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Interview with Luther Jones

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Interview with Luther Jones

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Interview with Luther Jones

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  • A student in Western Carolina University's (WCU) Theatre Department in the late 1960s and early 1970s studying Technical Theatre, Luther Jones later became an Assistant Professor at WCU's School of Stage and Screen. Josephina Niggli taught in the department at the time when Jones was a student and in this interview he discusses Niggli’s persona, her writings, her interactions with other teachers, and how her acting class ‘Shakespeare on Stage’ made a tremendous impact on his understanding of the technical aspects of theatre.
  • Hilary Lindler: This is Hilary Lindler and I am interviewing Luther Jones: Luther Jones HL: This is October 7th 2009. Are you aware that you are being recorded? LJ: Yes I am. HL: Are you ok with this recordation 1 ••• LJ: Sure HL: ... being used for other research? LJ: I wouldn't say anything in private that I won't say in public. HL: Alright, sounds like a deal. [pause] So, you did tell me that you had been a former student of hers. Could you repeat the years that you were a student? LJ: Ah, I started college at Western Carolina in 1968. I graduated in 1974. I was in and out a couple times. I started out as a Forestry major, until I took my second course in Chemistry, and that changed very rapidly. [laugh] Ah, became a History major and put in about three quarter hours, 'cause we were on quarters then. I finished my degree in History when I got interested in theater and went over to the theater. To be honest with you, I think the reason I went there was because they had a lack of male actors and they had an awful lot of pretty girls. So [laugh] I ended up going into theater. Ended up finally graduating with a degree in 1974. An AB degree which is a Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Arts, but the later area being theater. HL: So is that like a BA with a concentration in Theater? Is that kind of the same thing? LJ: AB degrees by in large are not offered anymore because most universities are so structured now that you can't get a degree strictly in Liberal Arts. Or in other words, I did not have a Modern Foreign Language, I took Latin. I did not take a whole lot of science. I took more history, more literature, more theater, more art, and things like that. HL:OK LJ: It's the way they used to train people who wanted a very broad background. They don't do that anymore. I'll give you an example. A number ofyears ago when President Bush was running against Governor Kerry, USA Today had an article where they listed the fourteen top people that would be the nominees for the Supreme Court. You know if they were replacements -seven for Bush and seven for Kerry. Out of that fourteen, eleven of them's first degree was an AB degree. But, nobody does AB degrees anymore. Now if you want to become a lawyer they I recording tell you to take poli-sci or business. Back then it was get your liberal studies and then you've got a broad background you can cover anything. HL: Okok LJ: [laugh] r guess HL: I see what you are saying. LJ: Ok, that had nothing to do with Ms. Niggli but [laugh] HL: At least I understand the AB thing better. LJ: Yeah [laugh] HL: [laughJ Ok, before we really start talking ... did you happen to stay in touch with her after you got out, or was most of the time that you knew her pretty much when you were a student? LJ: Most of the time was when I was a student. I did not keep track ofher after I left. First of all, I was a Technical Theater student, not an acting major. I did not have as much contact with her as a lot of other people did simply for that reason. She taught acting/directing. She also taught things like Shakespeare on Stage. That was one ofthe first classes I took in theater, other than some stage craft and things like that. Under stagecraft ... stagecraft's under general ... urn Bob Pevitts2 , but anyway. I had class Shakespeare on Stage, and that class made a tremendous amount of difference to me because what it did was, we took different scenes from different plays and each scene had a different problem. One of them from Merchant qf Venice dealt with stage movement. You'd have Shylock standing on stage for a long period oftime giving a speech. Ifhe stands still in the middle of the stage and gives his speech it's going to be very boring. But, if he just moves randomly it doesn't make sense. There has to be a reason for him to move where he's moving. Look for what's happening there. Another one dealt with Kate3 from Ti1ming <!/the Shrew where it was talking about conflicts and comedy. You had Petruchio and Katrina4 on the road arguing with each other, and it was that argument which ... you know it showed that you could have tension and comedy at the same time. Another one dealt with the fight between Tybalt and Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet. What we went into there was that 21 assume this is how his name is spelled. Unfortunately. I did not ask Luther Jones to spell the last name for me. 3Katherine 4Katherine modern directors have to re-work it from what would have been done in Shakespeare's day because people don't understand the codes of dueling today. See, there's a scene where Mercutio and Benvolio are talking about that Tybalt had sent a letter to Romeo's house, and Romeo shows up a few minutes later and so does Tybalt and Tybalt challenges Romeo to fight and Romeo turns him down. Well, the rules of dueling are that, at that point in time, If a man challenged you face to face you would turn him down because everybody carried weapons and you might be hotheaded. But, if he'd sent you a formal challenge, you couldn't turn it down and keep your honor. · HL: The formal challenge would have been the letter. LJ: The formal challenge would have been the letter. Correspondingly though, everybody on the street there knows that Tybalt has sent this formal letter, except for Romeo. Romeo had been shacked up with Juliet all night. Doesn't know he's been formally challenged, so he turns down the duel and the only way for his honor to be saved is for his best