Dear Committee Members

This epistolary novel by Julie Schumacher was recommended by friend Anne Zald, who is still working in the trenches (i.e., the library) at Northwestern. Having also spent much of my life in academia, this book was bittersweet and funny because there was so much truth embedded in the sarcasm. I am reminded of another book told by a disgruntled English professor protagonist, Straight Man by Richard Russo, which also occasionally made me laugh out loud. Told through a series of letters spanning one year (2009-2010), we learn of the travails endured by creative writing professor Jason (Jay) Fitger, who is besieged by not only current but also long-ago-graduated students for letters of recommendation to every imaginable type of job. Probably believable for English majors to consider working in a store that sells nuts (the edible kind). Payne University (all puns no doubt intended) has been slashing the English department, as Fitger sees it, to enhance the the prima donnas in the Economics department, one floor up. No new faculty, no tech support, larger classes, hiring an acting dean from another department...the insults are endless. It is a wonder that Fitger ever made full professor, in spite of publishing four books, given his propensity for pissing people off. Both his ex-wife and his ex-lover still work at the university and won't even let him in their respective office doors; but he's also alienated his literary agent, the head of writing programs elsewhere, and his fellow faculty members. He does seem to be endlessly accommodating of his students (if not always flattering in his letters of recommendation) and has especially taken on the case of one Darren Browles, who has lost his fellowship and desperately needs another source of income in order to finish writing his book. Fitger beseeches everyone, but to no avail. People we come to know only as the subject of Fitger's letters either move on with their lives, or they don't, and Fitger, in the end, is elected chair of the English department--a suitable punishment. Numerous laudatory reviews: Kirkus, The New York Times, Slate, Newsweek, NPR, and so many more....
As Newsweek notes, this book is worthy of a letter of recommendation!