A Newsletter of Humorous Writing

For June 16-22, 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. In his essay "Simulacra and Simulations," philosopher Jean Baudrillard writes, "Disneyland is there to conceal the fact that it is the 'real' country, all of 'real' America, which is Disneyland." But if that's true, why are all the rides in there and not out here? Checkmate, Baudrillard.

---

What We Enjoyed This Week

I'm a Dog Architect, and Here's Why Your Whole House Should Be Windows by Mary Gulino (Points in Case) The contrast between the professional, businesslike tone and the dog details works marvelously. ("My receptionist can send you a formal estimate, but my guess is a project of this size will run you around thirty belly rubs and maybe five to ten 'dat’s a good boy's.") And even though we know from the title what the dog architect is going to recommend, the specificity of the character's voice keeps us engaged the whole way through.

And So Alexander The Great Wept by Sean McGowan (Widget) This riff on a familiar quotation has some truly fantastic descriptions of Alexander the Great in the midst of a crying jag. It also does a great job of building out the world around Alexander and populating it with interesting characters and lively situations--but it never winds up feeling overstuffed or lacking in focus.

Relating to Birds by Sophie Lucido Johnson (The New Yorker) This piece won't just make you laugh, it'll  teach you a thing or two about six different kinds of birds! (And one moth.)
 

---

An Old Favorite

From This Moment Forward, I Will Only Accept Gratitude in the Form of Jet Flyovers by Asher Perlman (McSweeney's) Proof that you can write something inspired by current events and still have it work as an evergreen piece. This has great specifics, but not the kinds of specifics that wind up making it feel dated. (Otherwise it wouldn't work as an old fave!) That plus the great jokes mean it'll be relevant as long as we have fighter jets and gratitude.

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

There are just FOUR spots left in Luke's "Let's Write a Short Humor Piece" workshop starting on July 10th! And be sure to check out this thread highlighting some of the great writing people have done in past workshops.
 

---

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!