friend to take it up for him, which is Mercutio. Now, if you look at the Zeffirelli' production ofthat, the film production of it, they play Mercutio as egging Tybalt on and they're doing it out of fun and then Tybalt is killed by accident. You know as an accident, when in fact, that's not what happens. In Shakespeare's day it would have been a duel between the two of them, and Romeo would have been trying to stop the duel because he didn't know why they were fighting. Today, it has to be played in a totally different way. [laugh] So, being able to take a script, take a look at it, analyze it, pick it apart ... where as I'm not an actor and I'm not a director. I have to do that when I design or build. And, that's what it taught me to do. It was a tremendous influence on my life I that way. It made me start looking at the connections between things, and when I start connecting the dots I get an entire picture. But until then, I only get bits and pieces of a picture. When I put all those dots together it's like when you are a little kid and you're doing that thing from dot one, dot two, dot three. When you come back around you see the whole picture, and until that time I could never do that. It was always bits and pieces. I could see parts of it. The other part of that which she instilled in me was that if you read drama, it's literature. If you see it on stage, it's theater. There is a difference. One is you're looking at the words, and the other one is you're looking at the action, you're looking at the portrayal, you're looking at the characterization, you're looking at the entire package. Theater is the one place that you put it all together. It is collaborative of music, acting, literature, art, design, and thetical aspect as well. It's the only place you put it together. That's the truth. You've gotta be good at what you're doing. I worked for a number of years in the film industry and films are different. In a film, the director and the editor decide what you're going to see. Because, they filmed it ... every scene's filmed 5The 1968 film Romeo and Juliet which was directed by Franco Zeffirelli. It starred Leonard Whiting as Romeo and Olivia Hussey as Juliet. half a dozen different ways and they cut it apart and put it together the way they want it. In theater you don't have that. You're sitting there, you're looking at it and that's what it is. It's gotta be good to begin with. If it's not, it's gonna bail. HL: So there has to be a high level of cooperation in working between the different departments? LJ: There has to be a tremendously high level of cooperation. Not only that, but there has to be a tremendously high level of collaboration. I can't design lights for the show without talking to • the costumer and the costumer talking to me. Ifl put a red light on the stage and she's got a green dress on there, it's going to come out brown. [laugh] Ok? HL: Yeah LJ: If I design the set and I use a wall cover which is not neutral to the colors that the lighting designer is using, we clash. We've got to make it work [laugh] I mean, this is a necessity. Then you have ... the other part about that is that you have a live audience, which you don't have in films. If you watch a film, it's going to be exactly the same every time, because it's been decided before what it is and how to edit it out. In theater, you have a ... you have an audience. That audience is going to be ... going to determine what happens to that show that night. There's a quote. Have you read Mexican Village by Ms. Niggli? HL: No I haven't. It's the second thing ... I'm finishingA Miracle for Mexico. I'm reading that now, and then Me.l:ican Village is my next on my list of things to read. LJ: Mexican Village. There's a quote in there. It's where these itinerate actors have come to town and put on a play in the village of Hidalgo. They're one of these groups that they don't just ... the actors are also the ones that have to build the stage, they have to set it up, you know the whole works right? It's a quote ... I actually keep it on the wall. It's sitting right over there. It comes from Mexican ~11/age. It was published in 1945, and it says "The actors banged their hammers and wondered what it would be like to be tied to a village with a family and a little farm perhaps. No worry over tonight's bed or tomorrow's meal. For a moment, they realized that such a life would never include the nervous prick lings of stage fright or the smell of grease paint nor the sound of the beautiful words that followed each other like notes of music, and the two men felt very sorry for the village people who would never know the beauty of the mystery of that strange thing called theater." HL: That's a really nice quote. LJ: That's sort of what you learned through Ms. Niggli. Did she had an unusual way of doing it? Oh yeah. The best way I can describe Ms. Niggli is she was imperial. When she walked to the edge of the stage, she stopped and held out her hand and waited for someone to take her hand and help her down the steps. When she got to a door, she stopped and waited for someone to open the door. When she pulled out a cigarette to smoke it, you could smoke in building back then, she stopped and waited for someone to light her cigarette. Ok? Now, that sounds very ... how should r say it? Sounds very ... much like she's being the grand dame looking down at her nose at people, but what it did was ... We're college kids. We're nineteen/twenty years old. Some of us have had better training than others as far as how to treat other people and how to deal with other people. Some of us haven't. You gotta remember Western Carolina University 1968 was basically mountain kids up here. Most ofthe kids came from Western North Carolina at the time. They don't now, comes from central ofthe street more6 , urban areas. But at that time, it was mountain kids. A lot of us did not have the polish we should have, and what it did was is it forced us to think about what the other person needed. How did you treat the other person? What were their requirements? What could you provide? And I think that in my case, as a technician, that's one thing. I look at it and I go ok. When I start designing a set how wide does that set of stairs have to be? You know, is the person coming down it in a hoop skirt? If