Reading Selection - March 2004

The English Disease, by Joseph Skibell

JOSEPH SKIBELL’s The English Disease follows his first novel, A Blessing on the Moon, which has received international acclaim. The recipient of Publisher’s Weekly Book of the Year award, the Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Steve Turner Prize for First Fiction from the Texas Institute of Letters, Skibell is also a frequent contributor to the New York Times’ Sophisticated Traveler. His prize-winning short stories and journalism have appeared in Story Magazine, Tikkun, and the New York Times, and his play, Our Own Dear Anton’s Abandoned Story Cycle, premiered in 2001. Skibell teaches English and Creative Writing at Emory University.

THE ENGLISH DISEASE tells the wildly funny and sometimes heartbreaking story of Charles Belski, a neurotic Jewish musicologist trying to balance his sense of self and identity, struggling between intellectual and emotional reactions to a life which feels beyond his control. A chronic sufferer of melancholy – “the English disease” – Belski married to escape the tedium of dating, had a child whilst considering divorce, and is now consumed with a seemingly dissonant guilt at his distance from his faith. He narrates his tale with the wicked humor of a master cynic—a journey that starts with a disastrous camping trip meant to save his marriage, continues on a traumatic voyage to Poland with an egomaniacal yet desperately lonely colleague, and finally finds him back in California confronting his assimilated life and his wife’s unexpected religious epiphany. Described as “a wildly funny novel that is equal parts Philip Roth, Groucho Marx, and Woody Allen,” THE ENGLISH DISEASE tackles the challenges of relationships and changing cultural landscapes with a gentle touch and boundless wit!

Reviews of The English Disease Include:

“The sophisticated interplay of conflicted faith and prosaic everyday life,
and the clashes between inborn heritage and constructed love, are at the
heart of this second novel by the author of the memorable A Blessing on the
Moon. . . . The story moves to a surprisingly rich denouement in which
Charles's dour intellectualism takes second place to his emotional
fulfillment.”— Publishers Weekly

Please note, if you have not yet read The English Disease, the reading group discussion guide below might include some spoilers.

Reading Group Discussion Guide:

1. Belski ruminates about music a lot – how do you think the musical pieces discussed relate to the characters associated with them? For instance, what is Goodnight Irene to Isabelle, versus Mahler to Belski?

2. The English Disease opens with the line: “English melancholiacs used to tour the ruins of Antiquity as a cure for their depression.” Why does Belski use the past as a treatment for his own depression – or do you consider it a fixation, instead? To what degree does Belski take responsibility for his life choices?

3. 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 his sadness, and does his difficulty letting go of his daughter represent other difficulties in his life?

4. Belski suggests that his early Jewish socialization predetermined his marriage outside Judaism. Do you really think there is a correlation?

5. Belski repeatedly describes his wife Isabelle as “blonde.” What does he mean when he says, “everything about her seemed blonde?” Why was Belski initially attracted to Isabelle? Contrast this attraction to his attraction to Gitl Finkelstein (pp 80-83).

6. Belski’s tour of Poland is excruciating for him, in large part due Leibowitz, whose company he tolerates seemingly out of pity. What do you think about this part of the book, and Belski’s reactions to Leibowitz?

7. 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 do you think he views Isabelle’s conversion similarly – and to what extent are his own layers of identity superficial? Given this, how are we to understand Belski’s epiphany as he stands under the chupa at the end of the novel?

Glossary:

The English Disease: The expression “the English disease,” or “la malaise Anglais,” has been applied to rickets, mad cow disease, depression, procrastination, and homosexuality. The latest use of this term has been the British “malady” that drives people to violence at soccer games. Used in this book, it refers to melancholia.

Gustav Mahler (1860 – 1911): Mahler was born to an Austrian Jewish family living in Bohemia. His music is known for its sadness, depth, and length. In 1897, he converted to Christianity. He became the director of the Vienna Opera, and in 1902 married Alma Maria Schindler. Mahler said of himself that: “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.”

Simcha: This is the Hebrew word for “joy,” and is often used to describe happy occasions in Jewish life, such as a wedding, bar- or batmitzvah, or an engagement.

Beshert: This is the Hebrew term for “destiny” or “fate,” and is sometimes also used to describe one’s soul mate or true love.

Halutzim: This is the Hebrew term for pioneers or adventurers. The Halutzim were early East European Jewish pioneers who emigrated to Palestine in order to settle the land and farm it.

Chupa: This is the Jewish wedding canopy under which a bride and groom stand during a traditional ceremony. Open on all four sides, it symbolizes the home of Abraham and Sarah, which was designed similarly to be hospitable to guests approaching in any direction.