The English Disease (Magill’s Literary Annual 2004)
At a glance:
- Author: Joseph Skibell
- First Published: 2003
- Type of Work: Novel
- Time of Work: 1990-2002
- Setting: The western United States and Poland
- Principal Characters: Charles Belski, Isabelle Belski, Franny Belski, Liebowitz, Rabbi Falconer, Rabbi Gurwitz
- Genres: Long fiction, Novel
- Subjects: United States or Americans, Traveling or travelers, Twentieth century, Twenty-first century, Religion, Anti-Semitism, Depression, mental, 1990’s, Holocaust, Jewish, Poland or Polish people, Judaism, Concentration camps
- Locales: West (U.S.), Poland
The novel’s opening lines clarify the title, explaining that English people suffering from melancholy toured the ruins of ancient Greece and Italy to cure their depression, which in those days was called “the English disease.” The first-person narrator observes that these victims of melancholy must have believed that contemplating the splendor of actual ruins would help them to find beauty in the misery of their own ruined lives.
While Charles Belski, the voice in The English Disease, must settle for the United States’ less impressive ruins, such as Mesa Verde, he...
[The entire page is 1857 words long]
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