Introducing Chandler Burr, Perfume Critic

I'd never heard of Chandler Burr until the New York Times announced it would hire him as a full-time perfume critic. Burr's task is to pen fancy-scent reviews the way a more pedestrian newspaper might critique an art exhibit or a fine wine.

And what a wicked delight he turns out to be. Even master satirists like Stephen Fry or Evelyn Waugh could hardly have conceived of anyone quite so unintentionally sidesplitting, so possessed of a doomed desire to turn an achingly exquisite phrase. The purple prose of scribbling wine connoisseurs notwithstanding, Burr is in a class by himself. His sentences resemble a high-wire act by a doped-up Marcel Proust wannabe; you know it will end badly, in a spectacular logorrheic splat, no less entertaining for being horrific.

And if you think that's a dreadful metaphor, well, you have no idea.

Enter Mr. Burr and his two articles in yesterday's Times:

Darkness, when it is crystalline and somewhat luminous, may be the most difficult quality to capture in a perfume. ... The result sweeps over you like the silent, massive shadow of an Airbus A340, a tactile component that makes you narrow your eyes. If it fades slightly faster than one might hope, the aesthetics are pitch-perfect. ...

Rose Barbare is a crepuscular, rose-inflected darkness suffused with a luminosity that floats on the skin. ... This is the scent of the darkness that inhabits a Rubens, a warm, rich, purple blackness; Pomegranate Noir is like a box of truffles with the lid on, sweet bits of darkness, waiting. ...

Bigarade smells like a person trapped in a complex weather system, the wonderful scent of a guy’s armpit and a woman’s humid skin washed in fresh rainwater and ozone. ... It is a masterful juxtaposition, and smelling Bigarade is like looking down into a well of cool, black water. Your retinas expand from the strange pleasure of this scent.

Also:

A good synthetic heliotropin is an olfactory marvel, as if a tonka bean had somehow been crossed with a cloud.

Clearly, if verbal frottage is an art form, Chandler Burr, a world-class onanist with a word processor, is its Rembrandt. Châpeau, mon ami; my retinas, when not darkened by the silent shadow of an Airbus A340, are still expanding from the strange pleasure of your prose!

Comments

"... a tactile component that makes you narrow your eyes."

and

"Your retinas expand from the strange pleasure of this scent."

It's called being high, Chandler.

[Garth]

I went to Grad School with Chandler and considered him a friend (we've since lost touch).

For some time he was more famous for his investigative work on the roots of homosexuality than on his perfumery especially due to his quite good book: "A Separate Creation"

[Andrew Olmsted]

Oh my. That's quite a review there; makes me want to run outside and wait for an Airbus to pass overhead so I can revel in the sublimity.

[Jeff the Poustman]

Being a Canadian of Mennonite descent, by nature and nurture my response to this kind of thing is to instinctively adopt an expression partway between shock and happiness, and to glance rapidly back and forth (moving only my eyes) in order to ascertain whether the writer/speaker is serious or not, and if so, whether he is hopelessly above me, or me him.

Whatever that response may say about me and the world, I'm confident it is not the response generally sought after when a publisher hires a journalistic writer.