John Updike is considered one of the greatest American authors of his generation. His character Rabbit Angstrom, a former high school basketball star was named one of the hundred most memorable characters in fiction since 1900 by Book Magazine (you may be familar with his book the Witches of Eastwick that later became a movie starring Jack Nicholson). While he is best known for themes of sex, infidelity and religion usually involving the Protestant Middle Class, Updike's multi sensorial writing is often compared to Marcel Proust, the French writer we often associate with memory and scent.
In his 1962 short story, "In Football Season," published in The Early Stories, short stories which were written between the years 1954-1961, a pensive John Updike takes the reader on a sensory journey to an idyllic time in his past, a "paradise lost," as he deftly describes the sights, sounds and smells of a Friday night high school football game. Grab a wool blanket, take a seat on the bleachers and enjoy Mr. Updike's words, photographed for the ages across a darkening sky. He writes:
"Do you remember a fragrance girls acquire in autumn? As you walk beside them after school, they tighten their arms about their books and bend their heads forward to give a more flattering attention to your words, and in the little intimate area thus formed, carved into the clear air by an implicit crescent, there is a complex fragrance woven of tobacco, powder, lipstick, rinsed hair, and that perhaps imaginary and certainly elusive scent that wool, whether in the lapels of a jacket or the nap of a sweater, seems to yield when the cloudless fall sky, like the blue bell of a vacuum, lifts toward itself the glad exhalations of all things. This fragrance, so faint and flirtatious on those afternoon walks through the dry leaves, would be banked a thousandfold on the dark slop of the stadium when, Friday nights, we played football in the city."
What fragrance does this bring to mind? I am reminded of one of Liz Zorn's stunning Soivohle Absolutes, "Tobacco and Tulle." The ostensible innocence of tuberose hiding a rich, raw tobacco note, like a cheerleader hiding a cigarette. With its musky animalic undertones, one must also wonder what this girl was doing behind the bleachers. As Updike writes of those afternoon walks through the dry leaves, I think of the rich honey hue of the tobacco absolute which colors Ms. Zorn's fragrance, producing the colors, along with the smells, of autumn. Having the vestiges of this scent "in the lapels of a jacket or the nap of a sweater" would warm any soul on a chilly fall night.
Updike's passage also calls to mind Chanel No. 19, with its iris notes suggesting not just the tobacco, but the lipstick and powder he so eloquently describes. No. 19 is crisp and sharp and beautiful; this cheerleader walks to the field without a smile, breaking hearts along the way. Her scent floats to the boys on the bench and their heads turn in unison. Its greenness echoes the torn grass on the field and perhaps the last green leaves of summer. Soft but with a bite; cold, but with a trace of summer's warmth.
The story continues:
"The stadium each Friday night when we played was filled. Not only students and parents came but spectators unconnected with either school, and the money left over when the stadium rent was paid supported our entire athletic program. I remember the smell of the grass crushed by footsteps behind the end zones. The smell was more vivid than that of a meadow, and in the blue electric glare the green vibrated as if excited, like a child, by being allowed up late… And of course I remember the way we, the students, with all of our jealousies and antipathies and deformities, would be—beauty and boob, sexpot and grind—crushed together like flowers pressed to yield to the black sky a concentrated homage, an incense, of cosmetics, cigarette smoke, warmed wool, hot dogs, and the tang, both animal and metallic, of clean hair."
What fragrances embody the sport of football? The ball, the field, the crowd, the excitement… I think of the classic game, when helmets were made of leather, when men smoked cigars in the locker room and spectators sipped whiskey on wooden bleachers. With its notes of fresh dirt, burning peat, cigars, leather and scotch, "2nd Cumming" from CB/ I Hate Perfume embodies this classic game. Who knew dirt could smell so sexy? Created in collaboration with actor Alan Cumming (the original release, equally captivating, was simply called "Cumming"), Christopher Brosius composed a scent that is as photorealistic as it is wearable. The comparisons extend beyond the chosen notes and parallel the note structure as well. Like football, it's a display of quick bursts of movement followed by moments of recovery, thought and control. In theory, these notes should clash like opposing teams and at times, in fact, they do, but each conflict is followed by moments of calm and purpose, as Brosius has masterfully planned each collision and progresses closer and closer to the goal.
Le Labo's Oud 27 leaves the dirt on the field and takes us into the locker room. This is pigskin with an emphasis on the pig. It's leather and lust, sex and celebration. According to Le Labo, Oud 27's notes include Atlas cedar, incense, patchouli, saffron and gaiac wood. When I first tried Oud 27 last year, I detected a faint odor of stale beer in the opening. I thought I was alone in this until a friend recently told me he detected the same note. One might find this unnerving, but I find it exciting, especially as the fragrance melds with the skin unlike any other. Where does the perfume stop and the person begin? It's the scent of someone who played the game hard and as the Friday night lights are turned off, is ready to play even harder.
Juxtaposing my own words among John Updike's is like trying to play a game of catch while sharing the field with the New York Giants. Nevertheless, Michelyn and I wanted to share the beauty this story and Mr. Updike's memories of his own teen age years when the world around him was filled with sight and sound, but also unforgettable scents.
"In a hoarse olfactory shout, these odors ascended. A dense haze gathered along the ceiling of brightness at the upper limit of the arc lights, whose glare blotted out the stars and made the sky seem romantically void and intimately near, like the death that now and then stooped and plucked one of us out of a crumpled automobile. If we went to the back row and stood on the bench there, we could look over the stone lip of the stadium down into the houses of the city, and feel the cold November air like the black presence of the ocean beyond the rail of a ship…"
–Michael Devine, Contributor
Art direction-Michelyn Camen, Editor in Chief (I chose black and white photography to evoke the era)
Thanks to Liz Zorn of Soivohle, (whose husband is an avid Updike reader we have 2ml of all natural Soivohle Absolutes Tobacco andTulle to giveaway. To be eligible please leave a comment with your favorite Soivohle fragrance, your favorite olfactive quote or what fragrance you would associate by reading In FootBall Season by October 21, 2012.