The chapters that follow are drawn entirely from John Wall’s own recollections, recorded across a series of conversations and set down here in his words.
The method was straightforward. Over many sittings, John was recorded telling the stories of his life, one leading to the next. Those recordings were transcribed, and the transcripts became the source for everything in this book. Editing has been confined to what is needed to bring spoken memory onto the page: the interviewer’s questions were removed, the ordinary tangles of transcription were cleared, and the stories were arranged into a readable order. His wording has at times been shaped for clarity. What he said, and the way he says it, have been left his own. Where a story was told more than once, the fullest telling was kept.
Memory, however exact, is not a record. John’s recall of dates, names, and places is remarkable; but where a detail could be checked against the historical record, it was, and where it could not, his account has been preserved as he gave it rather than corrected or invented. Three kinds of material are kept distinct throughout: his own remembered experience, historical context confirmed from outside sources, and the connective narration that carries the reader from one story to the next. That narration introduces no fact he did not himself provide.
The aim from beginning to end has been fidelity to a single voice. This is John’s account of his life, told as he tells it.