The Curable Romantic

Emory's own Joseph Skibell authors this epic tale of the idealistic anti-hero Jakob Sammelsohn.  Dr. Sammelsohn, exiled by his pious Hasidic father for the crime of reading secular books, finds himself lovelorn in 1895 Vienna.  He falls madly in love with a woman he spies from a theater balcony and the ensuing obsession takes him into world of Sigmund Freud in the early days psychoanalysis.  The woman turns out to be Freud's most notorious neurotic, and  the young Dr. Sammelsohn becomes involved in a cure gone terribly wrong.

Next Sammelsohn meets the creator of Esperanto and becomes infatuated with a beautiful devotee of the the common world language.  Fueled by passion for world peace, the two romantics enter the dirty web of politics behind the universal language movement. Again, mystical events intercede in history causing Sammelsohn to bungle his work in the cause.

Sammelsohn finally ends up in the Nazi occupied Warsaw Ghetto in the 1940s. He befriends a rebbe and ends up on a trip to Heaven where he finds not exactly what he was expecting.

Skibell is a masterful satirist, who deftly weave historical tales into otherworldly scenarios, blending hilariously egotistical characters with mystical phenomena and factual events.  The story of his protagonists personal exile is ingenious, incongruous and hugely compelling.  The story begs the big questions born of human suffering with high Jewish humor.  After finishing over 600 pages, I wanted to know what happens next to the endearing Dr. Sammelsohn.  Is he curable?  I hope not because I want to read the sequel.

In the video below, Skibell performs a song about his book.