A Newsletter of Humorous Writing

For November 25-December 1, 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. Luke here! No bit up top this week, just a recommendation: Dr. Brown's Cel-Ray is a good soda and you should try it. You might be thinking, "Luke, celery flavored soda, what are you talking about, that's disgusting." You're wrong. It's good. Give it a shot. (This is not a sponsored post, but if anyone can hook us up with a Cel-Ray sponsorship we would welcome the opportunity to "cel" out, as it were.)

What We Enjoyed This Week

An Open Letter to the Guy Who Was Always at the Bar on His Computer by Kristin Manna (McSweeney's) When a piece is about a familiar, recognizable situation, feeling, or character, it's got to have great details and specifics--and this open letter delivers. It also evokes "the current moment" without letting that become its main focus or falling back on any of the shopworn jokes that have been endlessly rehashed since March.

List: Headlines I Wasted My "Free Articles" on Before Hitting the Paywall by Alex Bergmans (Points in Case) This could easily have become a collection of random headline jokes, but it builds and heightens nicely and ties everything together with good solid runners and callbacks.

Upgrade to Premium by Andrew Jaico and Cara Devins (www.upgradetopremium.com)
Why write a prose piece in the form of a website when you can just make the website? That's what Cara and Andrew did and it paid off big time. Having this exist as an actual website you can visit adds an extra level of funny weirdness that you just wouldn't get if it were a traditionally-presented prose piece. We truly love to see writers experiment like this.

An Old Favorite

The precision of the prose and specificity of the descriptions are what make the jokes land in this piece. The imagery is hilarious and vivid and it heightens in ways that are surprising but still grounded in the reality that the piece has established. It's a real master class.

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 is doing a workshop about editing and polishing your short humor drafts and how to get and give helpful feedback when working with others on humor writing. It's on Saturday 12/19/20 from 1-3PM EST via zoom and it's gonna be informative AND fun. Sign up here!

Mike Sacks, author of And Here's the Kicker and Poking a Dead Frog, has a new book out this month! It's called Slouchers—the third in a series of faux film novelizations he’s written, this one parodying grunge-y ’90s Seattle—and you can check out an excerpt over at McSweeney's and then order it right here.

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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