so, how far can l make the ... how high can I make the steps so they can take them in a hoop skirt without stepping on the edge of it and falling? Automatic thought. But, that comes from that idea of trying to see what people need. I think for an actor, what it did was ... and I wasn't an actor ok? I think, but what I saw was the actors ... what it did was was it made them play off the other person on stage. They became a member of an ensemble rather than an individual standing out there being the center of attention. HL: Like give and take? LJ: Exactly. Exactly. You can have an actor with a tremendous amount of talent, but if they don't act well with others, they're not a good actor. And, I think what she turned ... what she taught people was to be good actors. If you look at the students who came out of that period, there was a large number of them, fairly high percentage, that went on to do professional theater or acting in theater or in fact people in community theater. There was a tremendous, a very high percentage if I remember correctly, that went in to professional theater or at least on a part-time basis, or academic theater. That help you? Is that what you want? HL: Oh, that is perfect. LJ: [laugh] HL: That's perfect. Actually, you were mentioning that you took the Shakespeare on Stage course with her. What other courses, I mean I know it's been a while, but do you remember what other course you had with her? Or what they might have covered. I'm not looking for exact titles. LJ: You want me to be honest with you? That's the only course I ever had with her. 6Possibly ·'center of the state" or "center of the street'' instead of "central of the street" HL: Ok. LJ: I was no/ an acting/directing student. I was a technician. I worked with her, because as you direct a play or as you mentor one of the student directors, then I was the one doing the backstage. And, that was that collaboration. H L: So outside of a formal classroom setting, and actually working on the plays themselves, how was that like? LJ: Generally speaking she ... like I said, I'm not eh acting/directing person. HL: But it sounds like you still had some kind of interaction ... LJ: I had contact, but I had contact with her through the student directors. Or in other words, if I had a question I didn't ask her directly, because she would have told me upfront. She'd say ''I'm not the director, Dear7 " [laugh] you know, or she might have said "I'm not the director, Doll" You know [laugh] HL: Doll? LJ: She ... yes. She would have pointed over to the director. I [laugh] I think she did that to me one time. [shared laugh] At one point. Ah, ifyou really want to get somebody who's more the acting/directing, you talk to Steve Carlisle. HL: I know I've ... I think he and I are meeting though. LJ: Do you know Steve? HL: I do not know him , but I have contacted him and I think we've arranged to meetx. LJ: Steve is a Associate Vice-Chancellor ... excuse me, Associate Dean of the Honor's College. HL: Ok LJ: Ok, so he's also spent a number ofyears as a professional actor. I worked with him on several films. I worked with him at Flat Rock Playhouse, State Theater of North Carolina. I'm trying to think the last film that Steve and I did was a film with Jack Lemmon and James Garner, called My Fellow Americans, with Warner Brothers.9 But, he was a regular on the TV shooting 7Luther Jones adopts a sophisticated or vaguely British accent when speaking in Josephina Niggli's voice. 8Arrangements were made for me to meet with Steve Carlisle, but due to changed dates and conflicting schedules the interview unfortunately fell through. with Burt Reynolds called B.r Styker. w I mean, he made his living as an actor. He got his training from Ms. Niggli. You know, it was training that we ... our actor students today ... and it's not because were slack, but it is because things change. Ok? You always led with your upstage foot. You always gestured with your upstage hand. You never turned your head away from the audience. If you had to speak up stage, you cheated enough to look like you were speaking upstage, but the audience could still see you. What happens is, it's because so many of our actors today are in mode and in the mind set of film work. That's no longer needed, because now what happens is • the camera is wherever it happens to be. It's going to get filmed half a dozen different viewpoints, and then they'll turn around and edit it back together to what they want it to be. But, you don't have that option on stage. On stage you get that one shot, and if the audience can't see it, can't hear it, doesn't know what's going on, they're lost. So she was of the old theater. You had that one chance. She knew the other though. She wrote for tv and film some, and she understood that end of it. I use a one act that she wrote in my design class. It's called lhe Ring of General Macias. The way it is written, it can actually be done on stage as a stage production, or it can be done ... it was put on national TV in 1956 as a two camera tv shoot. [laugh] so it was written where it could be done either way. So she totally understood that concept, but the idea is that if your audience can't see it, can't hear it, can't understand it, you've done a poor job. HL: So are you saying that now, when you teach theater, it's ok to turn away from the audience? LJ: I'm not an actor, ok, I'm not an actor. HL: Yeah, I know. LJ: You see more and more of it happening with actors. So many actors do not get formal training, do not get the depth of formal training that she had and that she pushed. You know, within our department ... and it's a necessity. 'Cause, if you're going to be versatile in what we're doing today. Ifyou want to stay busy, if you want to stay employed, you've got to be able to cross those lines. You've got to be able to do theater. If you've got regional theater or summer stock you've got to be able to do musical theater. You've got to be a good actor that can sing. A good singer that can't act is not good on stage. Ok, you need a good actor that can also sing. You need someone that can then shift right over into doing film work so that you can stay ... both. I don't even know who it was, but somebody once said that movies will make you 9Rcleascd in 1996. Afv Fellow Americans was directed by Peter Segal. 