Dear committee members : a novel

Title:

Author:

Schumacher, Julie, 1958- author.

Personal Author:

Schumacher, Julie, 1958- author.

ISBN:

9780345807335

Edition:

First Anchor books edition.

Physical Description:

180 pages ; 21 cm

General Note:

"Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Doubleday, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York"--Title page verso.

Abstract:

Jason Fitger is a beleaguered professor of creative writing and literature at Payne University, a small and not very distinguished liberal arts college in the Midwest. His once-promising writing career is in the doldrums, as is his romantic life, in part as the result of his unwise use of his private affairs for his novels. His life, a tale of woe, is revealed in a series of hilarious letters of recommendation that Fitger is endlessly called upon by his students and colleagues to produce, each one of which is a small masterpiece of high dudgeon, low spirits, and passive-aggressive strategies.--From publisher description.

Subject Term:

Employment references -- Fiction.

Letters -- Fiction.

College teachers -- Fiction.

Genre:

Epistolary fiction.

Humorous fiction.

Summary:

Holds:

Available:*

Library	Material Type	Shelf Number	Status
Searching... East End	Book	FICTION SCHUMAC	Searching... Unknown
Searching... West End	Book	FICTION SCHUMAC	Searching... Unknown

Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

"Like Richard Russo's Straight Man this book has a lot to say about the humanities in American colleges and universities.... Very funny and also moving." --Tom Perrotta, New York Post

A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: NPR and Boston Globe

Finally a novel that puts the "pissed" back into "epistolary."

Jason Fitger is a beleaguered professor of creative writing and literature at Payne University, a small and not very distinguished liberal arts college in the midwest. His department is facing draconian cuts and squalid quarters, while one floor above them the Economics Department is getting lavishly remodeled offices. His once-promising writing career is in the doldrums, as is his romantic life, in part as the result of his unwise use of his private affairs for his novels. His star (he thinks) student can't catch a break with his brilliant (he thinks) work Accountant in a Bordello, based on Melville's Bartleby.

In short, his life is a tale of woe, and the vehicle this droll and inventive novel uses to tell that tale is a series of hilarious letters of recommendation that Fitger is endlessly called upon by his students and colleagues to produce, each one of which is a small masterpiece of high dudgeon, low spirits, and passive-aggressive strategies. We recommend Dear Committee Members to you in the strongest possible terms.

Don't miss Julie Schumacher's new novel, The English Experience, coming soon.

Reviews (1)

Kirkus Review

A disgruntled English professor pours out his hopes, affections and frustrations in an interconnected series of recommendation letters.In "The Gristmill of Praise," a recent article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Schumacher (Creative Writing/University of Minnesota; The Unbearable Book Club for Unsinkable Girls, 2012, etc.) revealed that in a single year, she receives more than 1,600 letters of recommendation and writes 50 to 100 of her own. This onslaught of praise inspired her to write a very funny epistolary novel composed of recommendation letters written by a caustic, frustrated and cautiously hopeful English professor named Jason Fitger. He's a former literary wunderkind who parodied his own writing teacher in a successful first novel called Stain 20 years ago and has since parlayed three unsuccessful follow-ups into a tenured position at a small liberal arts college. Over the course of 100 letters, we learn that waste water is leaking into Fitger's office from the construction of a glorious new economics center above the English department; that he's engaged in a losing battle of office politics with the administration; that he has a cordial but cold relationship with his ex-wife over in the law school; and that he's generally kind to most of his students, even the ones who are moving on from college to the local liquor store. His writing, meanwhile, is tremendously florid and mostly cynical: "Mr. Duffy Napp has just transmitted a nine-word email asking that I immediately send a letter of reference to your firm on his behalf; his request has summoned from the basement of my heart a star-spangled constellation of joy, so eager am I to see Mr. Napp well established at Maladin IT." Most of all, we learn that the failed novelist still has hope for the futureif not for himself, then for one of his students, Darren Browles, whom he's mentoring through a difficult first novel. It's an unusual form for comedy, but it works.Truth is stranger than fiction in this acid satire of the academic doldrums. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.