None of the books received so far seems as ill suited for inclusion in my ‘Killing time’ project as Dave Lindorff‘s investigation onto the death row case of Mumia Abu-Jamal. As I read it to grapple with the problem and determine a solution, I lose the cursory distance which generally makes lifting and re-contextualising individual sentences easier.
Not only is it a third person account and therefore more difficult to integrate into a first-person narrative – the same is true for Conley‘s, Berger‘s, and Brady‘s (i.e., Harvey‘s) books. It also has quite long sentences most of which are studded with the legal terminology in which the case is so competently analysed. Sentences from quotations of court room reports, witness accounts etc may be somewhat easier to use. But the question remains whether the book should better be left alone, or whether the apparent difficulty might actually add something important to the overall result.
Other sources with a similar topic, such as Hollway‘s and Gauthier‘s report about John Thompson’s 18-year death row odyssee, are far easier to integrate due to extensive narrative reconstruction of the shooting event, including the relevant moments in the lives of important witnesses. In Lindorff’s book, much of the reconstruction is embedded in analysis. I also wonder how I will deal with the long relative clauses that are often embedded in the main clause. I am not ready just to remove them – this seems a bit too much tampering with the source.
I guess I must solve the problem by trial, and decide later.