Michael Cunningham
Appearances
The New Yorker Radio Hour
We the Builders: Federal Employees Stand Up to DOGE; Plus, Celebrating 100 Years: Michael Cunningham on “Brokeback Mountain”
piano plays softly What Jack remembered and craved in a way he could neither help nor understand was the time that distant summer on Brokeback when Ennis had come up behind him and pulled him close. The silent embrace satisfying some shared and sexless hunger.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
We the Builders: Federal Employees Stand Up to DOGE; Plus, Celebrating 100 Years: Michael Cunningham on “Brokeback Mountain”
Stars bit through the wavy heat layers above the fire. Ennis's breath came slow and quiet. He hummed, rocked a little in the sparklight. And Jack leaned against the steady heartbeat. The vibrations of the humming like faint electricity.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
We the Builders: Federal Employees Stand Up to DOGE; Plus, Celebrating 100 Years: Michael Cunningham on “Brokeback Mountain”
and standing he fell into sleep that was not sleep but something else drowsy and tranced until Ennis dredging up a rusty but still usable phrase from the childhood time before his mother died said time to hit the hay cowboy I gotta go come on you're sleeping on your feet like a horse and gave Jack a shake a push and went off into the darkness.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
We the Builders: Federal Employees Stand Up to DOGE; Plus, Celebrating 100 Years: Michael Cunningham on “Brokeback Mountain”
Later, that dozy embrace solidified in his memory as the single moment of artless charmed happiness in their separate and difficult lives. Nothing marred it, even the knowledge that Ennis would not then embrace him face to face, because he did not want to see or feel that it was Jack he held. And maybe, he thought, they'd never got much farther than that. Let be. Let be.