SIGHTING:

 

GOOD BOOKS, BAD BREATHERS: TEN ASTHMATICS IN LITERATURE

 

1. The kitchen maid in Swann’s Way
2. Sleary, circus owner, in Hard Times
3. Molloy in Molloy
4. Dr. Rieux’s elderly asthma patient (goes without saying) in The Plague
5. The shark in Pinocchio
6. The garlicky procuress in Lolita
7. Pums in Berlin Alexanderplatz
8. Tristram Shandy (following skating incident) in The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
9. Mr. Omer, draper, tailor, haberdasher, funeral furnisher, etc. in David Copperfield
10. Lillian Antolini in The Catcher in the Rye

 

--James Hillhouse (The Believer, May 2007, pg. 68)