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    Dear Committee Members: A Novel
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    Dear Committee Members: A Novel
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    Dear Committee Members: A Novel
    Audiobook3 hours

    Dear Committee Members: A Novel

    Written by Julie Schumacher

    Narrated by Robertson Dean

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    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.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateAug 19, 2014
    ISBN9780553398670
    Unavailable
    Dear Committee Members: A Novel
    Author

    Julie Schumacher

    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 and the Minnesota Book Award. 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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    Reviews for Dear Committee Members

    4/5

    266 ratings45 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Funny, sweet, genuinely moving. For those of us who have worked in higher ed in a liberal arts institution it is also painfully authentic. A very short but delightful listen. Great reader on the audiobook.
    • 5/5
      A hysterical, witty epistolary novel written entirely in letters of recommendation, Dear Committee Members artfully satirizes the interpolitics of academia and the often unhinged, out-of-touch faculty who work there.

      Jay Fitger, the author of the letters, is a creative writing faculty member at a mid-sized, mid-range university in the Midwest. A minor success with a "tell-all", salacious debut novel, he never achieved the same success with subsequent efforts, and his attempts to recreate the success of the first by unwisely dipping into his personal affairs cost him a marriage. He is in many ways the prototypical academic: self-important, pretentious, and out of touch with reality and the world outside of higher learning.

      The thread of a plot throughout the novel is his many unsuccessful attempts to find funding for his protege, a young man who has written a novel based around Bartelby the Scrivener, with the unlikely title, Accountant in a Bordello. These increasingly desperate attempts are interspersed with run-of-the-mill students seeking a letter of recommendation; the law school student letter alone is enough to keep you in hysterics.

      Were the novel simply a funny satire, it would be enough, but Julie Schumacher manages what should be impossible within the given format. Halfway through the novel, the protagonist Jay's motivations become clear, and he gains a sort of humanity that makes him more than the bitter, dryly witty letters originally painted him to be. Though he mocks the lavish spending bestowed upon the economists, he truly fears for the fate of English and the humanities as their funding is cut more and more to help fund sports and sciences; his pretentious novels are a way to poke fun at the character, but give way to a quiet musing of a man who wakes up to realize he is not who he meant to be.

      Dear Committee Members is a rare gem that will keep you rolling in the aisles, then hit you with a gutpunch at the end.
    • 4/5
      A quick and entertaining read. I love epistolary fiction and the "letter of recommendation" format of this book was very funny. I'm sure professors really are asked to write letters of recommendation for people they barely know. Prof. Fitger has turned it into an art.
    • 4/5
      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 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.
    • 3/5
      I was too disgusted with the character of Professor Jason Fitger to find most of his letters humorous. He seemed insecure and conceited. Maybe also I'm tired of the constant complaints of how shabbily non-STEM departments are treated.
    • 5/5
      This is a funny and addictive little novel, written as a series of recommendation letters from a crusty (but fairly likeable) English professor. It's very short. Just read it.
    • 4/5
      Funny and accurate! A fun, quick read.
    • 3/5
      2.5 stars might be a big generous, honestly. J does much complaining about students who don't understand satire these days, but does he? Does Schumacher? It's not enough just to be over the top and obnoxious, satire needs to actually make a point. The academy is broken? The old guard feels lost in the age of technology and bureaucracy? Maybe, but I don't feel this novel achieves much through it's exploration of these concepts. Dear Committee members is exactly what the blurb makes it sound like, but not it a good way. The framing mechanism for the story doesn't play as well as I hoped it would. J is wholly unlikable. And while I can sometimes appreciate an unlikable protagonist, there is nothing else going on with him or his life that makes me want to spend almost 200 pages in his head. My lack of connection with J and his lack of connection with everything and everyone else around him made me absolutely not care about the end, and the emotional impact that it had on J.Quick read, takes about 3-4 hours, although your time is probably better spent elsewhere.
    • 4/5
      At turns funny and effecting, this novel is told in a series of letters of recommendation written by a professor at a university. I admire Schumacher immensely for hitting the tone and atmosphere of academia so well and for the way she hits both the satire and the moments of real emotion. I did get maaaybe a little done with the premise before it was over, but not so much that it particularly detracted from my enjoyment of the book.
    • 4/5
      Jay is a beleaguered English professor at a liberal arts college. Between budget cuts, building renovations, and the myriad letters of recommendation he is asked to write, his correspondence makes for interesting reading. Especially since he has an ex-wife and a couple of ex-girlfriends that he still has to interact with in a professional capacity...This book was at times funny, at times touching. I picked it up because it's been making the rounds among my friends, and I'm glad I did.
    • 4/5
      A funny, ambitious epistolary novel that doesn't quite stick the landing.
    • 3/5
      This was my first book for Book Riot's 2019 challenge: read an epistolary novel. I really liked how the author created a story from one person writing various letters of recommendation. I laughed out loud many times, as the faculty member's letters use high diction and are pointedly honest. With the final letters of the book, the story turns on a dime and it was mildly confusing why the book would end as it did.

