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The English Disease
The English Disease is a remarkable feat, a story that mixes the Marx brothers and Maimonides, pornographic yoga with Polish paranoia, and the brutality of kindergarten with the beauty of the Kiddush.
It's the tale of Charles Belski, an expert in the works of Gustav Mahler, who, like Mahler himself, is talented and neurotic, and a nonpracticing Jew. Belski suffers guilt over his own contribution to the decline of the Jewish religion, especially since he married a gentile and now has a gentile daughter. As if he can't conjure up enough angst on his own, his great-grandfather appears before him in a dream to admonish him for neglecting the obligations of his faith. For Belski, the dilemma is how an assimilated intellectual can connect with an ancient and irrational (to him) religion without losing his sense of self. Is he the self-hating Jew that his obstreperous colleague pegs him for? Can his wife and daughter bully him into opening up his heart and letting in a little joy? Belski tries to come to grips with the meaninglessness of modern life, the demands of tradition, the nature of love and fidelity, and the true significance of the lyrics to Goodnight Irene. Joseph Skibell has written a novel that is sad, funny, daring, and ultimately redemptive.
It's the tale of Charles Belski, an expert in the works of Gustav Mahler, who, like Mahler himself, is talented and neurotic, and a nonpracticing Jew. Belski suffers guilt over his own contribution to the decline of the Jewish religion, especially since he married a gentile and now has a gentile daughter. As if he can't conjure up enough angst on his own, his great-grandfather appears before him in a dream to admonish him for neglecting the obligations of his faith. For Belski, the dilemma is how an assimilated intellectual can connect with an ancient and irrational (to him) religion without losing his sense of self. Is he the self-hating Jew that his obstreperous colleague pegs him for? Can his wife and daughter bully him into opening up his heart and letting in a little joy? Belski tries to come to grips with the meaninglessness of modern life, the demands of tradition, the nature of love and fidelity, and the true significance of the lyrics to Goodnight Irene. Joseph Skibell has written a novel that is sad, funny, daring, and ultimately redemptive.
- GenresFiction
256 pages, Hardcover
First published May 23, 2003
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
June 2, 2020
After I re-read Skibell's 'A Blessing On The Moon' - a work bordering on classic in quality and demonstrating creative genius with aplomb - I went straight out and ordered his two other novels available at the time. The English Disease was in comparison, a great disappointment. Introverted, self-referential, a novel about narrative and voice, an exercise in sub-Woody Allen American angst, but sadly a different kettle of (gefilte) fish...
The protagonist is a weak and frustrating character, dwarfed by the golem like grotesque of his 'colleague' Leibowitz. Leibowitz's Dickensian or Gargantuan presence eventually palls - it was a struggle to read through these chapters.
Despite my having a natural infinity for the rôle imagined for the main character and the narrative setting, I found that there was a lack of a consistent dramatic arc or narrative pull.
Skibell's satire is often times too dry and detached - the exception being his brilliant exposition on the Marx Brothers as an illustration of the increasingly pressing dilemma for American Jews, between a sterile, post liberal orthodoxy and integration or assimilation in liberal modernity.
Despite the sprinkling of rabbinical style anecdotes, this novel was too much an exercise in writing about thinking and belief (also indirectly about writing) but lacked the deeper resonance of life or death events (or everlasting life in death consequences) so deftly conjured in 'A Blessing.." (which I urge you to read).
I wonder if The English Disease was the earlier of the two works? Unfortunately, the content is a fulfilment of the title...
The protagonist is a weak and frustrating character, dwarfed by the golem like grotesque of his 'colleague' Leibowitz. Leibowitz's Dickensian or Gargantuan presence eventually palls - it was a struggle to read through these chapters.
Despite my having a natural infinity for the rôle imagined for the main character and the narrative setting, I found that there was a lack of a consistent dramatic arc or narrative pull.
Skibell's satire is often times too dry and detached - the exception being his brilliant exposition on the Marx Brothers as an illustration of the increasingly pressing dilemma for American Jews, between a sterile, post liberal orthodoxy and integration or assimilation in liberal modernity.
Despite the sprinkling of rabbinical style anecdotes, this novel was too much an exercise in writing about thinking and belief (also indirectly about writing) but lacked the deeper resonance of life or death events (or everlasting life in death consequences) so deftly conjured in 'A Blessing.." (which I urge you to read).
I wonder if The English Disease was the earlier of the two works? Unfortunately, the content is a fulfilment of the title...
August 6, 2009
Obsessed to a fault with the interior life of an unlikeable character, far more self-absorbed than the gold miner in The Colour, embedded in a nearly plotless narrative preoccupied with the plight of the Jews. The author tries to express himself with the sort of intellectual virtuosity & humor that characterizes Tom Robbins's novels, but his ponderous, self-absorbed prose gets tiresome pretty quickly.
November 2, 2014
his little book describes the adventures of a somewhat assimilated secular Jewish intellectual: first his discontentment with his non-Jewish wife, then his journey to Poland with an obnoxious Jewish colleague, and then the wife's turn to Judaism. It is a quick and pleasant read; I felt like it gave me a sense of what an unhappy-but-not-too-unhappy marriage can be like.
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June 3, 2016It's a little like watching a moving starring Woody Allen. Unfortunately, I only like the Woody Allen movies in which he doesn't appear.
Still, I ultimately liked this, and I think anyone who enjoys Woody Allen will enjoy this!
Still, I ultimately liked this, and I think anyone who enjoys Woody Allen will enjoy this!
December 8, 2011
I loved Skibell's first book, A Blessing on the Moon, so I was really looking forward to reading this. Pfah. I didn't get very far into it before I threw in the towel.
August 12, 2011
bored to death!
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December 13, 2015I read this a while ago, but I don't remember liking it as much as his other two books. but this does contain a mention of my husband's klezmer band, Yid Vicious.
February 4, 2013
Another book I left half-read. And by the middle, I still wasn't exactly sure what the story was supposed to be about.
July 15, 2014
Not as good as Joseph Skibells other works. It was the story itself that I didn't find engaging, kind of boring, in fact.
December 31, 2013
Skibell took a gamble with this one.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews