A Newsletter of Humorous Writing

For January 2-8, 2020, a roundup of the week's finest prose humor and prose humor-related news.
Our next show is January 28th, 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. We'd like to start this week's newsletter off on a sincere note: Caveat, the venue for our show, has hit a bit of a rough patch and could use some extra support this month (see below for more information). Caveat is a really wonderful place that supports a ton of exciting, creative, smart shows that other places might not take a chance on. It's also been a wonderful home for An Evening of Humorous Readings. We hope you'll support them by going to see something there this month (ideally our show, but go see SOMETHING if you're not free on the 28th). Or if you can't make it out this month, you can help by getting the word out about Caveat and all their great programming.

What We Enjoyed This Week

Things I Should Talk to My Therapist About Vs. Things I Do Talk to My Therapist About by Dan Caprera (McSweeney's) This is a great premise supported by a compelling, original format. The effect of the structure is marvelous: The left column, a dense, non-stop wall of text, viscerally conveys the narrator's anxious, racing thoughts. It becomes a kind of oppressive white noise that you absorb even if your attention is more focused on the punchlines on the right. The blank spaces in the right column feel like awkward silences the narrator has to endure while he frantically tries to think of something low-pressure to talk about. The tension built up by these two effects, and the sharp contrast between the content of the two columns, means that every joke hits really hard.  

The Art of Appreciating Art by M. Dean (The New Yorker) If you've ever been in a museum, or even just read about being in a museum, you're probably familiar with people who walk around saying "I could do that." Heck, you might even have been that person at one point. This piece invites you to take a moment to sit with artwork for just a little bit longer than it takes to say "I could do that." This is something we whole-heartedly endorse: After all, spending time thinking deeply about works that other people rush past is very much the mission of this newsletter.

For the Person Who's Fixing My Laptop by Lucas Gardner (The New Yorker) This piece is based on an all-too-relatable fear that many of us have when we send our computers in for repairs. Now, you can get some laughs just by identifying and describing a recognizable situation, but if you want to get the BIG laughs you have to go further, which this piece does by having the character fully embrace their fate and proactively work to hand over embarrassing material to the person doing the repairs. That extra turn of the screw, the one that pushes beyond the initial observation, makes all the difference.

I Survived: The Philly Phanatic Mascot Was My Step-Dad by Rachel Smith (Slackjaw) Look, sports mascots are just funny, and the funniest mascots come from Philadelphia (with the exception of Mr. Met, who is the funniest mascot of all time in a class of his own). Here the inherent zaniness of the Philly Phanatic is balanced by just the right touch of emotional groundedness, which makes the jokes land even harder. And the button! What a button.

An Old Favorite

What Time Is It In Music? by Tallulah Marzipan (The Big Jewel)

This is a kind of text-based music-centric version of Christian Marclay's The Clock. Short humor is a wonderful vehicle for your weird conceptual projects! It's really just a question of taking the standard list format and pushing in a more analytically and structurally rigorous direction. (Also if anyone has any info about Tallulah Marzipan, the enigmatic author of this piece and possible character in a Thomas Pynchon novel, please let us know!)

Updates From Your Hosts and Friends of the Show

Nothing from us this week!

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.