I noted that Sue Feder's article on Johnson referred to an
interview with a French magazine, tracked that down easily
enough and ran it through a Web translator. The result - not
great but understandible, is below:
Discussion with Richard Johnson according to correspondences
of October the 5, and 25 1983, August 10, September 4, and 24
1984.
Published in number 13 of Dick's Hardware-Boiled, entirely
devoted to Martin Brett and Emil Richard Johnson and
conceived and carried out by Roger Martin impression To
reduce the size of the Aggrandir text size of the text
Six novels published with the Black Series of 1968 to 1972
announced to the attention of the amateurs of black novels
the name of Emil Richard Johnson. They testified to a real
talent, an undeniable control of the style and an original
inspiration. Also there was nothing astonishing so that the
first title in question, the Herrings have good back (Silver
Street) received Edgar of the best first detective novel
allotted by Mystery Writers of America in 1969. Moreover, the
noise which ran that Johnson was in prison under the blow of
a charge of murder, added an unquestionable curiosity to a
work which did not raise interest badly. Emil Richard Johnson
wanted well, of its cell to the prison of Stillwater
(Minnesota) to raise the veil for the readers of Dicks
Hardware-Boiled.
R.M. Emil Richard Johnson the first question, most delicate.
How be you arrived here, in prison?
E.R.J. I passed my childhood in a small city of the North of
Wisconsin. I had three brothers and a sister, all older than
me. We trained a very one family or one worked hard and
although we never had the easy life, I had a happy childhood.
I drove out and fished much and worked in the forests with
the demolition of wood. I left the school at 17 years to
return to the army. I there finished studies of the college
type and passed from the diplomas for the occupation of
warrant officer. I was used in Germany in the services of
information of 1956 to 1960, date on which I returned to the
United States. I was then implied in criminal activities with
some types which I had known during my service and after four
years of a similar life I ended up failing in prison to have
killed a man during an armed attack in 1964. I was then
condemned to a sorrow going from 25 to 40 years of
prison.
R.M. I read in The Mystery Fancier that in 1978, you had been
released on word and that one had contained you following a
new armed attack...
E.R.J. I had not been released on word. It acted of a
programme of rehabilitation by work. I crossed a very bad
master key. One gave me in prison but without worsening my
judgment. In other words, I always accomplished my sorrow
from 25 to 40 years, which, with the possible reductions,
should fall in Mars 1992. However, I believe that I have a
chance to be released on word and I work there ardently. The
director of a Center of Release on probation of Minneapolis
makes feet and hands so that one entrusts to me with his
establishment.
R.M. How did you come to the writing?
E.R.J. I always liked to read and, once in prison, I had not
badly spare time - and due! I then understood that if I
wanted to do something of my life, it was while I was in
prison. In 1966, I started to write articles and stories for
children, not without a certain success. In 1967, I decided
that even if it means to spend my time writing, I should try
to write a novel, and a black novel preferably not only
because I had some experience on the matter, but in more
because I had sources of extraordinary information among my
fellows-prisoner. My first attempt, the Herrings have good
back (Silver Street) was crowned success since it was
distinguished by the M.W.A. After this first novel, I
understood that I really liked to write and that I could even
make my trade of it. I like to write black novels because it
is the real World. The crime is a subject which touches each
individual. Rich person, the poor, townsmen, the country
one... It is a subject on which any individual has ideas,
theories. It is a subject which interests me deeply because I
spent my twenty last years behind the bars with criminals and
that I know that the criminals are not inevitably people with
share, resulting only from the slums of the low-districts and
torn hearths. They are people like your voisin' of stage, or
the teenager who plays in the court, which, following a
sequence of circumstances, errors or bad choices, finish
badly. Everyone is able to make an offence - murder including
- and a writer has the possibility of creating the
circumstances, the situations, the characters and the reasons
which can give a good account. At the end of twenty years
spent in prison, I have enough groundwork of stories and
intrigues to write black novels during several lives!
R.M. You wrote stories for youth. Which kind of
stories?
