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

I am your host, your friend, your literary Mansplainer in chief, Michael and Black.

Well, it's morning time here in the wilds of Connecticut.

Graduation season has come and gone. My son now a high school

graduate off to college in just a few weeks time.

And I have, as probably any parent would have,

mixed emotions about this event.

I am thrilled for him. I am proud of him. I am excited for his future. I am also of course concerned

about his future in the way that parents are concerned about everything regarding their children

Concerned that he is not prepared enough concerns that he won't brush his teeth perhaps, or shower, concerns that he won't do the work,

concerned that he won't make friends, concerned that the food will be bad.

All of these are most likely unwarranted concerns, but they are concerns nonetheless.

As your eldest child leaves home semi-perminently.

He will return, of course, for holidays and then those returns home will dribble to a stop and then he will go get an

apartment somewhere and some part of the country and then we will never see him again.

In Jude is attending a graduation ceremony himself there in Christ Minster, where he sees all the shiny new graduates of the colleges

descending from their carriages and feels himself to be lacking in comparison but also reflecting on his

own life choices and how he is now a poor and broken man recovering perhaps

from illness perhaps not recovering from illness we don't know but he has just had an illness

and

he has been challenged by old friends in the crowd look at you your back you're back, you piece of shit, they're saying. And he's saying, yeah, I'm a piece of shit. I did the best that I could. I tried to make something of myself. But I was too hasty about it. It was the work of three generations. I tried

to do it in one, if you want to criticize me, have at it. But I did what I could. And whether or not I succeeded in your eyes is irrelevant. I could

...