A Newsletter of Humorous Writing #46
A Newsletter of Humorous Writing
A Newsletter of Humorous Writing
For August 2-8, 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. Today we went down to the barber to get our hair cut (we get a discount for getting all our hair cut at once by one person) and noticed a lot of tattoos on our barber. It got us thinking, what would be some fun short humor tattoos? Maybe a beloved quote? Or an image from a favorite piece? Chris Monks' face? Send us your ideas! We've got all this blank skin.
What We Enjoyed This Week
With This Facebook Like, I Hereby Acknowledge That You Got Married by Jeremiah Budin (The New Yorker) First person pieces responding to and dissecting a minor-but-relatable experience are online short humor's bread and butter. This one is great because it manages to stay specific, has jokes and not just references, and doesn't drift into detachment.
An Unemployed Person (Who Is Not Bitter At All) Writes A Job Recruiter's Job Description by Ysabel Yates (McSweeney's) Friend of the Show Ysabel has some fun with the age-old problem of job hunting being the worst.
Welcome To Pastures by Casey Rand (The New Yorker) This is a really well done and sharply written entry in the canon of "introducing my fake company" pieces (another trope that seems to crop up relatively frequently in short humor).
Bad Feminist? This Woman Loves Her Husband by Miranda Kronfeld (Reductress) In this age of tumult and quarrel, it's nice when some things are consistent. Like the fact that Friend of the Show Miranda has a great piece in Reductress this week.
An Old Favorite
Just The Funny Parts by Nell Scovell (Harper Collins)
Nell Scovell's new-ish book is new to me, James, and I've been really enjoying it. Scovell's work and resume speak for themselves, and her long and successful career's nearly guarantees you've already laughed at her jokes. In fact, if you're reading this newsletter (thank you and bless you), you've 100% laughed at her stuff. Just The Funny Parts is part harrowing and inspiring in its telling of being a woman in comedy, part snappy memoir, and part inside baseball and advice on comedy writing. Pick it up! The Times review is here, if you need more convincing.
Updates From Your Hosts and Friends of the Show
Well, we just looked up how expensive tattoos are -- jeez, these things are way more than we thought. Maybe we'll just go back to what we used to do when we were struggling humor writers and write our first drafts on each other's arms in sharpie. That's basically a tattoo, right?
Otherwise, no big updates from us this week.
News About The Next Show
Thanks to everyone who came out to our recent August show! We had a blast and hope you did too. We're hard at work plotting our next show and our next hang-out, but as always, keep an eye on this space for updates!
See you next week!
@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.
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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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!