Dear Committee Members by Julie Schmacher

 

Jason Fitger is a tenured English professor at Payne University.  As such, he says what he thinks and doesn't care if the rest of the college likes him or not.  Fitger is teaching creative writing as the English department and other liberal arts departments are seeing budgets and positions cut.  Adjunct professors make up over half the faculty in his department while departments with wealthy graduates such as Business and Economics are given tons of money for research and travel and sumptuous surroundings.

Jay as he signs himself, claims to have written over 1200 letters of recommendation.  These are done for former students, other employees at the college and colleagues at other universities.  He never holds back.  If he barely remembers a student, he quickly says so.  He rambles on about what they wrote about and he considers most of his students stuck in writing about monsters and superheroes.  He questions why this student would be considered for various positions.  He tells other universities that his collogues are too good for their university.  He tells his superiors that the English department is dying on the vine, forced to work in a construction zone that is endangering their health.  He is sarcastic and surly, the kind of email one hesitates to open when seeing it in your queue.  

This is a delightful book.  The epistolary style doesn't always work and some readers dislike it, but in this novel it works wonderfully.  The reader slowly gets to understand Fitger and his frustrations.  While he is generally disparaging of most, he spends a lot of time trying to help his graduate assistants find work and help collogues who have fallen on hard times.  The writing is sprightly and sings on the page and the reader will find themselves laughing out loud.  Those readers in academia will read each page nodding their head at how aptly the author has captured the academic environment.  This book is recommended for readers of literary fiction.