A Newsletter of Humorous Writing #186
A Newsletter of Humorous Writing
A Newsletter of Humorous Writing
For May 26-June 1, 2021, a roundup of the week's finest prose 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. We finally got the prototype for some Newsletter of Humorous Writing merch! It's a hat with the complete text of Thank You, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse printed on a baseball cap. Unfortunately, we can't sell any of the hats yet since we're entangled in a legal dispute with the Wodehouse estate. Plus to accommodate the full text of the book, the hats will only fit heads with a 32-inch circumference.
What We Enjoyed This Week
An Oral History of the Interstitial Ska Music on Friends by Jonathan Zeller (McSweeney's) A good ol' switcheroo premise, a humor classic. Jonathan impressively explores his flailing writer character's different attempt to deliver on the promise of the title, and uses the increasingly oblivious set-up paragraphs before the quotes to ground the piece in its format and frame the jokes.
How to Meditate When You Could Be on Wikipedia Learning Literally Everything About The History of Cranes by Dima Kronfeld (Reductress) A funny piece that also teaches you facts about cranes! Written by Friend of the Newsletter Dima Kronfeld, this is exactly the sort of thing this newsletter was created to celebrate.
The 16 Best and Worst Jerky Brands for Your Next Road Trip by Ryan Sutton (Eater) This piece is extremely impressive. It sets out rigorous criteria and defines a lot of terminologies, and then uses them to rank a whole bunch of jerkies. Naturally, the biggest laughs are coming in the pans of bad jerky later in the piece, but there's lots of fun writing throughout. This piece is part of a series called "Filling Up," which is "a celebration of eating at America’s gas stations" and features a lot of great pieces about the unique and sometimes exceptional place gas stations hold in American diets. Definitely worth your time!
An Old Favorite
This week's Old Favorite is a Brian Agler Selection (TM)--a piece whose accompanying note was written by Brian--from Newsletter #69.
12 Ways My Book Club Can Tell I Definitely Read War and Peace by Tara Millette (McSweeney's) Brian here! About two years ago, I saw a musical on Broadway called Natasha, Pierre, & The Great Comment of 1812. It's a full musical, with a narrative arc and everything, and it's an adaptation of just 70 pages of War and Peace. The point is, this book is bonkers.
Updates From Your Hosts and Friends of the Show
St. Nell's Humor Writing Residency for Ladies is officially open for applications! If you're a female or non-binary writer looking to get away and work on something funny this September, this is a great opportunity. The application is 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.
This newsletter is free, but if you enjoy it and want to support the work we do putting it together, you can send us a tip here. Any amount is greatly appreciated, and 1/3rd of each donation will go to Stand Up To Cancer.
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.
This newsletter is free, but if you enjoy it and want to support the work we do putting it together, you can subscribe to our paid tier, or you can send us a tip here. Any amount is greatly appreciated, and 1/3rd of each donation will go to Stand Up To Cancer.
If you'd like to place an ad in the Newsletter, please fill out this form.
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!