A Blessing on the Moon (26 page)

QUESTION
:
Over the years, there have been some attempts to adapt the novel, yes?

SKIBELL
: Well, yes, although that’s something I’ve resisted, for the most part. I received many letters when the book first came out from
people who wanted to turn it into a play or into an animated film, but somehow—I don’t know—I just felt very protective of the book and also of its characters. These were my relatives, after all! And I was a bit wary, I suppose, of the sense of theatrical artificiality that I assumed would come from a dramatic adaptation. Also, the writers who tried to adapt it didn’t seem able to approximate the book’s tone.

QUESTION
:
But now it’s being turned into an opera, and you’re doing the libretto. Isn’t that right?

SKIBELL
: Well, it’s a long story, but yes, it’s true, I am.

QUESTION
:
And so what changed your mind?

SKIBELL
: Well, opera always seemed to me to be a medium predicated on artifice, and so the sense of tone didn’t seem to be a problem. Also the composer, Andy Teirstein, and I really got along. I loved his work and I trusted his instincts. He tried to work with a few collaborators, but it became apparent that the tone of the book was too elusive. I realized—and I think Andy realized, or he maybe knew it all along—that it wouldn’t happen unless I did the libretto. However, I was knee-deep in
A Curable Romantic,
and I had no interest in either leaving off from that book or in revisiting
A Blessing on the Moon
. There seemed to be no joy in mechanically adapting a book that had been a passionate writing experience for me. And so I told Andy that, although I was willing to work on the libretto, the idea of sitting alone in a room, and taking apart this fragile, beautiful, and meaningful little book and then putting it back together again, was abhorrent to me. So instead, I spent two weeks at Andy’s summer place, and we wrote the libretto together. He’s still composing the music.

QUESTION
:
And what was it like, reading the novel after all this time?

SKIBELL
: Well, I hadn’t looked at it in many years, and I have to say—and I don’t mean for this to sound immodest—but I was a little in awe
of the audacity of the young writer I encountered there. That guy was
fearless,
more fearless, I thought, than certainly I could ever be now. And he really seemed to know how to put a novel together. He left a lot there for Andy and me to work with, that’s for sure. But I also saw the flaws.

QUESTION
:
Let’s speak of the issue of the Holocaust and fiction. When
A Blessing on the Moon
first came out, the issue seemed more controversial than it does today. Why do you think that is?

SKIBELL
: I don’t know. The question has always seemed a little odd to me, especially in relationship to
A Blessing on the Moon,
since, with the exception of about three paragraphs—the opening and, a little later, the exposition about the murder of the little boy nicknamed Pillow—I don’t believe there’s any depiction of any actual events from the war. Except for those three or so paragraphs, the entirety of the book takes place in the corridor between this world and the next. I don’t mean to make light of it, and I hope I don’t seem disingenuous, but those three paragraphs are a description of a massacre, and I don’t believe that anyone who advocates against creating fictions based on the events of the Holocaust has ever suggested that it’s taboo to describe a massacre.

Elie Wiesel, of course, remains the strongest and loudest voice advocating this position, as far as I know, and I believe that even he maintains that it’s only the experience of the concentration camps that cannot or should not be represented in fiction. It’s a huge subject, and a terribly complex one. I mean, a friend of mine did his dissertation in Yiddish literature on the difference between an earlier Yiddish version of Wiesel’s
Night
and the French version, the one that we all know, and according to him, the two versions are fundamentally different. Now if one writer, writing two versions of the same historical event, can produce two radically different books, it’s hard to know why nonfiction reportage can lay greater claims to objectivity and historicity. On the other hand, one hesitates to demonstrate the fictionalization of Wiesel’s memoir when there are Holocaust-deniers out there, prowling around, claiming that it’s all a fiction.

QUESTION
:
I see what you mean about the complexity.

SKIBELL
: But the real issue—and I don’t mean to go on pontificating about this—but the issue at the heart of the matter really is, I think, that fiction, along with almost everything else in Western culture, with the exception perhaps of money, has been completely trivialized. We don’t have to ask ourselves if a specific novel trivializes an historical event; we need only know that novels themselves are trivial. Literature is something we make our children read in school, but we all believe secretly that books are boring, ponderous things, and given the choice between reading Dante and watching
American Idol,
we’re going to be watching
American Idol.

But—let me say it loudly—novels and stories are not trivial. On the contrary, profound stories are a means of orienting ourselves within the cosmos. Literature is a compass that points to humankind’s true north. Everyone who has ever been profoundly moved by a novel knows this, and yet, we lie to ourselves and say it’s not so.

QUESTION
:
Speaking of novels, you have a new one,
A Curable Romantic.
Can you tell us a little about it?

SKIBELL
: Ah, yes! I’m happy to talk about it all day. To begin with, it’s the most ambitious thing I’ve ever done. The book follows its protagonist, Dr. Jakob Josef Sammelsohn, through a friendship with Sigmund Freud, into the early Esperanto Movement—the international language movement—and finally through World War I and into the Warsaw Ghetto. Without giving too much away, it’s sort of a cosmic love story. I began working on it immediately after publishing
The English Disease,
my second novel, and I worked on it, quite happily and without interruption, for about five years. The manuscript was originally just a page or two under one thousand pages, and I spent another year cutting it down by nearly a third. This was like performing surgery to make a 6-foot tall man 5 foot, 9 inches. You couldn’t just chop out a piece of his thigh. Everything had to be shortened proportionally. It was harder
work than writing the book in the first place, and the book was hard work. I became fully versed in the early history of psychoanalysis and various other arcane subjects like Jewish demonology. I learned Esperanto—a beautiful language with an extensive literature. At one point, I told a friend that, with the exception of a few major Esperantists, I probably knew more about Esperanto than anyone in North America and that, if I were a scholar, this knowledge would be the foundation of my entire career; as it was, I will have forgotten almost everything in about three years. Can I tell you a funny story?

