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

I'm your host, your friend, your earlover, and literary mansplainer in chief, Michael Ian Black, about to depart for Italy.

I'm on hiatus from the television program, and so the wife and I decided to return to

Italia, which is, gee, we began this reading the last time. I guess I wasn't in Italy when we

began because I purchased this book in London, which we visited after Rome, but now we're

returning to Italy, this time to a small village outside of Lake Como.

We're going to be there for a month, just kind of hanging out, living the Dolce Vita.

It should be pleasant, I imagine.

Now, I know it sounds sort of extravagant, you know, oh, Michael's going to Italy for a month. Well thought, well, la-di-da, but it really isn't. The fact of the matter is, we're flying for free,

because I've been basically saving a frequent flyer miles since our last trip, and the

accommodations are not nearly as expensive as you might think they would be. It's a nice two-bedroom apartment, and we overlook Lake Como in the distance.

But when you rent an Airbnb for a month, you tend to get pretty good rates,

and because we're not in Como or outside of Como, I think it's cheaper still. Is it a bargain? Yeah, kind of. It's kind of a bargain vacation. You know, I'm looking forward to it. And you might be thinking, oh, Michael, how much pasta you're going to eat? Well, Martha keeps telling me they don't have pasta in the north of Italy, which I think she's full of shit. She's like, it's more, it's more about risotto up there,

but come on, they're going to have plenty of pasta. And I will eat risota too. I love risotto,

and I'll have some pizza. I'll do the classic Italian eating thing. I may even indulge in the

occasional apparel sprits. The kids will join us for about a week of that month-long vacation. Then when we

return in May, I was going to say, I don't think I'm going to finish the book. No, definitely not.

It's going to be eight weeks, ten weeks, twelve weeks before we finish this book. I don't know. I mean, considering we started it, I picked it out in London, I feel like that was like three years ago. We're in a hundred and I guess it's only been two years and change, but my goodness, it just keeps going and going and going and frankly I love it. I'm delighted that it's going and going and going and somebody was complaining to me about the book, either on Patreon or on Blue Sky or something,

saying they didn't care for it.

Well, I understand.

There's books I haven't cared for, Wuthering Heights and Frankenstein being two of them.

But in American tragedy, I'm just outright enjoying.

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