A Newsletter of Humorous Writing

For May 14-20, 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. The weather has taken a turn for the nice, and so we've flung open the windows of Humorous Readings Headquarters (HRHQ) to let the books in our Library of Humorous Prose get some fresh air. But while the windows are open, we each have to take turns guarding the books so that birds don't swoop in and fly off with them. It's happened before! Birds love prose humor.

What We Enjoyed This Week

Lesser-Known Privileges of Academic Rank by Jonathan Strassfeld (McSweeney's) In a list piece like this your joke writing has to be rock solid, because hey, that's kind of the deal: You're giving the reader a list of jokes. No more, no less. And this piece has some good jokes. ("You get one gem heist.")

Woman Has 57 Psychological Theories About Guy Who Just Sucks by Loretta Donelan (Reductress) The title sets up everything the reader needs to know, meaning you get to spend more time on the fun stuff!

Sharks, Before You're All Out, Give Me 4 More Minutes to Pitch My Matrix-Themed Restaurant by David Bernstein (Points in Case)  Very often, when you frame a piece as a character giving a presentation or pitch or addressing an audience, it can require so much setup that it gets in the way of exploring the premise. But in this piece, the format allows the author to have lots of fun with the voice of the character--and we still get plenty of fun specifics about the Matrix-themed restaurant.
 

An Old Favorite

Tripadvisor.Com Reviews: Jekyll & Hyde B&B by Kate Hahn (McSweeney's)

The "internet reviews" format is used by many short humor pieces, but rarely is it used as well as it is here. It's the perfect way to explore the premise: It keeps things nicely focused, but also has enough flexibility to allow for the inclusion of a bunch of unexpected (and very good) jokes.
 

Updates From Your Hosts and Friends of the Show

Friend of the Show Mia Mercado's book came out this week! It's a collection of essays called Weird But Normal that explores all the strange and wonderful things about being a millenial woman. Mia's one of our favorite writers and this book is sure to be as funny and smart as all of her writing is. You can read more about it here on her website, and you can order your copy here through Bookshop.
 

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.