Pynchon colours the smell

[Monte Davis]

> "If smell is the sense of the imagination..."

Good article. The author doesn't go into it, but there are interesting
aspects to the neurology and cognitive science of smell/taste, which is
"wired" quite differently from sight and hearing. It has direct connections
to areas of the brain active in motivation, arousal, reward, emotion... so
in a very crude broad-brush sense, it "comes in under the radar" with less
forebrain processing involved in our response.

I suspect that goes a long way toward explaining 

(1) its mystique w/r/t memory: Tyrone and Imipolex, Proust's madeleine,
"comfort foods" familiar from early chilldhood, seasonal or localized smells
(turkey, evergreens, chestnuts roasting on an open fire, dee-dum-dee-dah...)
Some neighbor in Dallas, TX in the early 1950s burned the cabbage -- not
habitually, for all I know only once or just a few times -- and ever since,
that smell has taken me there and then with startling immediacy.   

(2) the relative poverty of language in dealing with smell/taste. Our
standards for good visual or auditory description are much higher. I know
that I, at least, tend to smile at wine-snob vocabulary or overwrought
restaurant reviews -- not because there isn't a rich experiential field I
care about there, but because even the best words are so clumsy and blurred.