A Newsletter of Humorous Writing #135
A Newsletter of Humorous Writing
A Newsletter of Humorous Writing
For April 16-22, 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. Here at Humorous Readings HQ (HRHQ), we've been making a lot of elaborate dinners lately. And it got us to wondering: What's the BIGGEST dinner you've ever eaten? Write in and let us know!
What We Enjoyed This Week
I’m Working Remotely. Can I Keep Hiding My Secret Baby? by Caity Weaver (The New York Times) When advice columns are funny it's usually because a question is completely ludicrous, or because the columnist really tears into the questioner. Here, the columnist is very much on the side of the person writing in, and while the question is pretty crazy, that's not where the bulk of the laughs wind up coming from. Read it and you'll see!
FAQ: Composting by Chas Gillespie (McSweeney's)
This piece takes a wild turn partway through. It's always a gamble when you do this in a piece--if it feels like you bailed on your premise you can wind up completely losing the reader. It works here because the piece builds to the turn in a very precise way, and once the turn happens, it really REALLY commits to its new subject matter. (It also helps that the prose is very good!)
Birthday Dinner Bingo by Ally Mason (Little Old Lady)
The benefit of the bingo card format is that you can get straight to your specifics with zero filler--but that's also what makes it a challenge. If your piece is nothing but specifics, they'd better be good. And these are, indeed, good specifics.
An Old Favorite
[_______]'s [_______] by @leafcrunch (Twitter)
A bingo card isn't the only way to do grid-based humor! We'd love to see this Punnett Square type format brought into wider use. This piece manages to be rigorously conceptual and unboundedly weird at the same time. It's a true original.
Updates From Your Hosts and Friends of the Show
James will be reading on the Good Light Comedy Show next Tuesday, April 28th at 7:30 PM! It's hosted by Jiji Lee, and features Friend of the Show Rekha Shankar, Johnathan Appel, Art Cai, Amanda Hunt, Caitlin Brodnick, and musical guest Viviana Cumplido. Watch it live on Youtube next Tuesday!
James also has a piece in the next issue of The Pandemic Post. It's a beautifully designed collection of art and writing, and all the profits go to the Service Worker's Coalition and Family Meal. Preorder the next issue here!
And our friends at Caveat have a fun show tomorrow we think you might enjoy! Brian, James, and 27 other writers did an exquisite corpse to write a script for "National Treasure 3." Each person wrote two pages, based only on reading the previous two pages of the script. Caveat is presenting a live reading of the sure-to-be-bonkers script tomorrow at 7 PM on Caveat's YouTube channel. Mark your calendar and tune in here at 7!
News About The Next Show
We'll be bringing the show back as soon as we're able, and as soon as we have a date, we'll let you know!
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!