Dear Committee Members

Dear Committee Members
Julie Schumacher

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.

Copyright (#ulink_7a4e54bf-17e3-5d92-8b86-16b99aa5340e)

The Friday Project An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)

This ebook first published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2014

Copyright © Julie Schumacher 2014

Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2014

Julie Schumacher asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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Source ISBN: 9780007586349

Ebook Edition © August 2014 ISBN: 9780007586356

Version: 2015-02-18

Dedication (#ulink_917a8b9b-4011-5164-8fc5-72df2af2cdcc)

To my students

Table of Contents

Cover (#u78e98ebb-f879-5e74-920e-4a27c9493648)

Title Page (#uca483721-b1ea-57e7-96df-365c77c7430e)

Copyright (#ua6c7fa78-5b04-50de-97cf-1c521c9c32a0)

Dedication (#u9e3b92ec-cd60-58bf-b443-e47b3b2a1073)

Dear Committee Members (#u343e4b36-fe82-5b51-b469-159a84fc3678)

Footnotes (#litres_trial_promo)

Acknowledgments (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

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September 3, 2009

Bentham Literary Residency Program

P.O. Box 1572

Bentham, ME 04976

Dear Committee Members,

Over the past twenty-odd years I’ve recommended god only knows how many talented candidates for the Bentham January residency—that enviable literary oasis in the woods south of Skowhegan: the solitude, the pristine cabins, the artistic camaraderie, and those exquisite hand-delivered satchels of apples and cheese … Well, you can scratch all prior nominees and pretenders from your mailing lists, because none is as provocative or as promising as Darren Browles.

Mr. Browles is my advisee; he’s taken two of my workshops, and his novel-in-progress, a retelling of Melville’s Bartleby (but in which the eponymous character is hired to keep the books at a brothel, circa 1960, just outside Las Vegas), is both tender satire and blistering adaptation/homage. In brief: this tour de force is witty, incisive, original, brutally sophisticated, erotic. You don’t need me to summarize it—you’ll have received his two opening chapters. My agent, Ken Doyle, is apprised of the project and is gnashing his pearly incisors in the hope of receiving the completed manuscript soon. Any additional perks or funding you can provide for Browles during the residency will be appreciated; he’s likely to be wooed by editors all over New York.

A personal aside: I was very sorry to hear of Mike’s death. He was a terrific director, and I always enjoyed talking to him in the row of blue rocking chairs out on the porch during the occasions (too rare!) when I was able to escape my academic duties here in the Midwest and accept his invitations to Bentham. He’ll be terribly hard to replace. Whoever tries to step into them will find he wore sizeable, generous shoes.

In sadness but looking to the future,

Jason T. Fitger

Professor of Creative Writing and English

Department of English

Payne University

September 4, 2009

Theodore Boti, Chair

Department of English

Dear Ted,

Your memo of August 30 requests that we on the English faculty recommend some luckless colleague for the position of director of graduate studies. (You may have been surprised to find this position vacant upon your assumption of the chairship last month—if so, trust me, you will encounter many such surprises here.)

A quick aside, Ted: god knows what enticements were employed during the heat of summer to persuade you—a sociologist!—to accept the position of chair in a department not your own, an academic unit whose reputation for eccentricity and discord has inspired the upper echelon to punish us by withholding favors as if from a six-year-old at a birthday party: No raises or research funds for you, you ungovernable rascals! And no fudge before dinner! Perhaps, as the subject of a sociological study, you will find the problem of our dwindling status intriguing.

To the matter at hand: though English has traditionally been a largish department, you will find there are very few viable candidates capable of assuming the mantle of DGS. In fact, if I were a betting man, I’d wager that only 10 percent of the English instruction list will answer your call for nominations. Why? First, because more than a third of our faculty now consists of temporary (adjunct) instructors who creep into the building under cover of darkness to teach their graveyard shifts of freshman comp; they are not eligible to vote or to serve. Second, because the remaining two-thirds of the faculty, bearing the scars of disenfranchisement and long-term abuse, are busy tending to personal grudges like scraps of carrion on which they gnaw in the gloom of their offices. Long story short: your options aren’t pretty.

After subtracting the names of those who are on leave or close to retirement, and those already serving in the killing fields of administration, you will probably be forced to choose between Franklin Kentrell (NO: spend five consecutive minutes with him and you will understand why); Jennifer Brown-Wilson (a whipping girl for the theory faction—already terrorized, she will decline); Albert Tyne (under no circumstances should you enter his office without several days’ warning—more on this later); Donna Lovejoy (poor overworked creature—I hereby nominate her [anonymously please] with this letter); and me. You’ll soon find that I make myself unpleasant enough to be safe from nomination.

Enfin: Lovejoy will sag under this additional burden, but she will perform.