The Imaginative Invalid: The Exaltation of Illness in Alan Pauls’ Wasabi (1994)

In the medical discourse, as in some of our social practices, disease is sometimes associated with deficiency and suffering. Literature has the power to challenge, and even reverse, these negative connotations established by other institutions. This is what Alan Pauls does in Wasabi, a novel whose narrator and leading character - the author’s very own alter ego - is apparently in poor health. In addition to frequent narcolepsies, he suffers a supernatural metamorphosis that he refers to using the lexicon of illness. The vision of illness Wasabi offers is in no way a pessimistic one, however; it is presented not as a problem to be solved, but rather as a positive life experience through which the narrator and central character is able to reach a higher state of consciousness.