10/J.L. ,~'tyker ran 1989-1990. and according to the Internet Movie Database (imdb.com). Steve Carlisle appeared in two of the show's twelve episodes as "Smitty.'' famous, TV will make you rich, and that theater will make you good. 11 Movies are gonna make you famous because it's on the big screen. TV's gonna make you rich because of the residual. They keep showing the same thing over and over and over again. And, theater's gonna make you good because you get one shot. If you blow it out there everybody in that audience knows you blew it. If they don't, then what happens is they all realize something's wrong and they figure it's a bad performance even if they don't know that you totally blew it. I mean I have seen people literally in a professional theater that didn't concentrate on what they were doing, and you know it was a murder mystery in three acts. What's supposed to happen is you have Act I which is the planning of the murder. Act II which is ... excuse me. Act 1 is the set up. Act II is the planning ofthe murder. Act III was the actual action ofwhere they're gonna bury all the ... you know, the gun and the shoes and everything like that. The actor went weird. Did the set up in Act I. Act II immediately buried the gun, buried the shoes, buried the clothes that he did the murder in and he hadn't committed the murder yet! [laugh] Well! Tell me that [laugh] you know, it's a concentration and she stressed concentration. She stressed that you have to keep you mind on what she was doing. You had to. You had to put it a [unintelligible] on. You couldn't wander with it. You know, it was a pretty rigid regimen in certain ways. If you were in a play. The first time that you were late for rehearsal, when you got there they stopped the rehearsal, and you had to come out on stage and you had to apologize to everybody in the cast and crew for being late. The second time you were late for rehearsal, they stopped the rehearsal. They had a vote, and if any one member of the cast and crew did not want you on that stage, you were gone. There was no third time. If you were late for rehearsal a third time, don't show up. You H'ere replaced. Somebody was already on that stage doing your role. They might have a book in their hand, but somebody was already out there filling in before you got there late. HL: Does that have to do with that mutual trust and understanding? LJ: It has to do with that mutual trust. Ifyou can't trust the people you're working with, ifyou can't trust them to be there to do what they're supposed to do, you can't get things on stage. It's a high pressure situation. You know, you take summer stock. Have you ever looked at a summer stock schedule? HL: No I haven't. LJ: Ok. I'll give you Flat Rock Playhouse if I can remember how it works. The actors go in and start rehearsal. They have rehearsal for a week. One week before the show is supposed to go on stage. The shows there ran two weeks or sometimes musicals ran ... there was like a two II 'Movies will make you famous: Television will make you rich: But theater will make you good." This quote is attributed to Terrence Mann who is currently the Carolyn Plemmons Phillips and Ben R. Phillips Distinguished Professor in Musical Theater at Western Carolina University. week rehearsal before you start trying to put it on stage. Here's what happens. You did a week's worth of rehearsals. Qk? The last show of the week was a Sunday matinee. Sunday afternoon they start tearing that set down, they clear that set, the tech crew has the next set up for a tech rehearsal on Monday night. Ok? Whatever had to be finished and everything was done on Tuesday. It was a dress rehearsal on Tuesday night. The new show opened on Wednesday. HL: That's hard core. LJ: Yeah. That happened every two weeks, because you ran the show for that week and the next • week and then you broke it down. If you can't depend on the people you're working with, it isn't gonna happen! [laugh] It's simply not going to happen. That was something that you had to have. You had to have the trust of people They had to trust you and you had to trust them. And if you couldn't, it made working very difficult. So what else would you like to know? HL: Oh, this is really fascinating. It sounds like you have read a number of at least her plays. LJ: Yep. HL: At least some of her plays, and have you read any of her books? LJ: I've read all of her books. I've read most of her plays. I've read her poetry. Urn, you have to understand that when I was a student I recognized her for what she could instill in me, but I really did not recognize ... and I don't think any of us did. As a student we recognized what she did for us, but I don't think any of us really recognized that part of how good the things she had done were. I don't think the administration here recognized that or realized that. You know she spent twenty years here as an instructor. When she finally retired, she left a large portion of her estate to the university for a scholarship fund which provides scholarships for students in theater. I think the scholarship fund was established in '83. Since 1983 it's handed out $126, 662 in scholarships for a hundred and twenty-eight students. That's not bad. That's roughly nine to ten thousand dollars a year for this department to hand out in scholarships. HL: That's not bad at all. LJ: And it's strictly off of her legacy which she left behind. What happened is is that she went to school at Chapel Hill. I'm going to get into the history part of this ok. You're a historian, I've gotta get into the history part of it. HL: Go right ahead. LJ: She went to school at the University of North Carolina- Chapel Hill. Well, first of all she went to the College of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio, Texas which is not the University of the Incarnate Word. If you wanna get an idea ... I don't know what it was like when she went to school there in the early 1900s, but the college today is still seventy percent Hispanic. The classes are taught in both Spanish and English. [laugh] Ok, so that will give you an idea o( you know, San Antonio, Texas. Urn, she went from there to the University ofNorth Carolina­Chapel Hill to get a Masters in English, and she got her Masters in English in Writing. She worked there, she was under