from the Jill Schwartz Memorial Library in the Wilds of Connecticut.

This is Obscure, the podcast in which I read Jude the Obscure out loud and comment on it as I go.

I am your host, your reader.

I like to think I'm your friend, Michael Ian Black.

God damn it. I'm going to ignore it. I'm going to ignore it because I had this

stupid landline and the only reason we have the landline, I don't even know why we have the landline.

I have been begging for years to get rid of it, something having to do with 911.

We are those crusty elderly folk who do not understand the way the world works and that in a

nutshell is the problem with Jude he He, however, is young and he does not understand how the world

works, but he is quickly learning. He is quickly learning that his naivete is falling away from him like snake skin after a winter.

And in fact, it is winter in Wessex the fictional county it is winter there snow is on the ground and Arabella and he

have scheduled a pig killing. They've been raising this pig, right? And the pig is all things

carnal, all things sensual, in a sense it's also the baby that she pretended to have in her tum-tum.

And now it is time to kill the pig, and the pig killer has not shown up.

The butcher has not come because of the light dusting of snow and Arabella thinks maybe he's drunk.

So she's saying, you do it, Jude. You kill the pig. And Jude fine and so Jude when we last left he said he said he

said I'll do it since it must be done. He went out to the stye, shoveled away the snow for the space of a couple

yards or more, and placed the stool in front with the knives and ropes at hand.

A Robin peered down at the preparations from the nearest tree

and not liking the sinister look of the scene flew away though hungry.

By this time Arabella had joined her husband and Jude rope in hand got into the sty, and noosed the affrighted animal who, beginning

with a squeak of surprise, rose to repeated cries of rage.

...