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Best New Yorker Shouts & Murmurs

Shouts & Murmurs is The New Yorker's humor column, featuring comedic essays and satirical pieces. Since 1925, it has showcased wit from writers like S.J. Perelman, Woody Allen, and Jack Handey.

12 picks · 1928–2018

Top authors: George Saunders (3), Dorothy Parker (1), Alexander Woollcott (1)

My Year in Celebrity Deaths
Bruce Handy · January 8, 2018

How could Charles Manson and David Cassidy die within two days of each other? It’s as if fate were trying to erase my childhood.

Undecided
David Sedaris · October 27, 2008

SHOUTS AND MURMURS about undecided voters. As we move into the final weeks of the Presidential campaign, the focus shifts to the undecided voters. I look …

Ask the Optimist!
George Saunders · December 18, 2006

Reporting, Profiles, daily news, cultural coverage, podcasts, videos, and cartoons from The New Yorker.

“Borat”: the Memo
George Saunders · December 4, 2006

SHOUTS & MURMURS about a fictional memo regarding the Sacha Baron Cohen’s controversial comedy “Borat.” The writer suggests various ways to …

Pavlov’s Brother
Andy Borowitz · November 15, 2004

SHOUTS & MURMURS about Pavlov using his brother Nikolai for his famous ringing bell experiment. Nikolai insisted on caviar, because that was the only food…

A Survey of the Literature
George Saunders · September 22, 2003

SHOUTS & MURMURS about 'advances ' in the new 'academic discipline' of "Patriot Studies." The Patriotic Studies discipline concerns the …

Corrections
Calvin Trillin · February 5, 1990

Shouts & Murmurs by Calvin Trillin: Because of a computer error, the early editions on Wednesday misidentified the person arrested for a series of armed robberies of kitchen-supply stores on the West Side of Manhattan.

LGA–ORD
Ian Frazier · July 7, 1980

The playwright Samuel Beckett is your flight captain in this Shouts & Murmurs piece by Ian Frazier, from 1980.

I Cover Carter
George W. S. Trow · July 25, 1977

Parody of diary notes from reporter on the 1976 Democratic Convention, the Presidential campaign, the Inauguration, and the beginning of Carter's …

The Cliché Expert Testifies on the Campaign
Frank Sullivan · September 13, 1952

Frank Sullivan on the perennial clichés of political campaign speeches.

Reunion in Paris
Alexander Woollcott · July 30, 1932

An uncommon coincidence restores order to the universe in this Shouts & Murmurs story from 1932.

Just a Little One
Dorothy Parker · May 12, 1928

Dorothy Parker imagines a comic, catty, boozy date in a speakeasy, in this humor story from 1928.

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