A Newsletter of Humorous Writing

For April 18-24, 2019, 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. Luke here! I've got a non-prose humorous recommendation for you: Mrs. Murray's Menagerie, a production by The Mad Ones, playing at Ars Nova at Greenwich House through May 11th. It's thought-provoking, affecting, and also extremely funny. Go see it if you can!

What We Enjoyed This Week

When You're Looking for the Very Best by Evan Waite (The New Yorker) Friend of the Show Evan Waite premiered this piece at An Evening of Humorous Readings' anniversary show in March! And it's just as great on the page as it was read aloud. A sobering reminder that one should never miss a show if one can help it.

8 Conclusive Reasons Why, Logically, It Was Completely Fine For Me to Hook Up With My Ex by Megan Schwartz (The Belladonna) This has great specifics and also paints a hilarious portrait of the narrator.

Reading With... Jenny Odell by Jenny Odell (Shelf Awareness) Jenny Odell's writing is filled with interesting ideas and compelling observations. Come for the book recommendations, stay for the story about her childhood love of The American Medical Association Family Medical Guide.

Pain Don't Hurt: Essays on Road House by Sean T. Collins (Attention Deficit Disorderly) Sean T. Collins is currently engaged in an insane undertaking: He's writing one essay every day, for the entire year, on the Patrick Swayze movie Road House. Even if you've never seen Road House, you're sure to find something to like in at least one of these deepest of deep dives.
 

An Old Favorite

Letters From and to the Ford Motor Company by Marianne Moore (and the Ford Motor Company)  (Letters of Note)

Still Luke here: "Marianne Moore's Rejected Car Names" sounds like a McSweeney's piece you've definitely read, right? Wrong! It's a real thing that actually happened, and the results are better than anything you could invent. (Full disclosure: If this WERE a fictional piece, I would probably say that while I love the Ford Executive character, there's no need to do this in the epistolary form and also that you should get to the car names faster--but in the context of historical documents? It all works.) And once you're done reading this, why not check out some of Moore's poems? She's a Newsletter Favorite.
 

Updates From Your Hosts and Friends of the Show

Brian had a new piece up on the New Yorker yesterday. It's about how to navigate all the different streaming services out there. Which reminds us: if anyone would be willing to share their login info for "Dunlevy Medical Supplies Streaming Service" please send us an email! We really want to watch the new season of instructional videos about how to properly insert catheters.

For the insanely early birds among you, tickets are ALREADY available for the next performance of Luke's sketch team's Romantic Comedy Show. 5/30/19 at 9PM at the UCB Theatre in Hell's Kitchen! The show is gonna be running for the next few months, but that's no reason to wait. (And a big thank you to those of you who have already bought tix!)

Friend of the Show Emily Flake has a new book coming out called That Was Awkward: The Art and Etiquette of the Awkward Hug. It will be published in October, but you can preorder now!
 

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.