A Newsletter of Humorous Writing

For January 19-25, 2022, 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. This week, James and Luke are in two different time zones, neither of them Eastern, so we just hope we didn't send the newsletter out at the wrong time. If we did send this later than usual, please let us know immediately. We have a very important meeting at 11:15AM (timezone unclear) and we don't want to miss it!

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What We Enjoyed This Week

Write What You Know™! We ALL Have Tales to Tell! by Elise Seyfreid (The Belladonna) The structure of this piece works great. Early on, we're subtly clued in to what all the beats are going to be, which sets our expectations and builds a nice sense of anticipation. The setup of what is unusual about the narrator's point of view is also handled exceptionally well: The irony comes through crystal-clear without undercutting the character's voice.

Think You Got What It Takes to Join Our Gang, the Crabapple Boys?! by Alex Baia (Points in Case) Luke here! I must confess that I'm a sucker for jokes about old-timey rapscallions. But even if I weren't, there's still a ton I'd like about this piece: Wonderful specifics, a well-developed tone, and lots of nice runners. It's also a great example of how you don't have to heighten by going to grimmer, darker places--one thing that makes this so funny is how weirdly wholesome the Crabapple Boys are.

Excerpts From The House of Girth, Edith Wharton’s 1905 Novel About Powerlifting by Allie Rubin (McSweeney's) The juxtaposition of weight lifting lingo with the tone and setting of the Edith Wharton novel is just hilarious. Allie also does an excellent job of heightening without disconnecting from the source material, and builds in a nice story arc without getting too plotty.
 

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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 #12.

I'm Making a Few Changes to this Beloved Alt-Weekly by Jason O. Gilbert (McSweeney's) This one is not only funny, it hits close to home. Support your (independently-owned) alt-weeklies, people.

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.

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Updates From Your Hosts and Friends of the Show

If you're looking for a fun Valentine's Day gift, there are still copies available of An Atlas of Valentine's Day Island by James and Friend of the Newsletter Lucas Adams! It's a full-color, 14" x 20" newsprint map, full of jokes, drawings, and details about this made-up island and its inhabitants. Check out what the zine looks like, and order a copy!

Luke's got three workshops starting in February! One section of "Let's Write a Short Humor Piece", which starts on February 12th, and two sections of "Let's Write MORE Short Humor Pieces", which start on February 10th and February 12th, respectively. Click through for the full schedules and more details and check out this thread to see some of the great writing that's come out of past workshops.

The new "Funny How Show", where writers read their humor pieces and then discuss them, premieres on January 29th at 7PM at the PIT with guests Steve Young, Tulis McCall, Stan Baker, and Rebecca Kaplan.

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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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