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Review

A Best Book of the Year:  NPR and Boston GlobePraise for Dear Committee Members:"After years of teaching, I write a lot of recommendation letters, and Schumacher's parodies sound alarmingly close to the real thing." —Claire Messud, The Guardian “A hilarious academic novel that'll send you laughing (albeit ruefully) back into the trenches of the classroom. . . . [A] mordant minor masterpiece. . . . Like the best works of farce, academic or otherwise, Dear Committee Members deftly mixes comedy with social criticism and righteous outrage. By the end, you may well find yourself laughing so hard it hurts.” —Maureen Corrigan, NPR“If you like academic satires, you’ll love this novel, which is written as a series of recommendation letters by a cranky, long-suffering English professor. Like Richard Russo’s Straight Man this book has a lot to say about the humanities in American colleges and universities. It’s very funny and also moving.” —Tom Perrotta "In My Library", New York Post“For that reason, I entreat you, now that you’ve reviewed my précis, to read Ms. Schumacher’s book. It is easily consumed in small pieces, like a tray of sweets and savories. It is ideal for passing the time between innings of a baseball game, waiting for a long red light to change, or sitting in a warm bath. As for Jason Fitger, I implore you to take a leap of faith and offer him admission to your next available residency. The worlds of business and academia will be poorer for lack of his letters, but perhaps, with your support, he can find a way to channel his energy and inventiveness into a new novel—one that will hopefully be as entertaining and as sharply written as Julie Schumacher’s Dear Committee Members.” —Jon Michaud, The New Yorker“A smart-as-hell, fun-as-heck novel composed entirely of recommendation letters. . . . Beyond the moribund state of academia, Schumacher touches on more universal themes about growing old and facing failure: not necessarily the dramatic failure of a batter striking out with two on and two out in the  bottom of the ninth, but the quieter failure that accrues over time, until we are finally forced to admit that we are not who we wanted to become.” —Alexander Nazaryan, Newsweek“The book is hilarious. . . . [Schumacher's] scabrous book reminds me of Sam Lipsyte's Home Land, Richard Russo's Straight Man and Jincy Willett's Winner of the National Book Award. If you didn't find those books funny, well, that means you're a corpse. But you're also, apparently, a corpse who reads, so there's hope for you yet. You should read Dear Committee Members; maybe it will bring you back to life.” —Brock Clarke, The New York Times Book Review“Bitterly hilarious. If you are looking for a witty, original cri de coeur over the oft-lamented decline of the humanities, I urgently recommend this novel.” —Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal“Julie Schumacher’s Dear Committee Members is the best sort of novel: the laugh-out-loud page-turner that also bleeds and breathes, the satire you want to quote to friends, the book that lets you in on the joke so you can better see the truth of the world.” —The Rumpus“A funny and lacerating novel of academia written in the form of letters of recommendation. . .  .Dear Committee Members isn’t really an academic novel, or even an academic satire. It’s a sincere exploration of the depths and breadths of human selfishness, and the contemporary American academy is simply the backdrop. . . . So in the end, it is exactly Fitger’s selfishness that destructs, rather than his life—and although his semi-redemption may not redeem the rank carcass of academic culture that continues to fester around him, it’s more than enough to recommend this mischievous novel.” —Slate“[A] richly sardonic epistolary volume.” —San Francisco Chronicle “The beauty of Dear Committee Members is that Fitger is not just an eloquent professor with a poison pen. He’s previously alienated quite a few of the people whose favor he attempts to curry here, his ex-wife and ex-girlfriend included, and he has a habit of compounding the insults anew with each communication. But for all his corrosiveness, he’s actually one of the good guys: a generous defender of gifted students, underappreciated colleagues, and fine scholarship. He’s a romantic, really, a champion of academia. And he does love being a writer, 'which, despite its horrors, is possibly one of the few sorts of lives worth living at all.'”  —The Boston Globe “Each letter Fitger writes is imbued with the wisdom and comic chops that make Schumacher a wonderfully entertaining writer. Let this review serve as an LOR for Dear Committee Members. If there’s one thing new grads need in addition to the congratulatory check or gift card, it’s a few good laughs before reality sets in.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune“If Fitger wrote only sarcastic letters, that would be one thing, but in this short tome a man appears between the zingers... Be sure to tag this book with 'for fans of David Foster Wallace.'” —Milwaukee Journal Sentinel“Lest you conclude I am merely impressed by a humorous, well-handled gimmick, let me assure you that Ms. Schumacher brilliantly lays bare the tale of Fitger’s stalled career, failed love life, and quixotic championing of a student and his unfinished novel. “Dear Committee Members” ends with a blend of sadness and quiet hope that I did not anticipate, but found wholly satisfying.  In short, I recommend Dear Committee Members without hesitation or caveat.” —The Iowa Gazette“A hilarious and surprisingly poignant pleasure to read.” —Houston Chronicle“Schumacher’s satire of the petty rivalries, byzantine hierarchies and committee meetings is spot on—scathing and laugh-out-loud funny.”  —The Wichita Eagle“As back-to-school entertainment, Dear Committee Members hits the spot." —Santa Fe New Mexican“[A] very funny epistolary novel composed of recommendation letters. . . . It’s an unusual form for comedy, but it works. Truth is stranger than fiction in this acid satire of the academic doldrums.” —Kirkus Reviews“Schumacher’s warm satire of the peculiarities of the Ivory Tower will be recognizable to anyone who has encountered the bureaucracy and internal politics of higher education.” —Booklist“A creative writing professor herself, Schumacher crafts a suitably verbose but sympathetic voice for Fitger, a man who exudes both humor and heart.” —Publishers Weekly“The letters have many funny touches, which carry the novel. The best touches, though, have to do with students. More than a third of the letters recommend students for jobs, and one chord that runs throughout is that they face dubious prospects. . . . It's not a good time to be an English major, and Fitger's concern for his students redeems his otherwise questionably epistolary etiquette.” —Chronicle of Higher Education “Schumacher revitalizes an under—or maybe just unappreciated art form. . . . [Her] tone is warm and her insight into academia incisive.” —Bookish.com“A clever epistolary send-up of academic logrolling.” —Shelf Awareness“Let’s not look at this as an epistolary novel about the academic world, but as a laying out of the Tarot cards of our society’s past and future. It’s that indicative. That important. In the end, the future looks not quite so grim, but my reading is that like so many novels that investigate independence and fierce belief (with Melville in the lead), we have to read between the lines, infer, assume, and hope that the American virtues of compassion, empathy, and even wild projection will continue. This is a funny, very sad, disarming novel. My pitch to Hollywood would be: David Markson’s Wittgenstein’s Mistress meets Padgett Powell’s The Interrogative Mood but—and here I’m just another expendable would-be savior, like Ms. Schumacher’s character Jay Fitger—nobody would know what I was talking about. My hat’s off to the author of this flawlessly written, highwire act of a book. Hollywood be damned.” —Ann Beattie, author of Chilly Scenes of Winter and The New Yorker Stories“Dear Committee Members is a brilliant book that, in my head, sits comfortably on my prized shelf of academic novels, right between Lucky Jim and Pictures from an Institution. But it’s funnier than either, and more wrenching in the end. The conceit of a novel told in letters of reference is inspired, and it is killingly funny because it’s all so killingly true. Truth walks here in the strangest of costumes, and in part because of its guises, we can face it, frown, laugh, cry. I’ve never lost an afternoon so happily.” —Jay Parini, author of The Last Station and The Passages of H.M. “Julie Schumacher has perfectly rendered a portrait of the artist not as a young man but as the beleaguered tenured has-been surly lovable anachronistic man he's become. At once satire and tribute, the book alludes to a time in America's past both in literature and academia, and the passage of that heady heyday is hilariously—and bittersweetly—displayed in this genius borrowed form. Never have letters of recommendation made me happier to encounter them.”  —Antonya Nelson, author of Funny Once: Stories and Bound

