what is your name?
Carol Maric
how would you describe what you do?
“My life goal? Literary Immortality—without compromise.”
“I would rather be skydiving while writing a book”
“I am paradoxically precocious, belated, and posthumous.”
philosopher, polymath, writer, poet, musician, artist.
Author of the unpublished masterpiece PROTEAN NotUnTitled: The Philosophical Cantos (copyright 2000 Library of Congress), Carol Maric has presented the manuscript thus far to only a few, including Harold Bloom and Jacques Derrida, who had favorable comments. The work is akin to late James Joyce with Nietzschean poetics, highly baroque, and deeply complex in its content and language—an original extension of the English language, elucidating the ambiguities of various extremities of mind. This is the sort of book in which an author’s work might culminate, yet it is a first work.
Maric has since been writing a lengthy novel for several years, as well as another book of poetry, and essays; future works include books of philosophy, microfiction, and the (under construction) online literary journal Alidade Review.
She is also a multifaceted musician (electric cello, violin, and voice), and visual artist (photography, painting, and drawing).
what are you currently working on?
Philosophy.
I consider Philosophy to be the highest pursuit of the mind.
My independent study has been non-linear (within and across texts), primarily associative, and focused on a few great philosophers, along with other great literary writers and poets (why settle for anything less?), with whom I develop immediate affinities—I can feel their presence alive on the other side of every page I view and touch; I experience “discourse” with their minds as my thoughts immediately react to, and counteract theirs—imaginary debates and associative connections always ensue, during varying speeds of interaction ranging from slow, close, and deconstructive to mercurial, firestorming readings.
I am always studying everything and everybody around me, as my mind is never at rest, even while I sleep, although I experiment with transcendental meditation and biofeedback to explore stillness.
Having just completed the extensive project of familiarizing myself with the history of western philosophy, from its origins to the present, in order to broaden my base knowledge, in a linear manner, I am now about to go back through it all again in an even more comprehensive mode, in tandem with studying my favorite philosophers further, while writing philosophy.
I am founder and group leader of MySpace’s Philosophy / Critical Theory Group, one of the largest and flourishing public forums in the Science & History category, since 2004.
what has had the greatest influence on your work?
The greatest influence on my work was the death of my father, which caused me to emancipate myself at the age of 33.
I credit my father with teaching me how to write exceptionally.
Due to concurrent, life-altering events, I began a reassessment of my life and circumstances, and decided to radically change them. My introduction to the philosophical writings of Friedrich Nietzsche could not have been better timed or needed: his work became a life saving necessity and dark comfort in a raging tempest; it was then that I realized how important philosophy was to become to me, even though I had always been essentially a philosophical being, gestating and developing ideas over a long period of “undeclared” time.
I became actively autodidactic, as a voracious reader—and continue to be an enthusiastic advocate for the dissemination of knowledge through books.
Once I was acclimatized in my new environment, I started to seriously use the gifts that I had always possessed; after experiencing years of financial hardship and circumstances that severely constrained my freedoms during an singularly unconventional upbringing, my options continued to be narrow in my adult years until the breakthrough—I have not looked back since!
what is the greatest misconception about you or your work?
No one yet knows the magnitude and importance of my poetry.
what do you see as the main strengths and weaknesses of the medium you work in?
I work in several mediums, just as I invent different styles within them, and find no strengths or weaknesses, but one’s own—relentless experimentation is absolutely essential!
how has technology impacted upon the work you do?
Dissemination as Revolution.
My stance on Writing & Publishing: No Editing Allowed, except one’s own volitionally (otherwise known as crafting), is an uncompromising stipulation of mine; It is either In or Out—Curators, Not Editors.
what’s the greatest piece of advice you would like to pass on?
Develop an insatiable desire for knowledge, and feed it constantly!
where can we find you online?
PERSONAL:
www.groups.myspace.com/philosophycriticaltheory
www.linkedin.com/in/carolmaric
WRITING:
www.huffingtonpost.com/carol-maric
www.cherrybleeds.com/words/guest1/carol-nov07.html
www.writerscafe.org/writers/Carol%20Maric/
www.maricthinkpad.wordpress.com/
MUSIC:
www.myspace.com/damagedfranklin
www.last.fm/user/mathgeekepii10
www.last.fm/group/Experimental+Vocalists
ART:
what are you reading at the moment?
Too many books to mention: I usually read many, many hardcopy and digital books concurrently, kaleidoscopically shifting onward.
Some of my favorite philosophers and writers are Friedrich Nietzsche, Immanuel Kant, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Georges Bataille, Jacques Derrida, Willard Van Orman Quine, Karl Popper, Michel Foucault, Emil Cioran, James Joyce, Ezra Pound, Charles Baudelaire, T.S. Eliot, Dante Alighieri, Anne Rice, Antonin Artaud, Fyodor Dostoevsky, George Gordon Byron, Louis Zukofsky, Henry Miller, Vladimir Nabokov, Virginia Woolf, Henry James, Maurice Blanchot, Peter Handke, David Foster Wallace, Mark Z. Danielewski, John Berryman, Bryan Magee, and Blah3x^n—thus spake mathgeekepii10.
what are you listening to at the moment?
I am listening to the various sounds of my environment.
Philosophy lectures on my iPhone at iTunes University, a simply amazing educational project; and JM Roberts’ History of the World on my Zune, along with nonstop, multicrossgenremusic: classical, jazz, rock, experimental avant garde, noise, field recordings—anything and everything!
I have been particularly fascinated by Beck’s work, for several years now.
anything else we should know?
My Intellectual Inheritance:
Great Uncle: Leon Samson, who attended CCNY and Columbia, was an American Marxist social theorist of the 1930s, wrote the books The New Humanism, The American Mind: a Study In Socio-Analysis, and Toward a United Front: A Philosophy for American Workers. Samson is discussed in several books, papers and lectures by the political scientist Seymour Martin Lipset, and cited by numerous others in books and papers found primarily on Google Books.
Mother: Judith Greene is a criminal justice policy analyst who has been working in the field for nearly 40 years, and whose work is reflected in her many influential articles cited by major publications; her work is known both domestically and internationally.
Father: Joseph A. Greene attended NYU, became a teaching fellow at Michigan University at a young age, won a Hopwood award for poetry, acquired the English department’s first Rackham Predoctoral Fellowship, and was mentored by literary critic and author Austin Warren. Though he did not complete his dissertation, he continued as an assistant professor at a few colleges in MI, NJ and NY. He was a visual artist.
Coda: Maybe I will discuss my other work at another time here . . . Nice to meet you all.