Interview with Carole Maso
Interview by Mary Clare Griffin

Carole Maso is an English professor at Brown University.  Her published work includes novels, short fiction, essays, journals, and biographies.  She is the author of Ghost Dance, The Art Lover, AVA, The American Woman in the Chinese Hat, Aureole, Defiance, Break Every Rule, The Room Lit By Roses, and Beauty is Convulsive: The Passion of Frida Kahlo.  She has been awarded many grants and fellowships, including grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts.

As the eldest of five raised in poetic Paterson, New Jersey, what did you want to be when you grew up? Was it a traditional upbringing?

I wanted to be a painter or a dancer or a pianist.  As it turned out I had no real talent in any of these areas.  Still I took painting seriously for a long time.  Later I wanted to be a filmmaker-- but alas, I am not an extrovert, or a "people person," and so would have a hard time of it.  A traditional upbringing-- yes, in many ways.  On the surface at any rate: big family, public school, church on Sundays, two parents, stay at home mom.  But I had a mother who expected only excellence from me because, as she said, I owed it to myself.  In return, even though I was the eldest of a clan, I never had to do excessive chores or take care of the rest of the brood.  Both my parents always took me seriously.  And my father, the least patriarchal of patriarchs gave me the room to think and grow and dream and fail without the usual pronouncements and tyrannies.

I find your work gorgeously experimental, mosaic, irreverent. How did music-- particularly jazz-- influence you?

Music is the love of my life.  There was always music in my house growing up and the above-mentioned adored, silent father was a jazz trumpet player and this had a huge impact.  I think in many ways I have tried to write a kind of music in order to communicate with my father.

Taking another approach, how does silence inform language in your writing?

All those working with sound have got to contend with the enormity of the silence we speak against.  It renders the sound precious, sacred.  Like the air or the sea it must be respected, revered, honored.  It surrounds us.  It's a palpable presence in the texts, I admire most.  Each word is informed by it, asserting itself against it, shimmers and falls back into it, finally.

Currently, you're Professor of English at Brown University. Do you truly believe writing can be taught? Have you seen a shift in student writings since the September 11th attack on America? In your own?

I think some things can be learned-- and probably taught.  The relation of parts to whole.  The implications and possibilities of form.  Ways to read as a writer, and observe the world as a writer.  Also enthusiasms can be imparted, habits and patterns of concentration, seriousness of purpose.  I haven't been teaching this semester but have heard students all over the country are still largely in denial about Sept 11.  Having come of age in the Clinton go-go years, with infotainment instead of news, they must be in some serious state of shock.  As for me, as a result of the 11th, my work will never be the same again-- as I will never be the same.

"A Room Lit by Roses" chronicles your pregnancy and birth of your daughter. How has motherhood reshaped your relationship to language and writing?

It's an evolving thing.  Every day my work becomes, how shall I say it, more tender, more attentive to the most minute detail, more vulnerable, more filled with joy-- and with sorrow.

What draws you to painter Frida Kahlo? Talk about your recent book, "Beauty is Compulsive: The Passion of Frida Kahlo."

Everything draws me to Frida, but when I read her late diary I wanted very much to incorporate that work into a book of my own and create a dialog of sorts between us.  I wanted in some way to retrieve the woman from the icon, knowing full well that she had some real part in creating that icon.  It's a hybrid book incorporating fiction, poetry, biography, autobiography.

What are you reading now?

Wars I Have Seen--Gertrude Stein
Pastoral--Carl Phillips
Juice--Renee Gladman
Breathturn--Paul Celan
The Heart is Katmandu--Yoel Hoffman

Finally, in what section of the museum would I most likely find you wandering? 

Oh, I am a promiscuous one: the Sienese painters, the Illuminated manuscripts, The Greeks, the Asian Art Wing, the video installations, the Conceptual people-- the list goes on and on...

Visit Carole's website at www.carolemaso.com. 

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