from The Storyteller's Art: A Literary Conversation

"The Storyteller's Art," a literary conversation on the art of storytelling and creative writing theory, provides a reference for Lucille Jones's various works of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, plays, screenplays, and song lyrics, both published and unpublished writings. All works by Lucille Jones discussed here are available from Creative World Online, ICreative4@aol.com and/or through Xlibris, http://www.xlibris.com. "The Storyteller's Art" also contains excerpts from "Interview with Lucille Jones," published in Obsidian, Vol. III, Number 3 (Editor, Alvin Aubert). [Editor's Note: What follows is a series of excerpts from the full interview, "The Storyteller's Art." Where portions of the original interview are omitted, ellipses appear.]

GAYL JONES: When did you first start telling stories?

LUCILLE JONES: When I first started talking.

GAYL JONES: What kinds of stories did you tell and to whom?

LUCILLE JONES: All kinds of stories and to everyone—fairy tales and realistic stories, or a child's idea of realism. I told my sisters and my cousins and my friends and my teachers. I told stories to my mother, Amanda Wilson, who first encouraged me. She used to write plays for church programs and schools. . . . She would write plays, but she never went to a movie till she was in her sixties, because in her day movie stars were considered bad people. Movies were considered wicked. Going to the movies was considered wicked. People who went to see movies were considered wicked. Good people didn't go to the movies. . . .

GAYL JONES: Some people used to think that people who read novels were wicked. That decent women didn't read novels. I don't remember the name of the novelist, probably an 18th- or 19th-century English novelist, who in the preface to one of his novels, jokingly states that no decent woman ever read a novel, and if the woman about to read his novel wants to stay decent or innocent, then she shouldn't read the novel. Perhaps in those days people who wrote novels were considered wicked. Certainly in those days they probably thought no decent woman ever wrote a novel. The "good people" used to warn people about reading novels, that they shouldn't read novels.

LUCILLE JONES: Some people still do think so—certain kinds of novels. Like they continuously warn people about certain kinds of music. When rock and roll first came out, they didn't want people to listen to rock and roll. And also that was when white people first began to really listen to Black Music. They used to have records for blacks they called Race Records, and then it became Rhythm and Blues. But rock and roll was really when the whites, when people like Elvis Presley started singing African-American style music, the same style of music. I remember when a lot of songs like that first came out. You'd hear people on the radio and you'd think that they were African American or colored or Negro which is what we called ourselves then. You'd think they were African American, then when you saw them, you'd see that they were white.

GAYL JONES: Now it's certain kinds of rap lyrics. Gangsta rap lyrics. That's the new controversial music. Then you have the other sort of rap. Someone referred to that as G-rated rap—Bubblegum rap?—like Will Smith and Jeffrey Townes, Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince. But you have people singing softer rap lyrics.

I guess you still have some people who consider novels to be less respectable kinds of reading—people who don't read novels. There are people who don't read novels. That read the more "intellectual" kinds of writing. Or who might read a novel if it's the intellectual type of novel, or a philosophical novel. And you have people who read biographies, but don't read novels. Or they'll read...