Professor, and I'll be honest with you I don't know how you pronounce the name; it's K-0-C-H. I don't know whether it is "Cook" or "Kotch" or what, but anyway- Frederick Koch1=. He told them to write about what they knew. To take things that you know about and write them- if it's family stories, if it's legends, if it's the place that you grew up. Well, where did she grow up? She grew up in the north of Mexico. That's what she knew, and so she wrote about that but in the writing aboutit, she wrote about it with two different hats on. Both the insider and the outsider. She could recognize things in it as an outsider that insiders would ignore. At the same time, she could see things that outsiders would ill ISS. HL: Because she was ... LJ: Because she was there. [laugh] Ok, you know, her parents were not Mexican, but she was born in Mexico and raised there for part of her life in Mexico. HL: Do you happen to know what nationality they were? LJ: Urn, they were American, but her father I believe was of Swiss descent. Her mother's family, ifi'm not mistaken, was from Virginia originally. Her mother was, as I understand it, a violinist. A concert violinist at one point. I do know that, and you won't find this in any of the stuff they have here but I found that out some other way, that her grandfather was actually a law man that was killed in the 1880s. You know, one ofthe old west law men that was killed in the 1880s trying to enforce the law in northern Texas. [laugh] Which I thought was ... yeah. She was of the upper class in Mexico when she got there. Let's face it. Her father was the manager of a cement plant. The cement company that he managed later became what is called CEMAX. You've heard ofit? HL: Mmhmmn LJ: Ok. CEMAX is the largest producer of cement in the world today. [laugh] So, he was the manager ofCEMAX for a number ofyears when it was first starting. 12Luther Jones pronounced it "Kotch" 13affirmative He ... Under Professor Koch, he told them write about what they know. And he also founded ... he 11 was the founder, if I'm not mistaken, ofthe Outdoor Drama Institute 1 '. It was under him that the entire folk drama and outdoor drama movement in this country started. rost Colm~v, ok, was written by one of his students as a masters thesis. You've got [unintelligible] here at Cherokee was the same way. It was written Kermit Hunter as a masters thesis in his program. [laugh] So I mean think about this now. HL: Are you talking about Unto These Hills? • LJ: Unto These Hills was written as a masters thesis by Kermit Hunter to get his masters degree fro UNC-Chapel Hill under this professor. This professor at one time, in the 1940s after Ms. Niggli was no longer there but before she came to Western, he was doing a speech. It was one of those things. It was you know something to the anniversary of the Carolina Playmakers. He's the guy that founded the Carolina Playmakers. HL: That was actually going to be one of my questions. LJ: Ok, so now you get the idea. He's the guy that founded the Carolina Playmakers. He sat there and he started naming the twelve top students he taught, and he lumped them into a group. I can't remember all of them ok? But, 1 can remember a few of them. One of them was Kay Kyser. Are you familiar with Kay Kyser? HL: Sounds vaguely familiar. LJ: A band leader in the 30s and 40s HL: Ok. LJ: Big Band Era. HL: Ok. Ok. LJ: Qk? One of them was Paul Green, a Pulitzer Prize winner for In Abraham :S' Bosom. You know, what did he write about? Where was he from? He wrote about tobacco farming and sharecroppers and that's the usual in North Carolina. Alright? Ms. Niggli was one of those and Jonathon Daniels. Are you familiar with him? Jonathan Daniels was a historian ... historical writer and a biographer. He was also Press Secretary of ... Communication Secretary for President Truman. He also wrote Truman's biography. l4Prof. Koch? 15*Institute of Outdoor Drama. I could not confirm Koch's connection to IOD. HL: Ok. LJ: [laugh] Ok. He is .. yeah if you take a look at the list ofhistory books he's written, it's like, you know, pages long. One of the top writers at that time. He16 included Thomas Wolfe who had been one of his students. You know what Thomas Wolfe's first writing was at the University of North Carolina- Chapel Hill? HL: No I don't. LJ: It was a play called Return qf Buck Gavin about a mountain outlaw corning horne. Think about it. This man's saying "Write about what you know. Write about legends. Write about thing that you've heard from your people at horne." What is Thomas Wolfe writing about? What does Thomas Wolfe then turn around and write about later on? Look Homeward, Angel? He can't go horne again. Ok? You wrote about things you understood. That's what Ms. Niggli did. She wrote about Mexico. And what's happened is, is because she wrote about this period in English. Yes there were Hispanic writers, but they didn't have the audience in this country, she was taking it to an audience that wouldn't have had it otherwise. Did they take her book lvfexican T71lage and turn it into a movie? Yes they did. They called it Sombrero. Ah ... the movie is a piece offly. 17 HL: I found the movie poster rather amusing. LJ: Well, the movie is a piece of fly. It's a lot of dance numbers and music, and I mean it was that period of the 50s when you had that kind of show. Correspondingly though, I mean she obviously had to make a lot of compromises to get her book Aiexican Village turned into a film. At the same time though, how many more movies do you know of about Mexico that showed it in a positive light during that time period? HL: I can't really think of any. LJ: [laugh] Ok, you see what I'm saying? It was ... I think I do remember her at one point saying that she wrote in English because the people ofMexico did not need to learn about Mexico. [laugh] So, maybe there is something there. HL: That makes a lot of sense. You've mentioned Me..lCican Village a couple oftimes. Is that one of ... I guess if you had to choose one that you preferred above others, since you seem to have read her catalog of books and poems and that kind of thing rather comprehensively ... l6Prof. Koch 17This is what it sounds like he said. His sentiment was that it was very light. lacking in substance. LJ: Oh the critics liked Step Down, Older Brother