A Newsletter of Humorous Writing

For August 30-September 5, 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. This week at Humorous Readings HQ (HRHQ) we got way too into collecting 16mm prints of rare experimental short films, and now we owe a lot of money to a lot of very scary film archivists and avant-garde filmmakers. The worst part is, we don't even have a projector! We just like looking at the reels. Anyway, on to the humor pieces.

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What We Enjoyed This Week

Diva by Ellie Kemper (The New Yorker) There's a section right in the middle of this very funny personal essay that feels like it could be lifted out and would, with only a little tweaking, be able to stand on its own as a non-autobiographical humor piece. (The title could be something like "All the Ways In Which I Am Much, Much Tougher Than Any Baby.") When writing short humor, some of the most important choices you have to make are about how to frame a piece, and how much background you need to include in order to make your idea clear. Generally, we here at HRHQ tend to favor cutting down on exposition and getting right to the heart of the matter--but sometimes you're not sure what the heart of your piece is, and in those situations it can be helpful to explore and expand upon the initial sources of inspiration for your piece, though that may turn it into a very different kind of work than what you were initially imagining. At any rate, we'd be very interested to know whether Ellie Kemper started with that middle section and wound up expanding it into a broader personal essay, or vice versa. (Also just to be clear, this is NOT a call for everyone to start adding extended autobiographical frames to all their pieces. Please do this only sparingly.)

My Tattoo Is Meaningless by River Clegg (The New Yorker) If you've been reading this newsletter for even a little while, you already know that we think River's pieces are great. We think this piece is great!

An Incomplete Biography of Marcel Proust by Liana Finck (The Paris Review) Perhaps the only thing tougher than making autobiography funny is making biography funny. This piece manages to be informative, accessible, and, most important, very funny. And that's no easy feat.
 

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An Old Favorite

Following My Creative Writing Teacher’s Advice to Write “Like My Parents Are Dead.” by Ellie Kemper (McSweeney's)

And here's another great Ellie Kemper piece from way back in 2006--before she was even on The Office! It's a very simple premise, well-executed. It's just long enough to do what it needs to do, and then gets outta there before the reader gets a chance to get too far ahead of it. What more can you ask for?
 

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Updates From Your Hosts and Friends of the Show

All quiet at Humorous Readings HQ (HRHQ). Perhaps a little too quiet.
 

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.