Dear Committee Members

Professor Jason Fitger’s work on his most recent novel is not progressing. Perhaps it is because he spends too much time teaching. Too much time reading the work of his students. Too much time bemoaning the decline of his department and the rise of Economics. Too much time writing letters of recommendation - LORs - for others. Indeed, his LORs are so numerous, overwritten, and full of his creative energy, that a collection of them might just make a novel in itself. Which is what we have here — the LORs of Professor Fitger over the course a single academic year. It is a year of debris. Building debris, since the Economics department’s office above those of the English department are being renovated. But also the debris of his show more marriage and other liaisons, and especially of his favourite protégé, Darren Browles, for whom Professor Fitger writes a series of LORs in hopes of finding funding for him to finish the novel on which he has embarked under Fitger’s tutelage.

The campus novel is usually comic and this is no exception. But anyone who has worked in the academy, especially on the humanities wing of a campus, will find the comic here tinged with the horrifically real. Battered seemingly from all sides, Professor Fitger fights a losing battle through his LORs, many of which rail ineffectually against the dying of the light (which may simply be due to faulty wiring in the departmental offices).

I do hope this was as much fun to write as it has been to read. And so I find it easy to recommend. Enjoy! show less

A favorite read of the year! I wish I could give this 6 stars, because it deserves them. Consisting entirely of letters of recommendation, we follow an English professor through his academic year. The result is insane, hilarious, and very unexpectedly, touching.

I laughed so hard reading this! Julie Schumacher, herself a professor, is such a good writer, and her word choices repeatedly slayed me. I loved the puzzle aspect of figuring out what’s happening, with each successive letter of recommendation giving us more clues to piece things together.

Dear Committee Members is perfect for anyone working in an academic environment who has been in a position where they have to write a million letters of recommendation, or for people who have show more dealt with frustrating red tape in their jobs that makes it difficult to get anything meaningful done. But even if you haven’t been in a position like that, I have a hard time imagining someone NOT enjoying this, because of how desperately funny it is.

This is one of those books that is definitely meant to be physically read, because of the letter format it utilizes. You won’t want to miss any of the details Shumacher includes, they are so worth it! show less

This is an epistolary novel consisting mostly of letters of recommendation written by an English professor who's really tired of writing letters of recommendation. Some of them are recommendations for people he desperately wants to succeed, others for people he actually has an extremely low opinion of. He slips in complaints about the English department's lack of funding and the way the building it's located in has become a dangerous construction site. He's passive-aggressive and snarky. He overshares. He offers us glimpses into his life, including his good and bad sides, and into the world of academics and aspiring novelists and English majors attempting to enter the workforce (the poor bastards).

It's a interesting book, in that for show more the most part it's a very quick, light, funny read -- I laughed out loud a little more than once -- but there's also an undercurrent of sadness that sneaks up on you slowly in a rather poignant sort of way. All of which works better, I think, than you'd really expect it to. show less

A little slight, a little gimmicky, Dear Committee Members is nevertheless an amusing read for anyone who's ever spent much time working in higher education, particularly in North America. This novella takes the form of a serious of recommendation letters—varying from the passive-aggressive to the aggressive-aggressive—by a creative writing professor on behalf of a series of students, alums, and colleagues. I took a kind of vicious, vicarious pleasure in reading the ongoing complaints about the year-long workplace renovations which are designed to improve the working conditions of the Economics department while the English department, sequestered in the basement, breathe in dust and asbestos and the smell from backed up toilets. The show more whole scenario was far too close to my own working situation, as a humanities faculty member whose asbestos-walled office is regularly rendered uninhabitable by diesel fumes from construction work. (Thankfully, though, the one time the sewage lines backed up last semester it wasn't my office that ended up with two inches of raw human sewage on the floor. Thanks for refusing to fund your public education systems for generations, Americans!)

Although by the end the narrative wants the reader to like the main character—Jay Fitger, a novelist whose career never quite took off and a professor at a Midwestern R2—but I had no sympathy for him. This is in part a testament to Julie Schumacher's skill in conjuring up the kind of pompous older male ass who infests most campuses, and in part because in real life I have had it with pretentious sexists. That means that the end of the novel tries for an emotional impact that just didn't land for me. show less

A jaded English professor at a mediocre Midwestern university writes a series of letters of recommendation — written for students both exemplary and atrocious, for colleagues both esteemed and detested, written to ex-wives, ex-lovers, ex-friends. Schumacher deftly captures the deplorable state of liberal-arts education at modern public universities that are increasingly being run on a "business model", with students as consumers and faculty as contract workers.