and if you are looking at it from a sociological study it's a much better piece. But, if you want to look at something for entertainment that also gives you an unusual view, Mexican Village does it. Each chapter is a separate story. So, what you have literally is a book of short stories, but they have certain people that are tied in all the way through. You have an outsider who comes into the village to run the quarry for producing stone to be sent to the cement plant in Monterrey [laugh] Ok? A guy named Bob Webster. He is an American. As it progresses you find out that Bob Webster is only part American and his mother was actually Mexican, but his father was American. So where he comes in as the outsider, as the book progresses he has become more and more ... Where as he had a split identity when it started, he ended up being totally assimilated. Where as he came in as the outsider, but because he was the major employer in the region he was considered one of the Dons. But, he remains one of the Dons simply because everyone respects him. And all the different parts ... I mean it shows, there is a tremendous amount of social structure, of the political structure, the entire thing takes place right after the Mexican Revolution which is when her family moved back to Mexico. So you see, they left during the revolution but went back several years later when the revolution ended. Simply, they wanted to get out of the danger. So, you know it was what she grew up seeing. They've got all the secrets that are there and all the things that aren't talked about bl!t everyone knows and all the things that people don't know because no one suspects. And it's all the intricate workings- everywhere from Don Saturnino who basically his family has run that entire valley since the days of the Conquistadors to Ruben the candy maker to Dona Ninfa who is the village witch to Tia Magdalena who is the eagle witch. The eagle witches were considerably more important than the local herbal medicine witch [laugh] you know because they went back to the old gods. HL: Ok. LJ: So, it's just unusual. [laugh] HL: Sounds quite involved. LJ: Oh it is. But like I said, each chapter is a separate story, but they pull in people from other chapters so it all becomes one conglomeration of this village. We look at the Plaza del !bros, they're talking about bullfighting. [Knock on door] They're talking about the Plaza del Taros and maybe that chapter about the Plaza ofVirreyes I don't remember. But anyway it's the ... they're talking about bullfighting and it gives you an entire lesson on bullfighting culture without you realizing that you're getting one, a lesson on bullfighting culture. And what made people tick and why people watched it and why people did it. Some of the comparisons between the bullfighter with his cape, he had a movement called "veronica" that ... they're ballet moves. I mean literally, what they are doing is, it is a dangerous ballet. Have you ever seen a bullfight? HL: On television, like the videos that they show you in linguistics classes and that kind of stuff. LJ: Yeah, and the contempt that's there by audience if you have a matador that does not kill the bull well. It's bullfight. I saw them when I was a kid in Mexico. HL: You were visiting Mexico or you were actually living in Mexico? LJ: Uhhh ... I was living in San Antonio, Texas [laugh] · HL: Ok. LJ: Ok, but urn ... in fact we were in Monterrey. But if the bullfighter has it well, obviously they've tortured the buill mean you have the audience and the fans that made this bull angry and hurt and everything else, the matador when he goes in he has a sword which has a slight bend to the point. If he does this right as the bull charges him, he charges the bull and he puts that ... points that sword dead center between the vertebrae and the neck and the bull just falls down dead. If he doesn r, the bull is now running around with a sword stuck through his neck and he's got to try to do it again and the only thing he doesn't have is a second chance because the bull 's angry. It gets really messy. You know, makes you want to throw up if it's not done right. So I think that was the idea is that it is a cruelty, but it makes you appreciate the beautiful cruelty. You can get by the cruelty [laugh]. HL: Well it sounds like it is an art, if you will, in and of itself. LJ: Yeah, but anyway. I'm trying to think. You know, you've got the tale in there between the two villagers that were ... they have the greatest historian from their region you know, academic, that's born in one village but when he died he died in the other. So, the village he was born in claimed him and the village he died in claimed him. The two villages both want to claim him, and so the village he was born in keeps trying to steal the bones out of the graveyard from the village that has him buried. And their ... actually gets to the point where they go to the top of the mountain between the two villages and put a dividing line. The people of this village will not cross over into that one and people from that village will not cross over into this one. And how that's finally brought about by a boy from one village falling in love from a girl from the other and it's settled by a cock fight. Cock fighting, of course, is another one of those things by in large in our society we don't understand. People don't do it. They used to. [47:24- 48:50 deleted by interviewee's request] LJ: But ... because the chickens are so fierce they will fight to the death, especially if they are trained to do so. So you have, the best chickens are from this one village. The mayor of the village raises them and it's his daughter that the ... whose heart has been won by the boy from the other village. So, she steals one of his chickens, one of his cocks, turns it over to her boyfriend who takes it to the other village and there is an entire conspiracy here. The priest gets in on it. He knows how to dye the bird so they don't look like the same color. You know they hint ... some of the other people get in on it. The whole idea is that they stole this guy's prize bird and they're going to use it to fight his second best bird. They're gonna win right? Forget everything. The priest is the only one that really knows what's going on except the boy and girl. She knows