The English Disease

This book is a hilarious take on the Jewish intellectual's struggle between assimilation and self integration. It is more like a series of New Yorker short stories than a novel, but is so witty and so beautifully written that who can complain? Not me!

Joe Skibell has my number. He writes about everything I identify with, or have lived with, like Mahler, Wagner, klezmer music, middle class Jews, the holocaust, therapy, Freud, Jung, etc. If you are still reading, and not turned off by this imposing roll-call, let me say he does it with the wit and delivery of Jerry Seinfeld, and other stand-up masters. It wasn't enough to be born Jewish....but Jewish in Lubbock, Texas? Oy vey! (In the book he calls the town, Karkel) On page 76, professor Skibell (Emory Univ.) states, "The Jewish community of Karkel (Lubbock), Texas, was small". Yeah, I'm glad he told us. Like we'd have thought this small Texas town had four million Jews, with a synagogue, and a hot and cold running mikveh(pre wedding purification bath for women), on every corner. Skibell's protagonist is a musicologist, Charles Belski ( I know the word musicologist is losing me and Skibell readers), attending a conference in Poland. This leads to ruminations on the holocaust, the Freud Jung breakup, Mahler still battling anti-semitism, even after his converting, Wagner's anti-semitism and racial theories, and Jews in present day Poland. Read! Enjoy! Have something to eat. A perfect tool for TV withdrawal.

Joe Skibell has my number. He writes about everything I identify with, or have lived with, like Mahler, Wagner, klezmer music, middle class Jews, the holocaust, therapy, Freud, Jung, etc. If you are still reading, and not turned off by this imposing roll-call, let me say he does it with the wit and delivery of Jerry Seinfeld, and other stand-up masters. It wasn't enough to be born Jewish....but Jewish in Lubbock, Texas? Oy vey! (In the book he calls the town, Karkel) On page 76, professor Skibell (Emory Univ.) states, "The Jewish community of Karkel (Lubbock), Texas, was small". Yeah, I'm glad he told us. Like we'd have thought this small Texas town had four million Jews, with a synagogue, and a hot and cold running mikveh(pre wedding purification bath for women), on every corner. Skibell's protagonist is a musicologist, Charles Belski ( I know the word musicologist is losing me and Skibell readers), attending a conference in Poland. This leads to ruminations on the holocaust, the Freud Jung breakup, Mahler still battling anti-semitism, even after his converting, Wagner's anti-semitism and racial theories, and Jews in present day Poland. Read! Enjoy! Have something to eat. A perfect tool for TV withdrawal. Four stars. Five is reserved for Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, and Solzhenitsyn.

Charles Belski, musicologist, expert on the neurotically depressed Gustave Mahler, whose 'disease' Belski also shares, finds himself on the assimilated Jew's journey in American to discover who he is and his place in the Jewish world. Belski a new millennium Portnoy is condemned to forever chase the 'shiksa goddess' after his first grade teacher provides him with a six year old beautiful shiksa desk mate. The novel opens with Belski traveling through the Southwest with his shiksa goddess wife with whom he has become disenchanted. We follow Belski through the land of the 'glue eater's' as he takes his gentile daughter to day care and on a trip to Auschwitz with his hilarious colleague Liebowitz, who offers a witty exegesis on how the Marx Brothers are models of the Ascent of Assmiliating Jewish Man. Skibell's writing is intelligent, piquant and fun, and at the end Belski discovers his place on Liebowitz's model Ascent. I won't spoil the book by revealing that place.

The English Disease is a wonderful blend of the neurotic realities faced by Americans of any culture faced with assimilation. The struggle of Jewish-Americans' assimilation struggles are echoed by many Americans and Skibell's character takes this topic to places it's never been.His thoughts are mimic those of many American Jews who struggle with the juxtaposition of American life, and Jewish spirituality. I laughed out loud at parts and was amazed at Skibell's observations in others.