A Newsletter of Humorous Writing #326
A Newsletter of Humorous Writing
For January 31-February 6, 2024
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. This is the second newsletter we've sent out using Buttondown and it's still got that "new newsletter platform" smell--take a big whiff and enjoy!
What We Enjoyed This Week
My Waiting List’s Waiting List by Jack Handey (The New Yorker) “You are tempted by false lists.” This is full of great lines, just as you would expect from a piece by Jack Handey, whose sentence-level joke writing is second to none.
My Comments Are in the Google Doc Linked in the Dropbox I Sent in the Slack by Gwynna Forgham-Thrift (McSweeney's) Gwynna nicely heightens how confusing/convoluted the situation is, but always keeps the prose crisp and clear. There's a really fun run towards the end of the piece where the narrator rattles off a bunch of app names, and the rhythms and cadences of that sentence are extremely satisfying.
Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Possibly Flirtatious Texts by Ysabel Yates (McSweeney's) It's really challenging to write a short humor piece in the form of a prose scene with dialogue between characters. It can be all too easy to focus on the mechanics of the scene and dialogue at the expense of jokes and heightening, and often the piece will wind up being overly long. This piece has clear beats, clear heightening, and an excellent joke per word (JpW) ratio--it's a great example of how to do it right.
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Would you like to relax, do less, and be joyfully worse at everything?
If yes, please join humor writer Julie Kling and humor writer Talia Argondezzi in a Zoom workshop called How To Lean The F*ck Out in 2024 on Monday, February 12th, from 8:00pm - 9:15pm EST. (We dropped the ball on getting our sh*t together for January.) The workshop is based on Talia’s book Lean the F*ck Out and Julie’s newsletter Mom Rage(r): turning your Mom Rage into raging fun.
The anti-workshop is Pay What You Wish and you can sign up HERE.
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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 #51.
What I Assume the Eighteen-Eighties Were Like by Seth Reiss (The New Yorker) Seth Reiss is not only a Friend of the Show, he's an amateur historian. Though, in a way, I suppose we're all amateur historians. Have you ever thought about the past? Boom. Done.
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 an intro to short humor workshop starting on March 2nd! Learn the essentials of short humor and write a draft of your very own piece in four weeks. (He's also got a few spots [including scholarship spots] still open in his advanced workshop starting this Saturday!)
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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