A Newsletter of Humorous Writing

For February 22-28, 2018, 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. There was a lot of good stuff this week! Way to go everybody! Give yourself a nice round of applause or a big ol' pat on the back.

What We Enjoyed This Week

An Old Favorite

A Backward Glance by Edith Wharton

In this excerpt from A Backward Glance, Edith Wharton describes the experience of traveling with Henry James and having to listen to him ask for directions (If you've read any Henry James, you probably already know where this is going):

The most absurd of these episodes occurred on another rainy evening, when James and I chanced to arrive at Windsor long after dark. We must have been driven by a strange chauffeur — perhaps Cook was on a holiday; at any rate, having fallen into the lazy habit of trusting to him to know the way, I found myself at a loss to direct his substitute to the King’s Road. While I was hesitating, and peering out into the darkness, James spied an ancient doddering man who had stopped in the rain to gaze at us. “Wait a moment, my dear — I’ll ask him where we are”; and leaning out he signalled to the spectator.

“My good man, if you’ll be good enough to come here, please; a little nearer — so,” and as the old man came up: “My friend, to put it to you in two words, this lady and I have just arrived here from SLOUGH; that is to say, to be more strictly accurate, we have recently PASSED THROUGH Slough on our way here, having actually motored to Windsor from Rye, which was our point of departure; and the darkness having overtaken us, we should be much obliged if you would tell us where we now are in relation, say, to the High Street, which, as you of course know, leads to the Castle, after leaving on the left hand the turn down to the railway station.”

I was not surprised to have this extraordinary appeal met by silence, and a dazed expression on the old wrinkled face at the window; nor to have James go on: “In short” (his invariable prelude to a fresh series of explanatory ramifications), “in short, my good man, what I want to put to you in a word is this: supposing we have already (as I have reason to think we have) driven past the turn down to the railway station (which, in that case, by the way, would probably not have been on our left hand, but on our right), where are we now in relation to . . . ”

“Oh, please,” I interrupted, feeling myself utterly unable to sit through another parenthesis, “do ask him where the King’s Road is.”

“Ah —? The King’s Road? Just so! Quite right! Can you, as a matter of fact, my good man, tell us where, in relation to our present position, the King’s Road exactly IS?”

“Ye’re in it,” said the aged face at the window.

Updates From Your Hosts and Friends of the Show

James was this week's guest on the On Comedy Writing podcast! Why not give it a listen?

Luke has yet another Maude night coming up on Monday at the UCB Theatre. He wrote two sketches for the show! One is very stupid, and the other is pretty pretentious, and it's up to you to figure out which is which.

Brian we think is in Thailand?

Did we miss a piece you loved? Did you love a piece we mentioned? Let us know! This is an experiment and we're hoping to continue to make it better and better. If you have any thoughts, notes, wishes, or dreams for this newsletter, please respond to us or this email and tell us what the score is.

See you next week!

@brianagler, @lukevburns, & @jamesfolta