A Newsletter of Humorous Writing

For September 9-15, 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. Exciting times at HRHQ: We're working on a packet to try to get hired as the guys who come up with shapes of soaps. Here's what we've got so far: "Square on the bottom, circle on the top--finally put an end to those vicious arguments with your spouse about which soap shape is better." Wish us luck!

What We Enjoyed This Week

What Is a Snack, Really? by Rebecca Flint Marx (Eater) An essay on one of the most vexing ontological questions in all of philosophy, and a very funny look at the marketing language of snack brands. We also recommend that you check out the rest of Eater's Snack Week series. There's lots of good stuff, including an extremely wrong-headed article making the insane claim that kettle chips are bad.

22 Ways I Will Destroy You With Karate by Tom Laplaige (McSweeney's) There's a lot to like here: The pacing, the rhythm of the prose, the specifics and imagery--but it's the repetition of "destroyed" that really seals the deal. Destroyed. (By laughs!)

What Your Favorite Kind Of Candy Says About You And Now That I’ve Gotten Your Attention, Help Me! I’m Stuck In A Bottle by Catherine Weingarten (Little Old Lady) This piece gives us the opportunity to finally bring up the fact that we too are stuck in bottles and would love your help getting out. We would have mentioned it sooner but up until now every time we tried to segue into the subject it just felt forced.
 

An Old Favorite

Rosanna writes: "The Toast was an iconic source of creative and experimental humour writing. Abbey Fenbert's series pulling apart TV shows by imagining the writer's pitch, was the diamond in the Toast-crown. Fenbert took the simple premise of a pitching room, and used the sell as a format to simultaneously build kooky and vulnerable writers room characters, and turn the most obscure aspects of a program into its selling-points. Her Wishbone pitch is far and away the most whimsical, as she reveals all the nonsensical elements of Wishbone that somehow became a cohesive show."

Do you have an Old Favorite of your own? Let us know by filling out this form and we may run your pick in a future edition of the newsletter. 

Updates From Your Hosts and Friends of the Show

Luke has another zoom workshop coming up on Saturday, 10/10/20 from 11AM-2PM Eastern about Where to Start With Short Humor Writing. If you've always wanted to write short humor pieces but aren't sure how to get into it, or have tried writing pieces but find that you have trouble translating your ideas into prose, this workshop is all about helping you get over those initial difficulties.
 

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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