A Newsletter of Humorous Writing

For September 28-October 4, 2022.

Hello and welcome to A Newsletter of Humorous Writing, a roundup of the week's finest short humor pieces and funny articles, and a celebration of the fantastic writers who wrote them. It's been a rainy week in New York, and there's water leaking from the ceiling in multiple places here at Humorous Readings Headquarters (HRHQ). We'd put down a bunch of pots and pans to collect the water, but unfortunately, it's also stew season, which means all our pots and pans and other containers are currently being used to make or store gallons and gallons of hearty beef stew. All by way of saying, if anyone has any extra pots, please bring them by HRHQ (we're going to use them to make even more stew).

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What We Enjoyed This Week

I’m a Personal Trainer and I Can Tell You Need Some One-on-One Attention by Claire Friedman (The New Yorker) This piece has a very funny character as its narrator, and it simultaneously builds out a funny picture of the character the narrator is speaking to--and it does so without it feeling like one is pulling too much focus from the other. An impressive balance to achieve.

Who Will Win the 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature? by Alex Shephard (The New Republic) This, the seventh entry in the always-delightful annual series, is a treasure trove of hilarious analysis, great sentence-level joke writing, and sick literary burns.

If Literary Acceptances Were Written Like Literary Rejections by Ella Gale (Slackjaw) Ella expertly captures the tone and tics of correspondence sent by literary magazines. It's incredibly satisfying and deeply funny to see how our expectations are reversed in each beat.

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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 #72.

The Alphabet, Ranked by Reese Cassard (Points in Case) What a delightfully weird premise, and what a fantastic commitment to the bit. Bravo! (B is #12, in case you're wondering).

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

Luke's workshop "Where to Start With Short Humor" is starting at the end of the month! It's designed to give beginners and newcomers the tools they need to get started writing short humor. Check out this (just updated) thread to see some of the hilarious work that's come out of past workshops.
 

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Other Humorous Writing News

On Monday, the Onion filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court. The brief is in support of a man who created a Facebook page making fun of his local police department, was arrested by that police department, and is now suing them. You can download the full brief from the Supreme Court's website. It's long, but is worth checking out both for its funny lines ("The Onion knows that the federal judiciary is staffed entirely by total Latin dorks... They sweetly whisper 'stare decisis' into their spouses’ ears.") and for its thoughtful explanation of the practice and philosophy of satire. ("Parodists intentionally inhabit the rhetorical form of their target in order to exaggerate or implode it—and by doing so demonstrate the target’s illogic or absurdity.")

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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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