A Newsletter of Humorous Writing #406
A Newsletter of Humorous Writing
For August 13-19, 2025
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 reminder, we’ve got another hangout coming up at the beginning of September! Hope to see you there.
What We Enjoyed This Week
Some Funny Things About Getting Old by Jack Handey (The New Yorker) We just love the contrast between the narrator’s upbeat tone and the increasingly painful things that happen to him. This piece also contains a truly impressive number of riffs on the word “shot”—that’s the Handey touch.
I Feel Like You're Only Friends with Me Because of My Printer by Michelle Cohn and Madeline Goetz (Points in Case) Michelle and Madeline come up with so many different funny scenarios in which the character exploits their relationship with the narrator to gain access to a printer. Even though we know each beat will inevitably come back around to the printer, they manage to keep surprising us. And the heightening is great, like in this beat: “I see you every weekend, yet I’m not invited to your wedding. No, don’t try to make excuses. It’s a month away, and you already sent out the invites. How do I know? You printed them at my house.”
Don’t Judge My Book by Its Cover by Viktoria Shulevich (McSweeney’s) This piece touches on something that any writer will find relatable: the gap that so often exists between your ambitions for your work and how that work ultimately turns out. We also loved the well-paced reveals of what the book is actually about.
-- AD --
Hosted by Lana Schwartz (The New Yorker, The Onion, McSweeney's) Letters & Sodas brings together standup comedy, humor pieces, fiction, and essay readings in a way they never have been before (or at least not in recent memory). Join us for the next show at The Greats of Craft in Long Island City on August 27 at 7 p.m., featuring:
Nicole Beckley (The A.V. Club, McSweeney's, The New York Times)
Chris Ritter (NPR, Genius, Condé Nast Traveler)
Orli Matlow (Reductress, Adult Swim, SundanceTV)
Vikrant Sunderlal (Bodega Comedy, NYCCF)
Alise Morales (Go Touch Grass Podcast, Difficult People, Late Night with Seth Meyers)
Johnathan Appel (The New Yorker, Last Week Tonight)
Tickets available here!---
Are you laughing enough? Probably not. Good thing there's CHORTLE! We send funny, original writing from a rotating cast of writers to your email inbox every weekday morning. Perfect for fans of McSweeney’s or Slackjaw. Check out some of our most popular posts to get started!
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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 #84.
Sorry Kid, But the Amount Of Cute Animal Posts I’ve Mainlined Has Numbed Me To Even The Most Adorable Content by Sean McGowan (McSweeney's) Is there an official ranking of cute internet content? What is, by the rule book, cuter: A puppy wearing a hat, or a kitten going down a slide? What about baby otter trying to compose a topical tweet? That's got to be #1, right?
Updates From Your Editors and Friends of the Newsletter
Luke’s got just FIVE spots left in his advanced short humor writing workshop starting on September 13th! Write three drafts in four weeks and get notes and feedback in a supportive environment.
And James wrote a piece for Lit Hub this week about books you might spot in the background of your therapist’s Zoom.
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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