A Newsletter of Humorous Writing #198
A Newsletter of Humorous Writing
A Newsletter of Humorous Writing
For August 18-24, 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. Are you looking for a song to listen to while you read this newsletter? We recommend Scott Walker (the good one)'s cover of Sundown. It sounds like it's sung by a vampire about a vampire (and we mean that as a very high compliment).
What We Enjoyed This Week
Every Album by [Artist/Band], Ranked from Worst to Best by W.A. Hughes (McSweeney's) Each of the phrases in brackets is so well-constructed and on-point, it's proof that you can (and should) be specific even when your joke is about vagueness. This piece (and the last paragraph in particular) is also a wonderful example of using repetition and rhythm for comedic effect.
How I Learned To Trust Myself Even Though I’m The Guard Who Only Tells Lies
by Gwen Coburn (Slackjaw) A fun exploration of a familiar character's unusual point of view, fleshing out the world they live in and their backstory. (Though the question remains, could this whole story of impressive personal growth be... a lie?)
Quiz: Are You a Cat Person, a Dog Person, or a Wildebeest Person? by Aefa Mulholland (Points in Case) Obviously the heart of this piece is always going to be wildebeest descriptions and specifics, but Aefa also gets a ton of laughs from the quiz's questions, using them to parody of the cloyingly precious tone of clickbait articles about pets. This adds an additional layer of humor without pulling so much focus that it muddles the main premise of the piece (though it also helps that the premise is crystal clear right from the get go).
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 #72.
Men Find Me Intimidating Just Because I'm A Sentient Robot Sent Here From The Future To Destroy John Connor by Erica Lies (Splitsider) This is one of those pieces that nails the execution. It effortlessly marries two rich concepts (Terminator references and relationship tropes) without getting confusing, or letting one pull too much oxygen away from the other. It reads so smoothly and looks so simple, but it isn't. It's the result of carefully constructing the conceit, and of course, really tight editing.
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
James has a new piece in The New Yorker this week called "Diary of the Guy Who Drove the Trojan Horse Back from Troy." The cycle of epic ancient poetry covered a lot of ground and introduced a lot of characters, sure, but there's a lot of space to expand the mythos by adding weird guys with bad jobs!
Friend of the Show Colin Nissan's all-time classic McSweeney's piece "It's Decorative Gourd Season, Motherfuckers" is being released as its very own standalone book. You can preorder it now before it hits the shops on September 28th.
Just three spots left in the September edition of Luke's workshop "Let's Write a Short Humor Piece"! Check out this (continually updated) thread to see some of the great writing that's come out of past workshops. Full schedule and signup form 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!