QUESTION
:
Certainly, go ahead.

SKIBELL
: Dr. Sammelsohn gets married for the third time in Geneva in 1906 while attending the Second Universal Esperanto Congress. There’s a synagogue not far from Victoria Hall, which is where Dr. Zamenhof, the inventor of Esperanto, gave his congress address that year. Dr. Zamenhof made speeches at each of the early congresses. In any case, my wife Barbara and I took a couple of research trips to Europe, in part to make sure I was describing everything accurately, and during one of them, naturally, we visited the synagogue in Geneva. As I sat there, during Shabbat services—they wouldn’t let us in at any other time—I was marveling at the beauty of the place, and I thought to myself: “Man, I can’t believe I’m here. I can’t believe I’m actually here where Dr. Sammelsohn got married!” And then, of course, I remembered that Dr. Sammelsohn is a fictional character, that he hadn’t actually gotten married there, that I had in fact invented him, and that I was only there now because this was where
I
had placed his wedding. But I guess what John Lennon said is true: “Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.”

The Ester and Chaim Skibelski family,
circ. 1925 (from left to right): Hadassah, Shmuel, Yechezkiel (my grandfather, standing in back row; in America he called himself Archie), Ester, Sarah, Eliahu, Shlomo, Chaim, Edzia, Laibl, Miriam. The oldest son, Itzhak, is not pictured. He was already in America, living as Jake Skibell. Shlomo, Shmuel, and Eliahu also came to America, where they took the names Sam, Sidney, and Albert.

The following questions, discussion topics, and notes are intended to enhance your reading of
A Blessing on the Moon
and to provide additional material to facilitate your group’s discussion.

1. How does the author establish the fantastical nature of the novel from its very beginning? Why do you think the author utilized the plot device of turning the Rebbe into a crow? Why does this metamorphosis seem appropriate for the character? How does the first sentence of chapter two, “The Rebbe is not his usual self, that much is clear” (page 8), establish the mood and set up the action for
part one
of the book?

2. Chaim laments, “Without the moon, who can keep track of the time?” (page 204). How does the author play with time as the novel progresses? How does this technique affect the way we experience Chaim’s story? What is the significance of the fifty years that elapse during the course of the book?

3. Chaim is a man of almost unflinching faith who believes that “what’s forbidden is forbidden” (page 236) and says, “If the Rebbe insists, who am I to argue?” (page 228). How does Chaim’s adherence to Jewish law both simplify and complicate his existence? What are his feelings about the stringent Hasidic beliefs he witnesses by observing Kalman and Zalman? How does their discussion of whether the Law permits them to take the abandoned boat (pages 111–14) foreshadow the events of the novel’s conclusion?

4. Most of the characters are able to see the dead Chaim, but to others he and his blood are invisible. Who can see him, and who cannot? Why do you think the author decided to make him invisible to some? What is significant about the parts of the story during which Chaim bleeds? How and when are towels used as a ritual for cleansing and healing (see pages 71, 135, and 254)?

5. What is the nature of the attraction between Chaim and Ola? Why does Chaim succumb to “what is forbidden” in this relationship? Why is he reluctant to reveal to her the truth about death (pages 43–44)? What are Ola’s greatest gifts to Chaim?

6. The themes of abandonment and loss are ubiquitous in the novel, and Chaim often exclaims, “What can God be thinking!” If God could answer Chaim, how do you think their conversation would progress? How would Ola, the Rebbe, Ester, Ida, and others explain to Chaim their own “abandonment” of him?

7. The Hotel Amfortas is a unique and colorful representation of Chaim’s idea of paradise. Describe your own version of the ideal “Hotel Amfortas” and the events that would take place there. How do the similarities and differences illuminate the similarities and differences between you and the character of Chaim Skibelski?

8. What are the first clues that something is amiss at the Hotel Amfortas? How does the hotel’s deterioration mirror the events and outcome of the Holocaust? What happens to Chaim physically and psychologically as the hotel falls into ruin (pages 190–96)?

9. Explore the symbolism of the moon’s burial beneath layers of corpses and the construction of the scaffolding from human bones held together by “a higher physics of some kind” (page 244). Who was responsible for pulling the moon down from the sky in the first place? Is there more than one answer to this question?

10. The release of the moon from its burial site is simultaneous with the release of Chaim at the novel’s climax. What does this transition require of Chaim, and how does he react at first? Do you think Ola would have been comforted if she had known what happens to Chaim on the last page of the book? Do you think Ola underwent a similar process? Why, or why not?

11. Chaim notes the blood and pockmarks that mar the moon’s surface as it is about to be restored to its rightful place: “Forever now, the moon will appear this way, no longer the smooth and gleaming pearl I remember from my youth” (page 254). How have the events of the Holocaust changed forever the way the world appears, and how might the preceding quotation begin to suggest the feelings of the descendants of those who died at the hands of Hitler’s army? What does Chaim mean when he says, “Many worlds have been lost, not simply my own” (page 219)?

12. While carrying the head of the German soldier, Chaim wonders, “Perhaps I would have been happier being born a wolf” (page 119). Why does he momentarily feel he would be better off as a vicious animal? What does his fantasy reveal about his feelings toward his killers? About his own character? About his identity as a Jew? Why does he eventually relinquish this fantasy?