      But that's one minor quibble with what was otherwise a really enjoyable read, as well as a nice reminder that my erstwhile dream of teaching college would've come with plenty of tasks that likely would've ended with me writing letters similar to the ones in this book. Also, the descriptions of where the English department offices were? Totally spot-on to where my grad school compatriots and I were holed up for offices.
    • 5/5
      This is hilarious. Letters of recommendation from one beleaguered English professor. Seriously, it's very clever and a real vocabulary lesson. (Thank you, Kindle, for the dictionary feature.) It's a delightful read.
    • 3/5
      I enjoyed this and the epistolary format was fun, but I wish the main character had been...nicer, I suppose. This doesn't reach the heights of Jane Smiley's Moo or Kingsley Amis' Lucky Jim, but it's a pretty decent satire of today's university.
    • 4/5
      It made me laugh, which was just what I needed.
    • 4/5
      A painful, funny, painfully funny epistolary novel about the dark secrets of academia and human failings. I cringed...and I laughed. Well worth it.
    • 4/5
      scathing humor. Has received tons accolades from publishers and librarians alike, for good reason.
    • 4/5
      begins funny - becomes tedious - compare w Jane Smiley's MOO and you'll see
    • 5/5
      If you don't like your novels in epistolary form, skip right past this one - it's a series of letters only from the MC, written over the course of a year, so no dialogue. If you do like the narrative form, find dry wit and sarcasm hilarious, and have ever spent any amount of time in a university, I recommend this one. It took me a few dozen pages to work out who the main characters are, but the biting humour was worth it. A bonus half star for surprising me; I spent 3/4 of the book trying to decide if Jason Fitger was more of a man-child, a pompous ass, or a passionate and compassionate advocate for his students. I wasn't expecting much more depth from the book that what I'd gotten so far. Then the last 25% gave me pause because at the end Schumacher showed me his humanity and left me feeling like someone snuck kale into my berry smoothie. A quick, hilarious read with a little something to tug at you in the end.
    • 4/5
      This book is about the sort of self absorbed, womanizing, academic misanthrope most of us have known and hopefully few of us have become entangled with. He's fun to read about, as long as you're not asking him for a letter of recommendation of which he writes many. Unfortunately his LOR, no matter what the intention, are usually about himself and his sarcastic views of the world including the disrespect shown to the liberal arts in his university and the world.
    • 4/5
      We learn about the main character through his letters of recommendation - whether for his colleagues, old friends, or students, the reader often learns more about the protagonist than the people for whom he is writing the letters. It is a humorous romp through the life of an academic - one who sits in a department that is not greatly valued at his institution. Yet he is fighting to make people aware that literature and the art of writing still matter - or should matter. Mostly I laughed, but this book is touching and beautifully written, too. Highly recommended for anyone in or around academics and those who want to have a chuckle.
    • 3/5
      This is a short, fast read; I read it in one evening. It a wry satire about academic life and politics told in a series of letters of recommendation from a professor of English and Literature at a small budget strapped college. Some concern colleagues who are seeking promotions or better jobs elsewhere, but many are for students seeking employment or placement in graduate programs. The professor inserts all sorts of material not usually found in such letters, including details of his personal relationships with the receiver or the recommendee, complaints about the physical condition of the building that houses his department, and gossip about mutual acquaintances. It is an enjoyable read; witty and fun but basically a 150 page joke stretched into 180 pages. The copy I read was from my local public library.
    • 3/5
      An amusing short novel in the form of letters of recommendation, from an curmudgeonly English professor at a small university in an imploding department. Most of the jibes are standard academic fair -- the shrinking budgets and poor housing humanities departments are subject to, the jobs many English majors find themselves applying to, extra-marital affairs with other faculty members. A darker thread is added to give a little weight to the tale, but this remains more bemusement than tragedy. For those not in academia, I'd like to point out that one of the early letters, often excerpted, giving the new chair advice on who to select as the departmental director of graduate studies, is dead-on, and perfect in its selection of departmental role to focus on.
    • 4/5
      A very amusing look at aspects of academic life through the eyes of Jason T. Fitger, Professor of Creative Writing and English. His creative writing skills are much in evidence as he is regularly required to write references for students, sometimes students with little or no talents, or almost unknown to him due to poor attendance. He manages to intersperse references with mild complaints about the building work that is going on around him for a better funded university department.It is clear that his own department is short of funding, and that he is, or feels that he is, regarded as something of an irrelevance in the university. Nothing is helped by his two exes, recipients of some of his references, and less than inclined to take on anyone who his is genuinely putting forward. He puts a lot of effort into attempting to find a position for Darren Browles, a penniless student whose funding has been cut. Jason feels that Darren's part written novel has enough promise to put his department back on the map, should he ever manage to finish it.This was a delightful read, a real breath of fresh air, and it had me laughing out loud.
    • 4/5
