A Newsletter of Humorous Writing

For Jan 18-24, 2023

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. The Oscar nominations were announced on Tuesday, and because we didn't get our act together in time to make a short film about the newsletter, the Academy once again didn't have anything to nominate for "Best Live Action or Documentary or Animated Short About Pals Writing a Weekly Newsletter About Short Prose Humor." When they got to the announcement for the category, Riz Ahmed and Allison Williams just stared, unblinking, into the camera without saying anything for, like, two minutes. Oh well, maybe next year!

---

What We Enjoyed This Week

It’s Not You, It’s Me and My Science-Based, Life-Optimizing Podcasts by Sloan Green (McSweeney's) "Life-optimizing podcasts" are ripe for satire, but there are a lot of different ways one could approach the subject. The choice to frame this piece as a breakup adds a nice extra layer of heightened stakes that makes the jokes and observations about these types of podcasts hit even harder.

Bob Dylan’s Philosophy of Modern Sitcoms by Lauren Daley (McSweeney's) Luke here! I just want to acknowledge my bias in picking this piece: I'm a big Bob Dylan fan and Lauren does an excellent job capturing and spoofing the tone and voice of his music criticism. While I think that the juxtaposition of tone and subject matter will land even if you're less familiar with Dylan's writing on music, you can also get a pretty good sense of what that writing is like by checking out an episode of his radio show, "Theme Time Radio Hour". I recommend this episode. (A particular highlight is his rendition of Poe's "Annabel Lee".)

What Colleges’ Emails Read Like to High School Seniors by Katherine Lopez (McSweeney's) This piece takes a truly delightful turn (that is still very much in keeping with the premise) in the penultimate paragraph, going on a fun extended riff that is capped off with the wonderful line, "Complicated Yet Devoted Son, Brother, and Man." (Trust us, it's very funny in context.) Prior to this section, each letter is about the same length, so having this one be notably longer adds to the joke, and it also nicely tees up the final letter, which is brief and brusque. Varying the lengths of your beats is really effective for both pacing purposes and for humorous payoff.
 

---

YOUR AD HERE!

We've got an ad section!
Do you have an ad you'd like to place in the Newsletter? Fill out this form!

---

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 #48.

I'm the Protagonist of a British Rom-Com and My Dear, I've Been Lying to You by Graham Techler (Points in Case) It's one thing to simply parrot a genre, but it's another to accurately satirize it. This piece does a fantastic job of the latter. Also, it's a fun psychology experiment, in that it's impossible to read this piece in anything other than Hugh Grant's voice.

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 Newsletter

A big thanks to everyone who has already filled out our 2023 Newsletter Survey! We really appreciate that so many of you have given us such helpful feedback. And if you haven't gotten around to it yet, there's still time to fill it out yourself!

Luke's still got spots in both of his February short humor writing workshops! They're both on Saturdays and via zoom. There's one at 12PM and another at 3PM. Write three short humor pieces in four weeks, get deadlines, feedback, support, and meet other funny folks! (And scholarship spots are available for both!)
 

---

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!