A Newsletter of Humorous Writing #140
A Newsletter of Humorous Writing
A Newsletter of Humorous Writing
For May 21-27, 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. May is nearly over, which is something of a relief here at the Humorous Readings Headquarters (HRHQ). During months that are also verbs, we try to live our lives in accordance with the month's homographic definition, which means in May we allow a lot of things to happen that we would otherwise say "you may not" to. It's been a month full of "you may crash with us" and "you may have an extra helping of dessert" and "you may borrow our car even though in the past you've returned it filthy." It's nice to be generous, but we're excited to passive-aggressively look at our watches and go, "will you look at the time" and show all our couch-crashers the door so we can be alone to rub our bellies that are aching from too much dessert.
What We Enjoyed This Week
Modern Love Essays By Nursery Rhyme Characters by Ysabel Yales and Ali Solomon (McSweeney's) This piece does a wonderful job of precisely mimicking the tone and cadence of Modern Love descriptions. And the spot-on visual parody of the illustrations is a treat too!
I Love My Work by Zach Buckner (McSweeney's) Pieces like this that are written from a more general perspective can be hard to keep engaging, but Zach gives us plenty of emotion and insight from the narrator, which gives the piece the intimacy and specificity it wouldn't otherwise have.
An Open Letter To People From My Hometown Who Request Me On LinkedIn by Caitlin Briody (The Belladonna) Love a good score-settling piece. The specifics about all the hometowners who have wronged the narrator are so visceral and relatable that it keeps this classic format (open letter) about a favorite punching bag of humor writers (LinkedIn) feeling fresh.
An Old Favorite
Notes From The Office Manager by Sam Kemmis (PBQ)
We're big fans of the short-lived humor magazine Pendulous Breasts Quarterly, which only published two issues (if you haven't read it, ask to borrow our copy in the next few days: the answer will be a reluctant, "you may.") This piece by Sam Kemmis is a great example of the sort of stuff that made the Quarterly great -- short, silly, and very inventive. We also love the choice to run this in the most office-y font around, Comic Sans.
Updates From Your Hosts and Friends of the Show
If you're looking for a new podcast, may we recommend Truth At Midnight with Robin Truth, a supernatural call-in show by Friend of the Show Sam Weiner? There are only a few short episodes available, but they're all very funny!
News About The Next Show
No updates for now, but we can't wait to see you all out in the world again.
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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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!