A Newsletter of Humorous Writing

For June 28-July 4, 2018, a roundup of the week's finest prose humor and prose humor-related news.

Hello and welcome to A Newsletter of Humorous Writing, the email propaganda arm of the acclaimed humorous readings show, An Evening of Humorous Readings. There's no time for bits! The show is tonight and there's still so much to do! We've got to make place cards for the guests, polish the good microphone, and get our short humor pieces into the oven NOW or they'll never be done in time.
 

What We Enjoyed This Week

We’d Like to Split the Bill by Shira Rachel Danan (The New Yorker)

17 Real-Life Would-You-Rathers I, a Woman, Have Had to Ask Myself by Isabella Giovannini (McSweeney's)

I Am the Algorithm by Emily Flake (The New Yorker)

An Old Favorite

Marvel Comics Backs Out of My Publishing Contract by Jon Methven (McSweeney's)

Truly there has never been a hero more strange than Captain Crochet! Given its central premise, this could easily have been a one-note, utterly predictable piece, but it does a great job of finding interesting angles to explore and surprising ways to heighten. It's written in the form of a letter, but it never lets that structure get in the way of the jokes, and it also never tosses out this base reality for the sake of a quick laugh. This piece is an important reminder that good humor writing doesn't always have to make an Important Point or be Quite Academic and Very Literary: it can also be goofy and beautifully dumb (and we truly mean that as the best kind of compliment).
 

Updates From Your Hosts and Friends of the Show

The only news we have to share is that we all had a nice Fourth of July.

See you next tonight (we hope)!

@brianagler, @lukevburns, & @jamesfolta

Did we miss a piece you loved? Did you love a piece we mentioned? Let us know! This is an experiment and we're hoping to continue to make it better and better. 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.