When they were putting together the shortlist for this year’s Thurber Prize for American Humor, the organizers just couldn’t narrow it down to the usual three candidates—so there’s going to be four authors competing for the $5,000 prize, which will be awarded in a ceremony at the Algonquin Hotel in October. They are:
- Sloane Crosley, I Was Told There’d Be Cake
- Ian Frazier, Lamentations of the Father
- Don Lee, Wrack & Ruin
- Laurie Notaro, The Idiot Girl and the Flaming Tantrum of Death
Previous winners of the Thurber Prize include (in reverse chronological order) Larry Doyle, Joe Keenan, Alan Zweibel, and assorted other funnymen stretching back to… Ian Frazier’s Coyote vs. Acme in 1997.
(Note: We use the term “funnymen” strictly as a matter of historical accuracy, and not as an endorsement of, say, Christopher Hitchens‘s or Jerry Lewis‘s positions on women and comedy. It’s worth noting that roughly one-quarter of the nominees in the last four years—the only years for which we found full shortlists—have been women; furthermore, the 1999 and 2005 prizes went to the writing staff of The Onion and The Daily Show, respectively, and we assume neither was completely male in its makeup. )