From the Jill Schwartz Memorial Library here in the wilds of Connecticut, this is obscure season four in American tragedy.

I'm your host, your friend, your ear lover, and literary mansplainerer in chief, Michael, Ian Black, Supine,

as always, on the Jack Jack, Memorial Reading Throne. It is a Monday. As I record this around noon,

we had friends here for the weekend. It was a very wholesome weekend. We played Rummy Cube. I worked on a jigsaw puzzle.

We had a key party. It was just very wholesome. And now they're gone and I thought to myself,

well, I guess I should head on down to the library and record an episode of Obscure. So here I am. It's a good way to

begin the week, you know, with a little classic literature. You think to yourself on a dreary

winter Monday, oh, how am I going to get through the day? Ah, I'll delve into the mind of a literary master,

in this case, Ted Dreiser. And I was thinking this morning while I was in the shower,

why isn't an American tragedy better known? I mean, I'd heard of it, and I know there's been some

movies made of it, but it's not really in the canon. And I suspect it's because ultimately,

it's kind of pulpy, isn't it? I mean, maybe there's other pulpy books in the canon.

I guess, well, Wuthering Heights is kind of pulpy too, but in a different way.

I don't know, it's like an American tragedy is trying maybe too hard to be a book of import. Maybe that's the problem.

Maybe it's just trying a little too hard because it's dealing with all the themes that similar

books in the canon deal with. And most notably, I think the Great Gatsby, which is about a fifth of the size

in terms of length, maybe even short. I bet it is even shorter than 20% of the length of

an American tragedy. And it's got all the same elements, right? It's got striving and it's

got class differences and it's got the habits and mores of the rich. It's set in roughly the same

time. And yet it manages to accomplish everything that an American tragedy is taking us, what's this,

128 episodes and counting to accomplish, and it does it better than an American tragedy.

Similarly, maybe you could think about something like, oh, I don't know, the concrete jungle or something,

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