      A quick read full of wit and humor, Jason Fitger is a writing professor at a school that seems to want to remove anything that isn't technology based. The novel is epistolary: the story strictly told through letters of recommendation that seems to be Fitger's only purpose in life. Fitger himself admits he doesn't have a chance to work on his own writing. Fitger's main goal seems to push one student to succeed through these LORs: a student writing a novel reimagining Herman Melville's 'Bartleby' (a very memorable book in its own way). Fitger doesn't seem to be the most likeable person, telling it like it is most of the time and it seems he has offended most of the people he is directing the letters to. Without the replies to Fitger's letters included in this book, Fitger does seem to have a lonely life as the book leaves the feeling that Fitger reaches out and communicates solely through these letters. A novel in letters wouldn't seem to appeal widely, but I was surprised at how interesting LORs could be, all because of Schumacher's funny and clever writing. It would be very easy for a less capable writer to make a book like this miserable to slog through, but I will be seeking out Schumacher's writing in the future.
    • 5/5
      Funniest book of the 2014 and nothing coming out later will beat it!I love epistolary (told in letters, email, etc) storytelling and this is just completely perfect. An English professor at a second rate college spends most of his time writing letters of recommendation for his second rate students and the fourth rate places of unemployment they need to weather the recession.Jason Fitzger is a bit of a jerk (especially with women), but he's our jerk and we're rooting for him. His campus home is being renovated so that the Econ professors, Gods of Olympus, may ascend to their heavenly thrones.Anything else would spoil, but there is a true heart beating beneath the snark and the hilarity. This book is perfect.
    • 5/5
      Thanks to Goodreads First Reads and the publisher for a copy of the book for my honest review. What a fun read! Don't let that fool you, though. Dear Committee Members hits the nail on the head with what is oh so wrong about the current state of academia, especially the humanities. From funding problems to the increasing slave labor of adjuncts in favor of tenure-track faculty with benefits, from ridiculous restructuring of departments to age-old academic feuds, Professor Fitger touches upon all the main issues with a cunning sense of humor and a flare for exquisitely convoluted letters of recommendation (LORs, as he calls them, after having penned over 1,500, all neatly organized, he claims). The letters are a delight to read from beginning to end, where Professor Fitger reveals all without restraint, giving the impression of an old, bumbling idiot and a calculating intellectual at the same time. The hilarity of the events he sets in motion by recommending a female student, whose writing he finds unappealing, and who he finds has bullied him into writing recommendations for her, is only matched by the desperation in his letters about another (male) student he tries to secure funding for, so that the budding writer can finish his first novel. Julie Schumacher captures the very atmosphere of academia that is at once maddening and hilarious. In the end, just like many things about academia, one wants to laugh and cry, not knowing which one should come first. A great read for all, Dear Committee Members should be a fast hit with anyone who has ever hung out with those German department grad students who only wear black, which makes them look even skinnier than they already are, and smoke (cigarettes) outside the building between two 3-hour seminars discussing Kant and Hegel, never once wondering why the fuck they are not in Philosophy instead, anyone who has ever dated a grad student or postdoc or adjunct professor, or anyone who has had the good misfortune of being the spouse of a tenure-track junior faculty member... For those who have survived the academic disaster, some parts may be too painful, though gracefully written.As with all things, life goes on, and academia limps along. Before you know it, it is a new academic year, a new DGS, a new department chair, and more idiots who line up to get their PhDs (I was one of those idiots, I know!) Julie Schumacher does a service to bring an incisive voice to this vicious circle of events, all with such an (un)likable and forever memorable character.Highly recommended for ex-academics (you've made it out in one piece!), college students aspiring to further their studies (especially in jobless sectors, i.e., all humanities!), and those who are especially fond of Comp Lit and English departments.
    • 4/5
      The novel is a series of letters, recommendations and posts from a Professor of English and Creative writing at Payne University. Form these posts we learn of the Professors frustration at the state of the building where his office is as well as that of this whole program in general. Of the impeding death of creative writing or writing actual books and his impulsive personal life.Extremely witty, tongue-in-cheek humor, sarcasm and ironic, the author deftly presents her story in an unusual matter. Although told in an amusing manner there are many truisms related about the current state of the publishing field, the writing field and a literature degree in general, that makes one think. Also the many jobs well degreed applicants are applying form that are not t all commensurate with their degrees.Schumacher is an amazing writer and through her so is Professor J.T Fitger, but take my advice, never, ever ask him for a recommendation.ARC from publisher.
    • 3/5
      This was a mildly amusing book, written from the viewpoint of a professor who has to write innumerable letters of recommendation for various people - students, colleagues, people he doesn't even really know. The premise is really quite funny, and there were parts of the book that did have me laugh out loud. Overall, though, I found the book only mildly amusing. Maybe it's because I'm not an academic, although you don't have to be an academic to find this book humorous.
    • 5/5
      Wonderful little book that starts out as a hilarious send-off of letters of recommendation (and continues to be), but morphs into a heartfelt story with some depth...