick up copies of a worksheet or quiz for the class lessons. In the late 70s, this meant carrying a warm stack of papers back to the classroom and privately basking in the strong scent of the ditto machine ink. Once the paper cooled, dried and landed on our desks, its distinct perfume was much harder to summon.
Textbooks, workbooks, library books, and books on my own shelves, like those warm dittoed handouts, each bring their own very specific perfumes. Usually, the smell is fairly neutral, and often it is oddly appealing. I rarely can identify the source; perhaps it is the ink, the glue in the binding, or the adhesive used to attach the library-card pocket to the inside of the front cover. Maybe the smells originate from the environments in which the books have been transported, stored and read, permeating the paper in a permanent and lasting way. If a heavy smoker and coffee-drinker had recently returned my borrowed copy of Dune to the library, the previous reader becomes a perfumed-participant in my reading experience. If I carry a novel in my bag along with the leftovers of a restaurant meal, I remember that Saag Paneer when I read in bed that evening.
In Catholic school in the 70s, we would occasionally be delighted to discover a truly revolting smell. If it was a school textbook or a workbook, the entire class would gasp each time we had to open the book for a lesson – the smell was usually a bit like vomit. While the nun spoke and wrote on the chalkboard, we’d exchange looks of dramatic disgust, gesturing fingers down our throats, some students audibly gagging. If the stinky book was instead in the school library, we’d bring the suspect specimen to friends and dare them to sniff it. Only a chicken refused.
When a book has a distinct smell, that smell becomes entwined with my reading experience. Each time I open a book, the smell can bring me back to the specific mood or frame-of-mind that lingered when I last closed the book. The smell of a book indelibly marks my reading experience; even now, when I open some of the old books I read as a child, a faint scent can bring back memories and trigger a strong emotional response.
My kids will never know the smell of ditto machine handouts. Perhaps the ink was carcinogenic, so this may be for the best. Likely there are other smells that inhabit their educational landscape. But the same technology trends that drove ditto machines to extinction have robbed us of these special smells shaping our reading and learning experiences. Today when I read on a computer screen or a kindle, I may enjoy the smell of the gingernut biscuits next to me on my desk. Tomorrow, the smell of laundry may be the most dominant note in my scent-scape. The story that I am reading is disconnected from smell-memory.
Printed novels “in all their glorious materiality” provide visual and tactile experiences. But the smells that inhabit the materiality of books – the perfume-infused nexus of paper-ink-glue – bring a level of meaning, sustain memory, and connect readers. These mysterious and elusive benefits will be difficult for technology to mimic or replace.
