The English Disease is Joseph Skibell's novel-length parable about several Jewish men who struggle to find their way in religion and culture. Charles Belski is a finicky, sometimes neurotic musicologist, ill-at-ease in marriage, fatherhood, and American life. Belski lives on an uneasy edge between the Jewish world of his ancestors and the secular Gentile world of his wife. He looks for meaning in such disparate sources as the comedic antics of the Marx Brothers and the life and music of the brilliant early twentieth-century composer and conductor Gustav Mahler.
About the Author
Born in Lubbock, Texas, Joseph Skibell is the recipient of numerous literary awards, including the Steven Turner Prize for First Fiction from the Texas Institute of Letters, and a National Endowment of the Arts fellowship. He has written many short stories, stage and screen plays. Currently Skibell is an assistant professor of English and Creative Writing at Emory University.
His first novel, A Blessing on the Moon, deals with the Holocaust. It is told from the point of view of the ghost of Skibell's great-grandfather, Chaim Skibellski, who was shot to death and buried in a mass grave in Poland. Using magical realism to make sense of the Holocaust, Blessing on the Moon, like The English Disease, takes the reader through depressing terrain to an oddly upbeat redemption.
Background Information
English Disease. The expression "English Disease," or La malaise Anglais, has been applied variously to rickets, Mad Cow disease, depression, procrastination, and homosexuality. The latest use of the term in the British media describes the frenzied madness that drives people to violence and hooliganism at football (soccer) games.
Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) was born to an Austrian Jewish family living in Bohemia. Mahler often said about himself, "I am thrice homeless, as a native of Bohemia in Austria, as an Austrian among Germans, and as a Jew throughout the world. Everywhere an intruder, never welcomed." His music is known for its depth, its sadness, and at times its interminable length. In 1897 he converted to Christianity, perhaps in an attempt to advance his career. He became director of the Vienna Opera, and in 1902 married Alma Maria Schindler. Mahler's famous works include Songs of Lamentation, Songs of the Wayfarer, and Songs on the Death of Children.
Discussion Topics and Questions
Joseph Skibell modeled the hero of his first novel, A Blessing on the Moon, on his own great-grandfather. Charles Belski, the narrator of The English Disease, bears more than a passing resemblance to Skibell. How is this expressed? Why might an author choose to project himself into a fictional work?
The English Disease opens with the line, "English melancholiacs used to tour the ruins of Antiquity as a cure for their depression." How does Belski use the past as treatment for his own malaise?
What is the source of Belski's depression or angst? Is it justified? Is it rational? What has he done to contribute to his unhappiness? To what extent can you sympathize with him?
On page 6, Belski describes how he fell in love with his wife Isabelle, whom he describes repeatedly as "blonde." What does he mean when he says, "everything about her seemed blonde"? Why was Belski initially attracted to Isabelle? Contrast his attraction to Isabelle with his attraction to Gitl Finkelstein (pp. 80-83).
Charles had a strange emotional experience in a cave near Moab (p. 23). What brought it on? Would you categorize it more as an epiphany or as a breakdown? What is the significance of the place-name?
On page 55, Belski associates the trauma of dropping his daughter off at day-care with Mahler's Songs on the Death of Children. What is the source of Belski's sadness? Does this sadness relate to something deeper? Does his difficulty in letting go of his daughter represent other difficulties in his life?
On pages 76-78, Belski suggests that his early Jewish socialization predetermined his marriage outside Judaism. How would Jewish life in Karkel (patterned after Skibell's home town, Lubbok) Texas, lead to intermarriage?
While Belski is traveling in Poland, his insufferable colleague Leibowitz presents a theory that Groucho Marx is a "meta-parody"--a lampoon of anti-Semitic caricatures of Jews. Discuss this. Is Leibowitz wrong, or might there be some merit to his arguments? Explore Leibowitz's theory that the Marx Brothers form an "Ascent-of-Man spectrum of European Jewish sterotypes on the path towards assimilation" (pp. 148-157).
On page 186, Belski admits, "Judaism seemed little more to me than a highly articulated form of ethnic paranoia." What does he mean by this? What, then, accounted for his sense of loss of his Jewishness?
The biblical story of Moses' murder of the Egyptian taskmaster is used as a metaphor for how Jews respond and react to assimilation (p. 210). Look at the examples Skibell provides. What other biblical stories illustrate responses to assimilation?
After the composer Gustav Mahler's conversion to Christianity, Skibell quotes him as saying that he had "changed his coat and nothing more." To what extent does he view Isabelle's conversion to Judaism as a similar charade? Were Belski's misgivings about the sincerity of her conversion or their remarriage justified? How are we to understand Belski's epiphany as he stands under the chupa at the end of the novel?
The English Disease is Charles Belski's story. We watch Isabelle's transformation, but only through the eyes of her cynical, neurotic husband. Throughout the novel, what motivates Isabelle? What is she seeking from life? Does she find it? Explore her journey into Judaism and compare it to your own Jewish journeys.
Further Reading
There are many reviews of The English Disease and interviews with Joseph Skibell on the Internet:
To see how other authors have treated issues of Jewish assimilation and the uneasy connection with the past, look at the work of Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, and Jonathan Safran Foer.
For information about Gustav Mahler, see the following Web sites and books:
Multimedia: 