A Newsletter of Humorous Writing

For September 20-26, 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. A non-humorous reading recommendation to start the week: Patti Smith wrote an essay on Little Women for The Paris Review. We were hoping there would be more jokes in it so that we could include it with the main picks, but unfortunately it's not quite humorous--just insightful and well-written. So we'll have to leave it up here, on the other side of the line that lets you, the reader, know that you are about to enter the zone of humorousness.
 

What We Enjoyed This Week

This Teacher Was Taking Three Buses To Work, So Her Students Surprised Her With Better Public Transit Infrastructure by Sarah James (Reductress)

Your Mom’s Book Festival by Bezalel Stern (McSweeney's)

Casual Mating by Ethan Kuperberg (The New Yorker)
 

An Old Favorite

Trip Advisory: The Boyhood Home Of Former President Ronald Reagan by Amelia Gray (McSweeney's)

Luke here: I just picked up Amelia Gray's Museum of the Weird on the strength of a recommendation from the good folks at McNally Jackson, who included it in their "Subway Reads" display. I was intrigued to see that the author bio included a reference to work published on McSweeney's Internet Tendency, so I decided to investigate, and this was what I found. It's a piece about how American myth-making works. There was a time when Reagan was primarily thought of as a mediocre actor whose most impressive roles involved playing opposite a monkey and getting punched by John Cassavetes (not in the same movie, unfortunately). But now, plenty of folks take it for granted that he's a revered statesman deserving of reflexive respect. This piece give some insight into how that change came about. It was published in 2006, but is perhaps still relevant today if for some reason you're wondering how a huge number of Americans could wind up convinced that a patently ludicrous figure should be taken seriously.
 

Updates From Your Hosts and Friends of the Show

Luke directed a sketch show that is going up tomorrow at 9:30 at The PIT (123 E. 24th Street). The team putting up the show is called Clementine, and it's full of wonderful writers and performers and the whole thing should be quite a good time indeed.
 

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.