Reply To: The spirit of the Three Pines community
Excellent questions Nancy! Three Pines has influenced us to create our own version of the village with trusted friends and family, bringing some friends closer and distancing us from those who don’t share the same values. Three Pines has made us better neighbours to other villagers. Now, are LP’s villagers withdrawn from the outside world and what do they do/have they done to show a greater contribution other than support other villagers? Because if Three Pines is influencing us to be better neighbours, are the villagers also demonstrating contributions to the outside world and thereby influencing readers to also contribute beyond the little groups of friends/our own little Three Pines villages? That is a very, very good question. I really appreciate your comments and questions Nancy because they do require some thought, not only about the books, but also about how the books influence readers to behave and therefore how the books influence society.


Susan has an excellent example of Myrna going outside to help with Haniya Daoud’s organization in The Madness of Crowds. So I think there could be other examples of targeted contributions. I will think about this more. With art and poetry, those are also contributions that have the potential to contribute, if the artists and poets are successful enough. I think that if the artists do not have an audience or any reach then it is impossible for them to contribute as much as they would like to. It’s unfortunate that most writers, poets and artists are not successful at all.
Katherine’s point is also important to show contributions to the outside world that can happen even if villagers never leave Three Pines. Our votes, our dollars, our clicks, our time spent on any chosen platform have real consequences. Everyone advocates buying books from independent bookstores, you cannot have one conversation online without someone commenting about that. And now we are just starting to understand how much power our eyeballs have when we spend time online, and how even where we look contributes to one cause or another. So I think there could be more examples of villagers making active, targeted contributions to bettering the outside world, but I’m not sure right now. I think there is interest in discussing the books again, starting from Still Life, and I think your points here would be excellent topics to make sure we cover for each book. Please don’t forget to bring them up for each book discussion!
