From: Jasper
Date: 17 Aug 2009
Time: 01:42:48 PM
Sweetpea — The only way to tell the truth about some things without hurting innocent people or creating a false impression of what it means is to put it in a work of “fiction.” ............ To maintain the integrity of the storyline you sometimes have to put one person’s thoughts into someone else’s head or combine the actions of several people into the actions of one. You have to invent key characters with little or no resemblance to the real ones unless you want to out the real ones. You have to spread your own experience around, sometimes among major and “minor” characters. The easiest way to represent conflicting aspects of yourself or the things you aspire to is to put them into close friends, lovers or partners. The easiest way to disguise what you did in separating the characters and advancing the plot is to sprinkle in some things that are pure fiction. .............The things to look for, consequentially, are not which characters represent which real people in a real case that Constance Dial was involved in. The things to look for are the forces that drive all of them within the practical and political structures of the LAPD. If Dial wanted to hide the truth in that regard with the O.J. case, I don’t believe that she would have written the book. –Jasper