I have only written recommendation letters for some of my student employees who were applying for other jobs, but I could relate to some of Jay Fitger's exasperation with the process. Even when you can unreservedly recommend someone, it's difficult to write a reference that show more adequately conveys how you feel. And if you are ambivalent about the person who has asked for the recommendation, the problems multiply. I, of course, have never dared to resort to the sort of snide but witty sarcasm that the good professor employs, but it's a vicarious thrill to imagine having the freedom to do so.

I have no idea how this book would be received by someone outside of a university setting. I have read many a faculty recommendation letter in my capacity as a member of a scholarship application committee, and while none of them were quite as far from the bounds of propriety as the letters in this book, I could tell you stories:
* I have read recommendation letters that address the student by name in the first paragraph, and refer to them in subsequent paragraphs either by an entirely different name or by the wrong gender pronoun, making it clear that the faculty member is engaging in the old cut-and-paste maneuver.
* I have read recommendations that delicately dance around the fact that the faculty member clearly has no memory of the specific student he or she is recommending. (The dead giveaway here is when the first comment is a precise regurgitation of whatever they found written in their gradebook for that particular student rather than a specific memory of a student's work or class participation.)
* I have read recommendations that went on for so long and contained so much minute detail that only a second readthrough revealed that all the detail was not about the student for whom the recommendation was being written but rather whatever the faculty member's current research project happened to be (which the student in question may or may not have had anything to do with; you'd never know either way from the letter).

Fitger's letters are written over the course of an academic year. As the year progresses, we follow along with the English Department besiegement as building renovations (to create a more luxurious office space for the Department of Economics upstairs) create havoc and hazardous working conditions. Fitger writes a series of increasingly desperate letters trying to find funding for a student who he clearly considers to be the cream of his teaching crop. Other letters are in support of former students seeking work as, variously, RV park managers, data-entry clerks, and paintball facility workers.

What elevates this short novel above the gimmick is the way Schumacher gradually reveals the true personality lurking beneath Fitger's acerbic missives. The more he pretends to disdain his students, his university, and his career, the more clear it becomes that he is at heart a man who can't help being an idealist about the arts, humanities, and the value of a liberal arts education. I wouldn't want to be any of Jay Fitger's exes — wife, lover, or friend — but I understood and sympathized with him more than I expected by the time I read his final LOR. show less

Oh gosh, I LOVED it! Told all in the form of letters of recommendation, this one follows an English professor at a small liberal arts college for a year as he wades through advising students, negotiating (with varied success) his career and his relationships, and trying to survive his department colleagues (and their own brands of insanity), budget cuts and asbestos in his basement office.
So bitterly funny and so true-to-life. The writing is fantastic, and I'm impressed that Schumacher has that rare ability to draw a character who is a complete ass but you can't help love him just the same. Makes me remember the myriad reasons why I don't miss being a Humanities professor at a small, liberal arts college. Highly, HIGHLY recommended.

My show more limerick review:
There once was a professor named Jay
who wrote recommendations all night and day
his wives were all exes
academia sure perplexes
he's an ass you just have to love anyway. show less

For the second time in as many weeks, I have read large sections of a book aloud -- this time to anyone -- anyone lucky (?) enough to be nearby. This is the funniest book I have read in a long time. It was also cringe-inducing on several occasions, and surprisingly touching and poignant. This is a novel of letters -- all written by Jason Fitger, Professor of English and Creative writing at Payne University, most of which are letters of recommendation for various students and colleagues. By Jay Fitger's reckoning, he has "penned more than 1,300 letters of recommendation, many of them enthusiastic, some a cry of despair." His letters are passive-aggressive chefs d'oeuvre, communicating exactly what Fitger thinks of the petitioner, the show more business/position for which the petitioner is applying, and many other grievances about draconian cuts to the English department, petty academic hierarchy squabbles, and unresolved personal drama of his own making. To the reader appears a portrait of an oppressed academic, a deflated novelist, a relationship bungler (to the nth degree), a rapier wit, and a devoted advocate for his advisees and for unglamorous, non-flashy English departments. I loved it. show less