A Newsletter of Humorous Writing

For April 5-11, 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. We're excited to announce that we'll soon be expanding our newsletter empire with a brand new offering, "A Newsletter of 90s Mail Order CD Commercials." A little preview: Our first pick in the soon-to-debut first edition will be Pure Moods.

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What We Enjoyed This Week

Are You Doing Something Very Ordinary in Real Life or Unraveling at the Brink of a Mental Breakdown in a Movie? by Talia Argondezzi (McSweeney's) This week, three of the four pieces we've picked satirize clichés and tropes from film and television. In this first one, Talia expertly identifies and describes some of the visual shorthand that movies often use to show a character's inner turmoil, revealing just how ludicrous and artificial these devices can be. One of our favorite things about reading short humor is when a piece shows you something that you didn't know you already knew. The well-observed and well-chosen details in this one give you the wonderful feeling of discovering something very funny that was hiding in plain sight the whole time--how could you not have noticed before!--and Talia brings it all home with a terrific final reversal.

Restrictions to Your Selected Airfare by Sam Corbin (The New Yorker) This is the one piece we're featuring this week that's not focused on the previously-mentioned clichés, but like the others, this piece is rooted in some all-too-familiar and recognizable source material: The frustrations of dealing with arbitrary and convoluted terms and conditions when buying airline tickets.

Job Openings in a Network Crime Procedural by Devin Wallace (Points in Case) This is a VERY thorough catalogue of the clichés and tropes you find in police procedurals. Devin packs in a ton of excellent, well-observed details, and makes fantastic use of the job posting format to generate jokes and laughs. (Here at the newsletter we're also just generally big fans of jokes about cop shows.)
 

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-- AD --

Emmy-award winning comedian and writer Taylor Kay Phillips has written her debut humor book, A Guide to Midwestern Conversation, based on her McSweeney's article series of the same name. This funny, loving, and beautifully illustrated guide to the language of the landlocked is available for purchase RIGHT NOW from wherever you buy your books! How bout that! A Short Humorous Writing that turned into a Long Humorous Writing. (Hi, this is Taylor. It's been me the whole time! Please order my book, I really think you'll like it. Okay, love you! Don't be a stranger.)

(Do you have an ad you'd like to place in the Newsletter? Fill out this form!)

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An Old Favorite

Cinematic Expressions of Inner Self-Loathing If There Were No Mirrors to Smash by Ross Murray (McSweeney's) And we end with one final trope-centric piece! Unlike the previous two, which describe a wide variety of tropes, this piece does a deep dive on one particular cliché: A character smashing a mirror as a metaphor for their self-loathing. This is a truly original premise and Ross delivers on it big-time, serving up a bunch of surprising and hilarious analogues for mirror-smashing.

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 Newsletter

On April 23rd, Luke's doing a single-session workshop on how to give and get helpful feedback--it's focused on short humor writing, but the lessons will certainly be applicable to other types of writing as well! He's also got another edition of his advanced humor writing workshop, Let's Write MORE Short Humor Pieces, starting on May 13th, if you're looking to generate material to get feedback on. And both classes are great opportunities to meet people to swap drafts with!
 

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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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