that her father trained his birds not to fight each other, and when they put them in the ring they're not going to fight each other. The priest has the ability at that point to say ''Why are we doing this? Here's what we are going to do." You know [laugh] and settle it between the two villages. [laugh] So it's just an amazing tale. [laugh] • HL: Well I'm definitely going to maybe put off what I'm reading now and go read that. It sounds quite fascinating. LJ: Well like I said, every chapter is like a separate story. So what you can do is is you can read each chapter and when you finish that chapter you've finished the story. So you have a beginning and an end in each chapter. It's not like where you start something and then it's nine hundred pages later before you finish it. HL: You just have common threads that weave throughout all of them. LJ: Common threads weave throughout but, it's not like reading let's say 7he Count <!f"A1onle Cristo by Alexandre Dumas where ... HL: ... which is still a very good book LJ: Oh it's an excellent book. I love Alexandre Dumas. The problem with Alexandre Dumas is that most people today won't read it because you take Jhe Count (!l Monte Cristo, they think they're [intelligible] it when Dante's at the beginning, come to a full culmination and to a head all the way nine hundred pages later, and there are so many plots and subplots weaving through it all that you can't pop into it at any point and read it and make anything out of it. You've got to stay with it all the way from the beginning to the end. This book I'm talking about literally you can take a chapter out of it and make sense out of it. You might not catch as much as you did if you read the entire book, but you can take any particular chapter and it has its own story. HL: Now just what I was thinking about when you mentioned that she had that chapter about the bullfighting. You are saying that you are learning about bullfighting without her stopping the whole narrative to tell you about bullfighting. So it sounds like she definitely did not take the Victor Hugo approach to informing her readers about ... You know, I read Les Mis and to this day the thing I mainly remember is he's18 about to go with Cosette over the wall into that convent and they're just about to do it. They're being chased and all of a sudden Victor Hugo says "now let's just stop the narrative and in order to understand what 181 can Valjcan is going on here we need to go back about so many hundred years ... m 9 so she doesn't take that approach for the most part to inform her readers? LJ: No. What she does is is she informs you about the characters. Each character has to have a ... you have to know who they are. And the way she develops the characters, she leads the information into the characters. In the one on bullfighting you've got Gitanillo who is the bullfighter who has been left with this guy who will never make it as a matador. He doesn't have the wrists for it, he doesn't have the speed for it, but he is one of those guys that, you know, moves in the bull pen and harasses the bull before the toreador and the matador take over. So, he • knows bullfighting, he knows bulls, he just doesn't have the skill. He's left with an eight year old boy. Gitanillo means ... uh ... "little gypsy" because the child is in fact the son of a gypsy that he has had another child by as well that is the daughter, and when she dies he ends p with both ofthe child's has that ability to be a bullfighter and so it goes from there. You have the gypsy, but you start out with it being from his viewpoint, the older man's viewpoint, then it shifts to the little gypsy who is becoming the toreador/matador, and it shifts into what's happening with the sister. Then you shift into Ruben the candy maker who is the one ... she is basically trapped. He is .. the brother's insecure and therefore she is kept cloistered and you know ... but, the person who makes those inroads is a simple candy maker from a village visiting the city. When the bullfighter is eventually killed she leaves them and she leaves the high society life to become the wife of a candy maker in a small village because she was much happier there even though she's been to the capitals of Europe and the [laugh] you know ... Madrids during the fighting season [laugh] or Santa Monica or wherever. Yeah, uh, read it! You'lllike it. The thing is is that you take that same character, the candy maker, and he works into another tale where he is with the rebels during the Mexican Revolution and he saves the life of the son of Don Saturnino who is aristocracy, who is fleeing because ofthe revolution [laugh] HL: Imagine that! LJ: 1 mean you see what I'm saying. So there is all this intertwining, but each individual story will tell its own. It's not like Alexandre Dumas. I would have to say it's more like ... do you ever read James Michener? HL: No I haven't. LJ: Michener will take you through thousands ofyears ofhistory, but what he does is his first two chapters will bore the crap out ofyou because he sets up everything that's going to go on from that point on. But then, each section is a different story and then it ties in to the next section. People from this chapter migrate into this one, and you've got new people and as these die off you've got others. You literally go through generation after generation. If you take 19Les i\!iserahles- Cosette. Book Five: A Dark Chase Requires a Silent Hound. Section N: Groping for Escape ( 'entennial, it's about an area in Colorado, where Centennial, Colorado came about. But, it starts all the way back with the topography of the land and the animals and things like that. Or you take Chesapeake and there's always something that ties it in together. When he does his book on the Chesapeake region ... What are the two things you always think of in the Chesapeake Bay region? They're always there and have been since anyone can remember and before. HL: I've honestly never given that much thought to the Chesapeake Bay region. LJ: The Canada Geese and the crabs. HL: (sigh] Canada Geese. LJ: Ok? HL: Yeah. LJ: They up, they're always there. There's always gees that come back every year and the crabs are there. But, what happens is he shows those are the things that are woven back into each generation all the way through. H