A Newsletter of Humorous Writing #371
A Newsletter of Humorous Writing
For December 11-17, 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. A little tip for the holiday season: If you find yourself in an A Christmas Carol situation, you can just pretend to be asleep until the ghosts go away. That’s what we do every year!
What We Enjoyed This Week
The Hater’s Lament by Evan Waite (The New Yorker) Would it be too bold of us to say that the narrator of this piece is the greatest hater in all of literature? There’s a lot of competition: Javert. Ahab. The guy who wouldn’t taste the green eggs and ham. Write in and let us know your pick for ultimate literary hater!
We Will Build a Big Arch for Your City by David Guzman (McSweeney’s) And speaking of haters, this piece has a very funny throughline about an architectural firm hating St. Louis. It’s also filled with really great wacky jokes: “By the way, these arches? So easy to build. So easy. You don’t even have to make them going up—we just build a big oval laying down, then cut it in half. Voila, two arches!”
Meet the Sculptor Tricking New Yorkers With Art Dedicated to the City's Fake History by Hannah Frishberg (Gothamist) This article combines an incredible number of things we love: High-concept artwork, alternate histories, erudite pranks, and New York City esoterica. Our secret dream has always been that there will one day be enough of these kinds of projects that we’ll be able to start a separate newsletter that JUST covers humorous art installations.
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An Old Favorite
The Hallmark Channel Presents: Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” by Ella Gale (McSweeney’s) It’s not easy to write a piece in screenplay form. All too often the formatting slows down the pace of jokes way too much. Ella makes sure to keep the laughs coming at a nice pace by including jokes in every section of the script, even a scene heading: “INT. BIG CITY HEDGE FUND”
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 Editors and Friends of the Newsletter
Luke’s got just THREE spots left in his Tuesday night advanced short humor writing workshop starting January 7th! (He’s also got ONE spot left in his advanced class starting January 4th.) Writing from past workshops has gone on to be published by The New Yorker, McSweeney’s, and more!
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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