from the the obscure, the podcast where I read Jude the obscure out loud and comment on it as I go.

My name is Michael Ian Black and today in Connecticut it's a chilly day. My library is a little

bit overheated and I'm feeling a little bit overheated as I fret about

poor Jude. Poor Jude who when last we saw him had abandoned everything that he knew to head into Christ

Minster where his beloved professor had gone to go to university and poor Jude, we, we Jude, just a child

really, had a job and he got fired from his job and he had parents and then they died and so he lived with his aunt who said well it's probably better if you died too and everything just seems terrible for Jude and the last sentence in the second chapter is as he's leaving town it says

here the plowed land ended and all before him was bleak open down so things are

not looking great for Jude right now. But consider for a moment the idea

of heading out into the world on your own as like a 10 year old kid you know basically like Huck Finn

but in England and with no particular street smarts no raft raft, no friend named Jim, he got nothing.

This boy Jude and so he's heading out really obscure and that's kind of, you know, that's

built right at that's baked right into the title there the idea

of obscurity and it's like he's running away from home except that you know

generally when you run away from home as a kid you got somebody at home who

cares Jude doesn't have that. Chapter 3. Not a soul was visible on the hedgeless highway or on either side of it, and the white road seemed to

ascend and diminish till it joined the sky.

At the very top it was crossed at right angles

by a green ridgeway, the Icknield Street

and original Roman road through the district. This ancient track ran east and west for many miles

and downed almost to within living memory had been used for driving flocks and herds to fairs and markets, but it was now neglected

and overgrown. Of course it is, because everything in Jude's world is neglected, bereft, bleak, miserable. I should remind readers. I have not

read this book before. I'm reading it for the first time as I go. That's part of the premise. The whole idea is I've never read Jude the obscure,

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