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About the Author

Julie Schumacher grew up in Wilmington, Delaware, and graduated from Oberlin College and Cornell University. Her first novel, The Body Is Water, was published by Soho Press in 1995 and was an ALA Notable Book of the Year and a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award. Her other books include a short story collection, An Explanation for Chaos, and five books for younger readers. She lives in St. Paul and is a faculty member in the Creative Writing Program and the Department of English at the University of Minnesota. Visit her on the web at julieschumacher.com.

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Product details

Paperback: 192 pages

Publisher: Anchor; Reprint edition (June 23, 2015)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 0345807332

ISBN-13: 978-0345807335

Product Dimensions:

5.2 x 0.6 x 8 inches

Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)

Average Customer Review:

4.4 out of 5 stars

605 customer reviews

Amazon Best Sellers Rank:

#38,443 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

This book is a funny and delightful epistolary novel, comprising predominately letters of recommendation from an English professor. If you have ever worked in academia, studied in a university setting, or asked for a letter of recommendation, then this novel will resonate with you. Those in academia will especially appreciate the layers of humor.Jason Fitger is a professor of Literature and Creative Writing at Payne University, a small struggling college in the Midwest. Nothing in his life is going right. He had early success with a novel written while he was in a graduate seminar. Unfortunately, the novel was based on his life and love life as a graduate student. Subsequent novels, also autobiographical of his love life, did not do as well. His ex-wife teaches at the same university and the woman he had an affair with is also employed there. Another ex heads up a writer’s retreat. He is trying to champion the novel of one of his graduate students, but the student’s funding has been cut and he is floundering. The chair of the English Department is a sociologist. Worse yet, the Economics Department, is having a complete renovation. They reside in the same building as the English Department. The Econ profs are evacuated while the English profs are left to deal with the toxic air and construction noise. In the midst of all this, Professor Fitger writes various letters of recommendation for past and present students, letters of complaint to the university, and letters of pining and regret to his ex-lovers.This book is laugh out loud and snort out loud funny. It will really resonate with university professors. Professor Fitger is cutting and sarcastic, but totally nails university life and the inherent politics. For all his bluster and snark, Professor Fitger remains a dedicated and thoughtful teacher. This book is well-written. It is smart and funny. It is also short and can be read in one day. I will be recommending this to my friends who teach at the university level.

I became aware of this book from a review in "The Chronicle of Higher Education," which recommended it, but with the warnings that (a) the main character is a cliché, drawn from countless academic novels, of the cranky male dinosaur prof with women troubles; and (b) the novel's satire is unsupported by a meaningful vision for academe, its jokes cheapened by not being at the service of a deeper purpose.Neither of these criticisms fit my experience of this book, which chronicles a year in the life of English professor Jason Fitger through his correspondence, mostly letters of recommendations (LORs, as he refers to them). Indeed our hero is a type, recognizable both from literature and from life, of the cantankerous, retrograde English prof who clings to his oldfangled ways even as they plunge him into certain obsolescence. But those of us who have struggled with the online forms on which LORs must currently be submitted will find a freshness to the predicaments described here: e.g., to the way that Fitger's answers to the cookie-cutter questions are cut off by the forms, to his refusal to check the boxes that require him to rank students by percentages, and ultimately to his insistence on sending them via "the picturesque blue mailbox on the corner, opening its creaking rectangular metal mouth, and dropping the envelope within." This kind of comedy, which Schumacher handles with aplomb, simply would not work with a different, updated protagonist.Also, despite his superannuated ways, Fitger, as it turns out, has not only a soul but a surprisingly sturdy ability to work the system, which together amount to a vision that easily sustains the satire in this novel (even if it does at times border on the sentimental). Threaded throughout the book are his indefatigable efforts to support a talented but tormented student (Darren Browles), his vain hopes of reuniting with his estranged wife (who learns of his infidelity through an unfortunate "reply all" mishap), and his growing, grudging respect for the sociologist "appointed by the university warlords to rule our asylum [the English Dept.] until the inmates exhibit greater pliability and calm." These threads are tied together in a denouement that, while hardly wildly dramatic, exhibits that Fitger is true to his principles, ready to make sacrifices, and will persevere in the face of whatever hardship life throws his way.As an erstwhile member myself of an English Dept., I also found highly satisfying and quite hilarious the many jabs this book takes at the lavish treatment received by the Economics Dept., which resides in the same building as English just upstairs and is undergoing renovation throughout the year of this epistolary narrative. That renovation accelerates the indignities forced upon the literature faculty by poisoning them with venomous fumes, demolishing the fax machine when a portion of the ceiling collapses almost decapitating the English Department's student assistant, and leaching slick and noxious liquids onto the floor of the men's room which abuts Fitger's office. "But never mind: I'm sure our foreshortened life spans will be made worthwhile on the day when the economists in their jewel-encrusted palanquins, are reinstalled in their palazzo over our heads."These are indeed hard times for the humanities. While this novel lacks the heft to qualify as any kind of masterpiece, even a comic one, and while it will probably (hopefully!) feel dated in a relatively short time, it feels really good to be able laugh along with Julie Schumacher and Jason Fitger at the absurdity of the moment in which we find ourselves now.

I bought this after hearing an interview with the author on NPR. I was so impressed with the interview that I decided to read one of her books. I was a bit disappointed; I have never liked epistolary novels (I did like the Sorrows of Young Werther, but that's an exception), so I took a risk on this one. It is mildly amusing and entertaining. Many times I have found myself wanting to write the kind of recommendations found in this book, so I did smile now and then, but found the premise not sustainable and the structure numbingly repetitive. Still, I am mulling over buying her second book, just out, but school is beginning; I guess I will have to wait on that one until I get all these letters of recommendation written. As they say in the LOR business: I recommend this book with reservations and with mild enthusiasm. If you have any career experience in secondary education or college, the issues in this book will sound vaguely and amusingly familiar.

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