Tell 'em, Annie!

From an interview with author Annie Proulx, published in the January/February issue of Public Libraries:

Public Libraries: Your stories are frequently about people on the edges of civilization --

Annie Proulx: I beg your pardon, sir. Rural places are not the edges of civilization.

PL: I apologize. But areas of life that the general public doesn't know about --

AP: There you go again. You're talking about urban people as the only people in the world who count as being real people while people who live in rural areas are somehow subhuman?

PL: Maybe I should phrase it as, "What it is about these characters, who aren't often talked about in popular literature, that attracts you?"

AP: Right, most people write about suburban or personal or urban affairs. I write about rural areas by choice; I live in rural areas. I have for almost my entire life except for brief stints in New York City and Tokyo, which I figured was my lifetime's worth of urban life. I'm keenly interested in the rural surroundings partly because they are neglected.... [T]hey're seen as places for use; use of extraction for minerals or crops or products of some kind. Or for disposal of unwanted wastes that the cities won't have. And this colonial attitude is something that really irritates the hell out of people who live in rural areas. It's hard to take being treated like invisible people or people who simply don't count. And I write about these people and these places because I like them.

For the bulk of the interview, those who are curious will have to find a printed issue of the magazine. Ms. Proulx was one of the authors that the proprietor of the "Booked Up" bookstore in Archer City, Texas, recommended to me on the one occasion that I got to talk books with him. Perhaps one of these days I'll have to take his advice.

I agree with Ms. Proulx that densely-populated hyperurban hellholes (or, for that matter, tickytacky generic suburban housing developments) are not a place where I want to spend most of my life. And I've noticed a tendency among people in urban areas to blithely ignore the interests of people in less densely populated areas whenever it suits their interest and they're able to use their concentrated political power to railroad it through the relevant governmental body. Unfortunately, my choice of careers -- which was largely predicated on the fact that library reference work and collection development are the only things I seem to be much good at -- makes it difficult to find suitable employment in sparsely-settled and non-crazymaking areas.