A Newsletter of Humorous Writing

For January 23-29, 2020, a roundup of the week's finest prose humor and prose humor-related news.
Our next show is February 25th, 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. Thanks so much to everyone who came out to the show on Tuesday! It was great to get to see and chat with so many of you. By the by, if you came to the show and had a good time, it would be really helpful for us if you could post something about the experience on your social media of choice! (Maybe even tag our venue Caveat while you're at it?) And if you didn't make it on Tuesday, did you know you can already buy tickets for the next show? Wow!
 

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What We Enjoyed This Week

Email Signatures in Ascending Order of How Nervous I Am to Be Emailing You by Maeve Dunigan (McSweeney's) The (very relatable) premise is set up perfectly, and the format and structure allow for pure heightening. It strikes a nice balance between staying grounded in the realistic aspects of the situation, and also finding surprising ways to push beyond the initial observation that inspired the piece.

If You Teach a Man to Fish by Eli Grober (The New Yorker) We can't believe nobody ever previously thought to give the "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie" treatment to this phrase! Often when a piece revolves around riffing on a particular idiom, the beats and jokes can wind up feeling overly disconnected and patchwork-y. But that's never an issue here because it's got such a strong, surprising narrative--plus lots of good weird and unique specifics.

Welcome to My Store For Women by Kady Ruth Ashcraft (McSweeney's) Well-observed details, a compelling premise, and a narrator with a clear, unique voice: It all adds up to a great bit of humor writing. And the way the word "thing" is used is truly marvelous. ("By the register are a bunch of trinkets, cousins of things.") This here is some good prose.
 

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An Old Favorite

Think Outside the Pot by Mollie Wilson (The Big Jewel)

You truly can find inspiration anywhere--even staring at your coffee pot while your morning brew percolates. This one has a little bit more setup, but the longer walk is worth it because it takes the piece to a more original place. All the hypothetical situations in this are delightful, but particularly the one in which a character must decide which carries more weight: The safety directions on a coffee maker, or orders given by the police. "How fortunate that I was able to maintain enough clarity of thought to choose the greater of two competing authorities."
 

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Updates From Your Hosts and Friends of the Show

Luke is directing a UCB House Sketch team, "House of Birds", and their show is going up on MONDAY at the UCB Theater in Hell's Kitchen at 7:30. They are a VERY GOOD team and their show will VERY LIKELY sell out, so get your tickets NOW.
 

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.