The Wonder Years: Carole Maso on Paterson

Novelist Carole Maso was born in Paterson, NJ and in many ways is a writer deeply informed both by the stylistic licenses Williams took, as well as by the aura of his presence in her first city. Maso talks of Wonderbread trucks, grammar school pride, Armenian silk workers, and other Patersoniana in this recent interview, again fairly unedited. I regretted later on not asking her about how she felt about the Marcia Nardi passages, especially after reading her say in another interview: “Only a college-educated white man can write enormous, sloppy, sometimes unreadable books and be labeled a genius. If a woman attempted such a project she'd be laughed or scorned or ridiculed off the scene. Or worse, ignored.” I did later see her at a reading, and we briefly talked about how Williams was canny to fess up to such power dynamics by including the Nardi letters to him, warts and all.
Maso talks about her upbringing in Paterson: (3 min. 24 sec.)
Moving through a modernist masterpiece: (4 min. 25 sec.)
Hardship in Paterson: (3 min. 9 sec.)
Paterson and Paterson: (1 min. 56 sec.)