L: Even though he's discussing different time periods. LJ: Oh! He goes all the way from pre-history to , I guess that book goes to the 1970s, and there from becomes the settle patterns. The Canada Geese no longer migrate. They're staying there and the crabs in the pollution ofthe Chesapeake Bay are dying off It's not so much the pollution, as it has to do with the way that buildings are being built, changing and sucking in more freshwater into the bay and so the crabs can't live in it. [laugh] You know, and it is just amazing work. HL: Well maybe I should put him on my list of things to read too. LJ: [shared laugh] You've ever read Michener? HL: l have never read Michener. LJ: Michener wrote historical novels, but he literally had a team of historians that would help him do the research. So, where as he would take actual thing that had happened and he might have things that happened to five different people happen to one. Yeah, he'll have a character which is a fictitional character but it will have actual events which happened to more than one person, but he 'II combine them into one person. HL: So one person just has a really event filled life. LJ: There's one section in there ... Have you ever read Billington's WesfHYnd Expansion? HL: I think I've read a couple parts of it, but it's been a while though. LJ: Ok, Levi's [unintelligible], who leaves Pennsylvania to ah ... and settles in Colorado. Ok'~ If you read that portion it follows almost exactly the outline ofwhat was happening in Billington's Westward F;xpansion, what was happening in Pennsylvania at that time. [laugh] I'm sorry, we got totally off topic. HL: No .. well I think we've pretty much covered everything I wanted to cover anyway. That's really interesting though. Talking about her writing style, and you're the first person I've spoken to who's actually read anything that she's written . • LJ: Which is a shame. It's a very good book. You know, her things were well received for the time she wrote them. Then they sort of died out in the 50s, 60s, and 70s, and now what's happened is is that people are beginning to understand that what she was writing about was something that's now lost except for her writing. People are just now beginning to understand that she is a highly significant early Chicano writer. HL: Weill have been noticing that her style is ... from what I've seen so far she seems to be very detail oriented but not excessively so. So the details that I've seen in the book, the one I'm reading so far about the Virgin of Guadalupe, it's almost like she includes these details that rare] the colors of people's eyes and the color of people's hair and the leather and the reasons that certain people wore certain kinds of clothes, but they had Indian blood so they couldn't wear certain kinds of shoes ... so she seems to have a lot of detail but it's not excessively so. LJ: Ok, if you will take and read lhe Ring (?l General Macias, it's a very short one act play ... I've actually taken a class and done of it lecture and then turned around and read the thing in class in a fifty minute class and gotten it done. You should get through it. You'll find that General Macias who's never seen in the play is actually ofthe upper class. There's references to him being a descendants of men who were with Cortez at the conquista. Urn, so you have that route. You have Andres de Ia 0 who is a rebel captain who is taking refuge in the house, I'm not going to go into why he staking refuge, in General Macias' house since General Macias is a better ally, ok? You have Claito who is his soldier [unintelligibleVu You have Captain Basilio Flores who is looking for the rebels. Alright. Now, I want you to look at what you have. You have a Creole who is a descendant ... General Macias' wife is a descendant from that same group that came in from Spain. You have Andres de Ia 0. Andres de Ia 0 is of the ... he's not specifically a peasant. He can read and write. Did he have a true education? No, but he can read and write. He's been mistreated by the system. He is Mastizo. You have Claito who's Indio. Claito does not even know exact ... he's somewhere around twenty years old but he doesn't know because he doesn't know when he was born. His mother died when he was very young. He doesn't even know who his mother and father was. He doesn't have a last name. Ok? You have three distinct socioeconomic groups right there in a one, in a play right there. Then you have 20Possibly "at his wedding" Basilio Flores who is the captain in the army. He is of the upper class but of the lower part of the upper class, probably a Chapultepec their equivalent to WestPoint. You realize that probably the greatest gesture, probably the most ... the highest the US ever was in popularity with Mexico was when President Truman went to Mexico. H L: I was not aware of that. LJ: During the Mexican War, the US scores that{?} in Mexico. We end up with a lot of territory. But during the Mexican War, the Castillo de Chapultepec which is where the ... that's • where the Mexican equivalent ofWestPoint is, was defended to the last nine. At the end there were nine cadets and they posed ... they died in a heap, and they are great national heroes. When Truman went to Mexico to visit Mexico, he took and placed a wreath at their monument at Chapultepec, and that has done ... that did more at that time for Mexican-US relations than anything else did. I mean think about it! [laugh] The president of a country that was your enemy comes in and honors your dead that are considered to be your heroes. And so ... anyway. Threw in a little historian. Sorry. HL: No, no. this has been incredibly fascinating, and I'm going to go ahead and stop this. LJ: And I need to get back to work. Date: 7 October 2009 Begin Time: 2:36PM EST Length: l hour 6 minutes 31 seconds Location: Luther Jones' office- WCU Fine and Performing Arts Center (FPAC)- Cullowhee, NC Equipment: Olympus Digital Voice Recorder VN-4100PC
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Oral Histories of Western North Carolina

These interviews document the communities and culture of Western North Carolina. Topics include the building of the Fontana Dam, the history of WCU, stories from local veterans, integration of the...

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