Drew Johnson

Hey there, all you folks. The @kenyonreview has my story "A Naked Horse" up as one small part of their jam-packed new issue. Mine's a wacky one, and I'm so glad to see it out in the wide world.

@WhitStillman The hallway shot & beflowered bedroom are lovely of themselves...and that they're a bit out of step with so much of what's coming next. But yeah, we wind up anchored with Audrey. Btw, her Mom is perfect. Reminds me of my piano teacher.

@DrewalsoKermit Good question. Early draft opens w Charlie talking about God. Next start idea the meet cute outside the Plaza. Finally wanted Audrey's worries the focus.

Just checked: First sentence is, "You mustn't listen to what your younger brother says." What's so bad about that??

@BretVDB There’s a Dawn Upshaw singing a piece done from this by Charles Ives in an arrangement by John Adams that you should track down. Whole album is great, as it happens. American Elegies? I believe?

A taste of heaven this morning—

@WhitStillman Did that cold open always come at the very first? In your head? On the page? In the editing room?

@WhitStillman I'm embarrassed to say I had to go back to check if indeed the "Christmas Vacation. Not so long ago." Intertitle card came just after or just before that scene. Not because I doubted you per se, but because I could play it both ways in my head and neither seemed wrong.

@CitizenBego Algernon should’ve been the giveaway.

I—er—prefer the reprint

@daveweigel That De Gaulle biography is all-timer.

@farfisasynth @saintsoftness Always have thought of it as a wry but earnest effort to come up with a story that fits that sculpture. To treat that piece as narrative in nature.

@saintsoftness Any connection to the Giacometti sculpture of the same name?

Another Barthelme banger, epigraph as formal device and/or firework:

@saintsoftness That story and the italicized rat gentrification yarn that comes right before or right after are my two favorite of his and are wonderful read together as pendant pieces.

@sablec_ @jblacksomething Those certainly. And for a more naturalistic adaptation/period piece, his The Marquise of O should go on the list…and The Romance of Astrea and Celadon. Big fan of the Tales of the Four Seasons, too.

@jblacksomething Many of his films are grouped into thematic series, so I definitely recommend checking out the Six Moral Tales, which includes his early films and essential works like La Collectionneuse and My Night at Mauds!

Eric Rohmer’s Perceval le Gallois (1978) is as far removed stylistically from Bresson’s Lancelot as I think you can get, yet is somehow a more perfect pairing for it than I could have imagined. Page-to-screen word-for-word Chrétien verse recited and sung on backdrop liminality.

@damiankelleher Being Here is Everything was great despite my allergy to Rilke biography. Come to think of it, maybe that was part of why it was great.

A Book, Read, No. 60 of 2026. Marie Darrieussecq - My Phantom Husband (translated by Helen Stevenson) I like Darrieussecq’s novels quite a bit, but this one missed the mark for me. Not enough there. Alas

@ethantgibson She’s never dull.

This was crazy

@ryanhasbadtaste And he invented replicants!

just realized arnaud is played by joe turkel

@MichaelLaRosaDC You're posting this hoping to create a facts-on-the-ground narrative about Mayor Mamdani. But the voters in the party you served so poorly like him and the direction he's going in. They want your empty faction to find some other line of work. You failed. Go away.

Two months shy of the 25th anniversary of 9/11, this is what New York City’s mayor has to say on the 4th of July? Mamdani is unwell. But it should terrify Democrats that we now constantly have to defend and explain his behavior and rhetoric—and grapple with the political impact his frequent condemnations of the very country our voters call home, and do not despise the way he seems to.

@HeerJeet Let us not to Orlando Furioso admit forgetfulness…

Where are my Gilgamesh guys and gals? My Aeneid allies? My Buddhacarita buddies? My Mabinogi mates? My Kalevala comrades?

They say anemones sprouted from where Aphrodites tears fell at the site of Adonis’ murder. My enemy comforts me for the agony his jealousy caused, or another variant of sleeping with the enemy.

Apropos of very little.

@PAHoyeck O e of the strangest, greatest movies.

Watched The Third Man for the first time last night. What an absolute masterpiece. A very rare 10 out of 10 for me. I've always had an affinity for film noir as a genre, but this is just above and beyond. I expect to watch it again very soon.

@JoyceCarolOates The quite serious head injuries from the two (!) African plane crashes plus the surveillance/harassment from the government (long dismissed but may well have actually been occurring) was in the mix, too.

well, 61 was an achievement for Hemingway. he had long been self-destructive (literally), clinically depressed, severely alcoholic, guilt-ridden. that he lived to 61 was indeed heroic. it is impossible/futile to speculate if heavy drinking precipitated severe depression or whether the heavy drinking was a way of self-medicating. since Hemingway's father had committed suicide with a gun, he may have felt resigned, "fated" to emulate his father. we see in the early story "Indian Camp" a triangular relationship between father, son, suicide.

@damiankelleher The number of folks who've been set up on the shelf next to Faulkner...only to fade away. You could field a baseball team with em, but no single generation would recognize all their names. Cormac got bigger than a lot of them, but he'll fade, too.

Or maybe like McCarthy was a bad writer compared to Faulkner? We all are, but he really was

Was listening to Atlanta’s @DiffMachine on the way here, their stellar new album, and now can only hear Xi Chuan’s poetry spoken in my head to such beats.