SOURCE: Johnson, Denis. “Secret Agent.” In Why I Write: Thoughts on the Craft of Fiction, edited by Will Blythe, pp. 98-102. Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1998.

In the following essay, Johnson reflects on the role of observing and reporting in his life.

I'm remembering a time in Chicago. Down around Jefferson Street, some ways below the Loop. I couldn't even guess how far below now, twenty-one, -two, -three years later. This was the very bad wino district around 4:00 a.m. People without soul or spirit slept against walls or right in the gutter, as they'd been warned they might someday if they kept on … and they'd kept on. This dark morning I'd come here to find work in the day-labor gangs the state employment people formed on weekdays, but I sensed I'd be living here, too, someday, and I observed electrically and sadly my future all around me...