A Newsletter of Humorous Writing

For March 5-11, 2020, a roundup of the week's finest prose humor and prose humor-related news.

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've got a very late edition of the newsletter coming at you because we were waiting to confirm something that we can now announce: Our March 24th show has been cancelled. Our wonderful venue, Caveat, is suspending all its programming for the month, which is a decision we fully support. It's the right call but is also a tough one for a small venue to make, and if you're able to, a great way to help support Caveat through this difficult time would be buying a membership.

What We Enjoyed This Week

Nobody Will Tell You This but Me: Phone Calls With My Grandmother by Bess Kalb (The New Yorker)  The pacing and rhythm of this piece is just marvelous. The voices of both characters are very funny and very specific, and it also has a nice narrative arc--but never gets so caught up in that arc that it forgets to bring the funny.

I Breed French Bulldogs Because They Make Great Companions and Prove God Is Dead by Mike Jungman (McSweeney's) This piece is a great example of how switching between tones generates that sweet sweet friction that you need to start a comedy fire. (You may also learn a thing or two about french bulldogs along the way.)

A Smoothie Recipe Written By a Cop In a Small Town That Just Had Its First Murder in 50 Years by Maeve Dunigan (McSweeney's) Another wonderful study in shifting tones--one that you could have heard read aloud if you had come to our last show!

An Old Favorite

What is Glitter? by Caity Weaver (The New York Times)

It's often difficult to make non-fiction funny. Most of the time it comes down to subject matter. And while this article certainly does have a subject that's pretty funny--the surprisingly fascinating world of glitter manufacturers--there's more to the humor than just that. And there's even one mystery that the article is unable to uncover: Which company purchases the most glitter for use in its products. It's apparently a closely-guarded secret. If anyone has any guesses, let us know!
 

Updates From Your Hosts and Friends of the Show

A lot of our favorite venues, comedy and otherwise, are going to be hit hard by closures. If you're aware of ways that people can help support venues through this difficult time, please send us an email and let us know and we'll do our best to get the word 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.