A Newsletter of Humorous Writing #113
A Newsletter of Humorous Writing
A Newsletter of Humorous Writing
For November 14-20, 2019, a roundup of the week's finest prose humor and prose humor-related news.
Our next show is November 26th, tickets here.
Hello and welcome to A Newsletter of Humorous Writing, the email propaganda arm of the acclaimed humorous readings show, An Evening of Humorous Readings. Our November show's only a few days away! Have you gotten a ticket yet? Great! Then it's on to the short humor!
What We Enjoyed This Week
The MacArthur Foundation Is Proud To Announce This Year’s Doofus Grant Recipients by Sean F. McGowan (Slackjaw) Premises that are the dumb version of a thing or a behavior can often falter by leaning so far into dumb that they become unbelievable. But Sean McGowan's piece has a great framing device (The Doofus Grant) that lets the dumb characters be dumb as dumb can be. Which is very dumb and fun indeed.
Situations with a Lot to Unpack by Colin Heasley (The New Yorker) Though a lot of short humor tends to be game-driven, that is, highlighting one central funny/absurd/"weird" thing and heightening/exaggerating/expanding on it, not all short humor needs to work that way. Colin Heasley's piece is a great example of a piece that isn't super gamey, but which still works really well: Each beat is its own funny and intriguing short story, riffing on a theme pointed to by the title. This type of piece can be hard to pull off, because it lives and dies based on how engaging, balanced, and funny the writing is. We're big proponents of pieces that have an extremely focused central conceit (and frankly, we think a more common problem is pieces not being focused enough) but pieces can also be organized in a more associative way. It all boils down to one of the central questions of humor writing: How do you surprise your reader in a way that feels earned rather than random? This piece succeeds because each section compels us to continue reading, through humor, detail, and careful writing, and because everything feels connected. So much to say, it's great!
A Letter To My 15-Year-Old Self From My 25-Year-Old Self From The Perspective Of My Imagined 65-Year-Old Self Written By Me, A 43-Year-Old by Marisela Gonzalez (Slackjaw) A great meta-bit riffing on a essay trope that's packed with solid jokes and, in exploring each of the narrator's perspectives, twists itself into really fun pretzels.
FAQ: Your New Houseplant by Riane Konc (McSweeney's) Speaking of packed with solid jokes, Friend of the Show Riane Konc sets up a simple FAQ format and then uses it to crack dinger after dinger. (Note: here "dinger" means "good joke.")
Whoa: Cool Coworker Has a Weird Instagram by Miranda Kronfeld (Reductress) Might be fun to compile a collection of the best humor pieces about coworkers. And if you did, this piece by Friend of the Show Miranda Kronfeld would be right up at the top of your list.
An Old Favorite
A Teenager Tries to Make the Best of Hosting Her Middle-Ages Themed Party at the Same Time as Her Older Brother’s Lacrosse Team’s Kegger by Jen Spyra (McSweeney's)
Friend of the Show (and reader at our next show!) Jen Spyra is one of the best writers out there. This particular pieces highlights one thing she does very well, which is to be attentive to making her characters specific and interesting, and then finding the best situation to see that person do their funny thing. Combine that with her consistently great jokes and excellent pacing, and you've got a great piece.
Updates From Your Hosts and Friends of the Show
Not much from us this week, we've been busy dry-brining our turkey by reading it the saltiest short humor from our collection.
Other Humorous Writing News
The best topical humor writer these days is Alexandra Petri and she's got a new book coming out called Nothing Is Wrong and Here Is Why. It's available for pre-order here.
And congrats to Friend of the Show Ariel Dumas for her promotion to head writer at Colbert!
News About The Next Show
Come on down to Caveat, next Tuesday November 26th (hangout starts at 6:30 PM, show starts at 7:30 PM) for a great pre-Thanksgiving send-off. And look at these guests:
- Delmonte Bent (Editor and writer for Flexx Magazine)
- Jen Spyra (The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, The New Yorker, The Onion, McSweeney’s)
- Kate Villa (McSweeney’s, The Belladonna, Wait…Wait…Don’t Tell Me!, Our Cartoon President)
There was an error with the ticket prices on our event page that we only just caught -- sorry about that. If you bought a ticket beforehand at the higher price, contact Caveat to see if they have a fix, but let us know too so we can help sort it out!
See you next week!
@brianagler, @lukevburns, & @jamesfolta
Did we miss a piece you loved? Did you love a piece we mentioned? Let us know! This is an experiment and we're hoping to continue to make it better and better. If you have any thoughts, notes, wishes, or dreams for this newsletter, please email us or respond to this email and tell us what the score is.
See you next week!
@lukevburns & @jamesfolta
We started this newsletter with our dear friend Brian Agler, and we want it to always honor his memory and his love of all things humorous. You can find our newsletter tribute to Brian here.
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If you have any thoughts, notes, wishes, or dreams for this newsletter, please email us or respond to this email and tell us what the score is!