From the Jill Schwartz Memorial Library here in Soltree, Savannah, Georgia, this is obscure

season four in American tragedy.

I'm your host, your friend, your ear lover, your literary, Mansplainer in chief,

Michael Bien Black, beginning today with a, oh, I guess a little weather report has been just dreary and overcast here in Savannah for the past three days we've had some heavy rains we've had some

popping thunderstorms we've just run the gamut and it's gotten chilly it was

it was it was it was it was positively bucolic only days ago and now

the chill has returned along with it the damp and me in my denim shirt observing the whole meteorological parade as it passes by my setting. Somebody sent me a nice little thing about Theater

Drieser on Instagram. I guess it was taken from a museum in Indiana acknowledging Theat risers, contributions to literature.

He was in Indiana and the little plaque made a point of saying, oh, you know, he wrote about all the social ills of the time,

etc, etc.

And in American tragedy was made into a movie called The Place and the Sun and so on and so forth forth but I thought that was interesting you know I can't help

but pick up little pieces of detritus about our various authors as we go along. As you know, it is my rule not to learn too much, really, or anything, about the writers beforehand because I am inclined to let whatever the work is stand on its own two feet if it can.

And so far, although we have had at least one wobbly novel in terms of being able to stand on its

own two feet, and here I am referring to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, all of the novels have been able to do that. I've been able to stand apart

from their authors and, you know, just be works of art and had they been anonymous, we'd be like, yeah, these are works of art. You know what I mean?

That's why I don't learn anything about the authors. I don't want my opinion colored.

I don't want any of it. But inevitably, as you go along, as you're reading these these books you find out a thing or two and

of course we already knew about Dreyzer being some sort of naturalist.

I say some sort of because it's not strict to me you You know, there's a kind of piety to his works

that speaks of a deep morality at the center of dryers character and I'm not saying naturalistic

authors don't have a morality but what I am saying is that as in the case

Hardy with Jude it seemed like I guess he's more

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