A Newsletter of Humorous Writing #310
A Newsletter of Humorous Writing
A Newsletter of Humorous Writing
For October 11-17, 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. Some frustrating news: We woke up this morning to discover that all the leaves we'd carefully curated into a big pile on the street outside Humorous Readings Headquarters (HRHQ) have been BLOWN away by some sort of MACHINE created for that express purpose! We don't know what kind of joker would come up with an invention like that, but rest assured we will be investigating further once we've found and re-collected all our lost leaves.
What We Enjoyed This Week
What Do We Want…? by Pat Cassels (McSweeney's) There are plenty of humor pieces written as dialogues, but this is a terrific twist on that familiar form. A guy having a conversation with an entire crowd of people is very funny. It's also very funny to have an entire crowd of people shout, in unison, things like, "THERE’S ALWAYS SOME WEIRD GUY SITTING CROSS-LEGGED RIGHT OUTSIDE THE DOOR, WORKING ON HIS LAPTOP." As that quote indicates, this piece also features some excellent use of capitalization for humorous effect.Alpine White BMW M4 Convertible, Fiona Red Leather Interior by Sophie Madeline Dess (The Paris Review) Specificity is so often the key to humor, and this delightful essay focuses on a VERY specific subject indeed. The tone, word choices, and syntax are all delightful: "I want to park it and feel the brutal throb of my revving. I want to feel the car’s restraint, for to drive it at all is to tame it."
Easy Answers to Common Job Interview Questions for Anyone Who Was Saved by a Swamp Creature When They Were Nine by Tyler Gooch (Points in Case) The juxtaposition of "job interview" and "swamp creature" works great, but we also love the descriptions of the creature. They're evocative and moody, but those aspects of the prose never come at the expense of, or pull too much focus from, the laughs.
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“A ton of fun, and a masterful display of joke writing.”—Luke Burns and James Folta, editors, A Newsletter of Humorous Writing
(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 #106.
Evaluations From Every Doctor I Visited Before My Insurance Ran Out by Julia Edelman and Ginny Hogan (The New Yorker) This is a piece that does two things really well: 1. Enjoy the game it creates for itself. 2. Play off of Millenial foibles without leaning on them so hard that we lose sight of the clever writing.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 Show
Luke's got two advanced humor writing workshops starting in November! One begins Tuesday November 7th and the other Saturday November 11th. These are the last workshops he'll be running until 2024 (!!) so snag a spot now!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!
See you next week!
@lukevburns & @jamesfolta
This newsletter is free, but if you enjoy it and want to support the work we do putting it together, you can subscribe to our paid tier, or 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'd like to place an ad in the Newsletter, please fill out this form.
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!