NABOKV-L post 0021487, Wed, 30 Mar 2011 15:36:34 -0300

In one of the biographies of Saul Steinberg an entire paragraph was devoted to Nabokov's ill-health when he was fifty years old (lumbago, psoriasis, digestive, pulmonary and cardiac problems) and to his admiration about how Nabokov managed to find sufficient energy and joy to write "Lolita", "Pale Fire" and "Ada" without delving into his sufferings, unlike John Updike, who freely describes how psoriasis disturbed his relationship with the world from early infancy on, dictated the destiny of his marriage and his professional choice.

From the Pynchon-l-digest V2 #3464 distributed at the Nabokov-L (cf. 2003-08-04 David Morris and Frans Meulenberg), I read a little more about Nabokov's psoriais* and was informed that John Updike has been also mentioned (together with the librarian Verger) in "ADA": "a spectacular skin disease that had been portrayed recently by a famous American novelist in his Chiron and described in side-splitting style by a co-sufferer who wrote essays for a London weekly'. With this famous writer Nabokov refers to Updike and his novel The centaur; the essayist of the a London weekly is hitherto unknown (as far as I know). The two psoriasis patients in Ada exchange notes with tips: `Mercury!' or `HЖhensonne' works wonders'. Other pieces of advice are found in a one‑volume encyclopedia, and involve taking hot baths at least twice a month and avoiding spices. A doctor describes these patients as `Crimson-blotched, silver-scaled, yellow-crusted wretches, harmless psoriatics'. The narrator is less pathetic and speaks of `meek martyrs'. And in Pale Fire psoriasis is attributed to Shade's daughter who has psoriatic fingernails** (Pale Fire, 355). My question is: are there other references to psoriasis in Nabokov's fiction or non-fiction?".

...........................................................................................................................................................

* The Thick-Skinned Art of John Updike: 'From the Journal of a Leper' by Jay Prosser -The Yearbook of English Studies
Vol. 31, North American Short Stories and Short Fictions (2001), pp. 182-191 - Published by: Modern Humanities Research Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3509384 and findarticles.com/p/articles/mi.../ai_n28890340/
Abstract: This essay examines the significance of skin in Updike's work, beginning with his representation of psoriasis in his short story,'From the Journal of a Leper'. The conception of skin as an aesthetic or writing surface is considered, as well as the interfaces between autobiography and fiction, self and other, and finally men and women in Updike's writing.The most revealing moment in Updike's autobiography Self-Consciousness comes when he quotes from his short story, 'From the Journal of a Leper', as he frequently does cite his fiction in this strange characteristic of his autobiography.... The dream captures two sides to psoriasis.. Either way, as the potter says on waking, 'This skin is me, I can't get out' (p. 188): the skin is the self. The dream attaches the strongest significance to skin, and its citation in Self-Consciousness means that this short story 'From the Journal of a Leper' may be read to examine the significance of skin...to unpack the metaphorical valences of skin and superficiality, and the surface and interfaces between Updike's life and art, between autobiographical self and fictional other...Skin is of undoubted autobiographical importance for Updike, and it is in this sense that the citation of 'From the Journal of a Leper' is revealing. The chapter 'At War With My Skin' in Self-Consciousness (pp. 39-74) tells how Updike too has suffered from psoriasis and, like the potter, has a self formed through and thoroughly invested in his psoriatic skin. His skin is the most manifest reason for and symptom of his self-consciousness. Many of the details from Self-Consciousness repeat identically the psoriatic circumstances of 'From the Journal of a Leper', so that the earlier short story reads like a proleptic autobiography, a covert, because fictional, rendering of Updike's own psoriatic skin...

** - Hazel does commit suicide, but Nabokov resisted the impulse. Cf. Brian Boyd: V.Nabokov The Russian Years: "In February 1937 Nabokov suffered a bad attack ...On May 15 of that year, he wrote to VИra: `I continue with the radiation treatments every day and am pretty much cured. You know - now I can tell you frankly - the indescribable torments I endured in February, before these treatments, drove me to the border of suicide - a border I was not authorized to cross because I had you in my luggage'. "

Curiously, two of the writer who were mentioned in "Pale Fire" in a significant way, appear in March 5, 1989, in the "New York Times" (ie and too late to hqwve been the one elaborated on in "Ada"). It's about Updike's 'Self-Consciousness' by Denis Donoghue, who informs that Unamuno's assertion, ''consciousness is a disease,'' was often quoted by Updike and to a very particular use. "If it is, then self-consciousness is the act of the mind that takes its sores as privileged objects of attention. A good deal of 18th-century satire, notably in Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope, was provoked by the dismayed reflection that everything spiritual may be reduced to its physical correlative: as with a churlish fellow who would insist that spirit itself is nothing but wind. Mr.Updike's fixation on his ailments has the opposite intent: to convert his symptoms into corresponding inwardness, and to make his blotches seem in the end like his idea. According to this procedure, every disease corresponds to a certain form of spirituality. If you suffer from psoriasis, it is because you have, morally, a sensitive skin. A stammer is the outward sign of a scruple, appropriate to a man who refuses to say the first thing that comes into his head ...If you add to physical ailments the sundry devices for warding them off, you make a fairly complete regimen which can be turned to spiritual account"

Warning: although I tried my best to keep the names, dates and links straight, they were often dispersed in various sites and with cuts and muddles.If anyone is interested in these informations or queries, please check them again in the internet before using the information.

Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en

Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com

Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/