E.R.J. Primarily, they were stories of animals published in
Children' S Friend and other reviews. But I also wrote
articles on the prisons in Catholic Digest, on hunting for
the stag with the arc in Bow Hunting, on the trade of trapper
in Fur Fish Game. Unfortunately, I do not even have the
complete list of my articles or news, all my cards having
been destroyed, by the fire which devastated the prison
during a riot at the beginning of the Seventies. I ceased
writing for the reviews since 1968. I have just recalled me
that I had a news, published in the newspaper of the prison
at the end of the Sixties, which was preceded, but I do not
have of it a copy.
R.M. Why did you cease writing news?
E.R.J. On the one hand, to devote me only to the novel and on
the other hand park E which the police news is not
appropriate to me. I am not on I would arrive there because I
need place to develop the study of my characters. R.M.
According to your bibliography, it seems that you ceased
writing since 1976. What happened does exactly?
E.R.J. I stopped writing in 1975, because that did not go at
all. I thought that I would not be long in being released and
my attitude was that which prevails in these cases. I did not
expect nothing very easy and I renon硩 to be written. I put to
take drug intensively "to escape" and it is in this state
that I spent the following years. There towards the end of
1979, I failed to remain of overdose on several occasions and
I understood that I was going to kill me if I did not stop
with drug. I tried then by all the means of seizing again me
and of going into reverse. Fortunately, it is at that time
that I met my second wife, Kathy, and it lavished the moral
assistance to me for which I required to break the infernal
circle, which was not easy, which was not easy. In 1982, I
was released from drug since nearly two years and Kathy
suggested that I recover to write to occupy me. It is it with
what I get busy since. I try to give me in saddle in the
police kind. I work intensively and I finished three novels
lately: a work of science fiction, The Dune Riders Of Shadak,
a book on "the after-prison", Survival-Not Sport, and a black
novel with the characters of Silver Street and The Inside
Man, Blind-Man Bluff. I put in this moment even the last hand
at Million Dollar Dead Man, which is a black novel whose
intrigue was inspired to me by a news of Cornell Woolrich,
and who seems to me one of my best books.
R.M. You evoked your "second wife". You had already been
married previously;'
E.R.J. Yes, in 1960, and divorced in 1962. I have a girl,
Suzanne, which is married and mother of a small girl.
R.M. How do you work in prison?
E.R.J. I in general pass three to five hours to be written in
my cell. Here a standard day: 6 H at 9 a.m. 30 work of
prisoner employed in the common room... 9. 30 to 12 noon, I
write in my cell and I make my mail... 12 H at 12 noon 30,
meal. 12. 30 to 13 H, work of prisoner. In general, four days
out of seven, I go then of 1 p.m. 20 at 2 p.m. 30 to the
gymnasium or I make weights and halt貥s to discuss. 14. 30 at
16. 30, work of prisoner. 16. 30 at 6 p.m. 30, I write again
in my cell. After the evening meal, I pass my evenings to be
discussed in the court or the library. I am also a president
of the Council of the Prisoners which discusses problems of
the prison and thus hold meetings for these questions. After
the hour of sleeping, 22 hours, I try to write still a little
when become again room calms assembles neither uproar more,
nor noise.
R.M. Which are the writers who influenced you?
E.R.J. "Influenced" is perhaps a quite great word. In all
cases I like to read people like Spillane and Brett Halliday,
but also Ross Macdonald and John D. Mac Donald, and Ed
McBain, too. I also read all the detective novels which fall
me under the hand, to hold me with the current and to
distract me at the same time. I also from time to time like a
good book of Science fiction. But I think that nobody
equalizes Faulkner, Hemingway or London Jack to tell a
history and a day, I would like to write a novel not-police
officer on people and their life, as these authors did
it.
R.M. One adapted for television one of your novels, Mongo
returned (Mongo' S Back In Town), and, in my opinion, this
telefilm, which we could see in France, very is successful.
Joe Don Baker made a remarkable composition in particular
there.
E.R.J. I saw Mongo with the tele ici-mꭥ and before even as it
is not turned, I had the occasion to meet Joe Don Baker in
these walls. I appreciated the telefilm although I do not
think that they could really turn the same history that that
of the book. In any case, the choice of Joe Don Baker was
judicious. It is a "nature".
R.M. Emil Richard Johnson, in the name of all the readers of
Dicks Hardware-Bolled, I would like to wish you all our
wishes of success in your trade of black novelist, and social
rehabilitation at the time of your release on word, which we
hope for very next.
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