A Newsletter of Humorous Writing #125
A Newsletter of Humorous Writing
A Newsletter of Humorous Writing
For February 6-13, 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. We're going out of town for the weekend and need someone to take care of our humor and books at Humorous Readings Headquarters (HRHQ) while we're gone. It's a pretty straightforward job: the essays need a scoop of dry prompts and some wet quotes twice a day, the biographies need a pinch of quotable anecdotes one a day and arthritis drops twice a day, and the sci-fi just needs one big idea per week and no water. The funny sci-fi can get one or two silly names as a treat if they're good. Let us know if you're up for the gig!
What We Enjoyed This Week
Mafia-Movie Characters You Won’t Be Hearing From Again After the Nostalgic Intro Voice-Over by Rob Kutner (The New Yorker) Pieces that play with tropes can be tough because they're often so reliant on voice and cliche that they can feel like funny mash-ups that don't explore as much as they reference. Rob breaks through that constriction by being very specific and then heightening the weirdness of the piece so much that the framing and structure of the piece begin to crack in funny and surprising ways.
10th Grade Teacher Arrested but Not for the Thing You Thought by Emily Zauzmer (Reductress) Similarly, Emily avoids a shopworn take on the classic "weird teacher with a murky past" by including lots of fun and specific speculations from a wide variety of characters.
Borrower’s Agreement For The Horse In A One Horse Town by Libby Marshall (Little Old Lady) Libby uses the format and language of a legalese contract so nicely here, rarely undercutting it. Which makes all the details and characters of Squabbler’s Gulch that much more satisfying to explore.
I’m E.T.’s Wife And I Never Wanted Him To Come Home by Terry Heyman (The Belladonna) E.T. always struck us as a space-dirtbag who got an overly kind edit, but it took Terry's clever piece exploring the world around the beloved cosmic imp to convince us that our gut feeling was right.
An Old Favorite
Corrections to Last Night's Party by Melanie Maksin (McSweeney's)
If only it was this easy to issue a correction every time you made a fool of yourself, told a dumb white lie, or dredged up minor turns-of-phrase as a kneejerk and had it bite you in the ass. Newspaper-style corrections are a format we don't feel like is used quite enough. Melanie uses it very well here to explore all the embarrassments and faux pas that make you wonder why you thought going to a party was a good idea in the first place.
Updates From Your Hosts and Friends of the Show
James has a new piece in McSweeney's this week about a fashion iconoclast called "The Diary of Asger, the First Barbarian to Wear Body Paint." Be sure to also check out the blue body paint photo/reason James' facial hair was greenish this week that accompanied the piece.
News About The Next Show
Our next show will be on Tuesday February 25th at Caveat. We're going to hang out at the venue starting at 6:30 before the show begins at 7:30. Tickets are $10 in advance, but $15 at the door, so get a ticket now!
But the real info you need to know is that the line-up is simply crammed to the rafters with knock-out guests. Look at this:
- Maeve Dunigan (Reductress, The Belladonna, Points in Case)
- Kendra Eash (McSweeney’s, Keep Scrolling Till You Feel Something, The New Yorker)
- Keaton Patti (The New Yorker, Marvel, McSweeney’s, The Onion, Comedy Central, UCBT)
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
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