Is it harder to write about the Miramichi from a big urban center?
It’s not harder at all. It’s the very same thing Tolstoy said about the rural mentality. Tolstoy made the observation that most people think or believe that the rural life deprives you of intellectual curiosity. Many times, just the opposite is true. And what I’m trying to show here is that the intellectual curiosity — not only of Sydney Henderson and Diedre Whyne but also Leo McVicer, who is extremely astute, extremely clever and Cynthia Pit who is absolutely brilliant in knowing how society works from the courts to the laws to the police. Her own hubris and ego does her in, but she’s no one’s fool. I’m saying that — good, bad or indifferent — these are admirable traits in people and rural people have them just as much as anyone else. Do you think maybe that the rural lifestyle feeds some of that as well? That maybe rural people are more in touch with their surroundings and their lives? Well, it might or might not. I can’t say. But it’s kind of like — and this has been said by lot
