Schumacher has written an academic comedy of manners in the grand tradition of LUCKY JIM, MOO, and STRAIGHT MAN. Robertson Dean narrates masterfully. Part of the fun of these books is the surprising literary form many take. Here Schumacher has outdone herself. This is an epistolary audiobook written entirely in letters of recommendation. Robertson Dean does a wonderful rendition of the aging English professor who is trapped literally—in a building under construction—and figuratively—by his romantic and professional missteps over two decades. As he should, Dean leaves the listener guessing about Professor Fitger’s real feelings towards the denizens of Payne University as his life emerges through a torrent of letters. F.C. © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine

06/09/2014
Professor Jason Fitger, the hero of this engaging epistolary novel from Schumacher (The Unbearable Book Club for Unsinkable Girls), is concerned about Darren Browles, a student of his currently at work on a novel. Fitger, who teaches creative writing at fictional Payne University, believes this book, when completed, will prove Browles to be a prodigy. Despite Fitger’s near-ecstatic praise of the would-be novelist, both for writing positions and for any job available, no one seems interested in hiring Browles, not even the less-than-enterprising college radio station. In addition to this pet project, Fitger commits himself to writing recommendations for anyone that asks. However, he agrees to do so only on the condition of being completely frank, leading him to address the personal lives of his colleagues and students inappropriately. Additionally, Fitger delves into his own life with uncomfortable honesty, regardless of which person he’s writing to, usually concerning the marriage-ending novel he wrote about his extramarital affairs and his distress over being a failed novelist. His letters become progressively more abrasive, to the point of insult. A creative writing professor herself, Schumacher crafts a suitably verbose but sympathetic voice for Fitger, a man who exudes both humor and heart. Agent: Lisa Bankoff, ICM Partners. (Aug.)

Praise for Dear Committee Members:

"[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

"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

"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 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

Schumacher has written an academic comedy of manners in the grand tradition of LUCKY JIM, MOO, and STRAIGHT MAN. Robertson Dean narrates masterfully. Part of the fun of these books is the surprising literary form many take. Here Schumacher has outdone herself. This is an epistolary audiobook written entirely in letters of recommendation. Robertson Dean does a wonderful rendition of the aging English professor who is trapped literally—in a building under construction—and figuratively—by his romantic and professional missteps over two decades. As he should, Dean leaves the listener guessing about Professor Fitger’s real feelings towards the denizens of Payne University as his life emerges through a torrent of letters. F.C. © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine

2014-05-07
A disgruntled English professor pours out his hopes, affections and frustrations in an interconnected series of recommendation letters.In "The Gristmill of Praise," a recent article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Schumacher (Creative Writing/University of Minnesota; The Unbearable Book Club for Unsinkable Girls, 2012, etc.) revealed that in a single year, she receives more than 1,600 letters of recommendation and writes 50 to 100 of her own. This onslaught of praise inspired her to write a very funny epistolary novel composed of recommendation letters written by a caustic, frustrated and cautiously hopeful English professor named Jason Fitger. He's a former literary wunderkind who parodied his own writing teacher in a successful first novel called Stain 20 years ago and has since parlayed three unsuccessful follow-ups into a tenured position at a small liberal arts college. Over the course of 100 letters, we learn that waste water is leaking into Fitger's office from the construction of a glorious new economics center above the English department; that he's engaged in a losing battle of office politics with the administration; that he has a cordial but cold relationship with his ex-wife over in the law school; and that he's generally kind to most of his students, even the ones who are moving on from college to the local liquor store. His writing, meanwhile, is tremendously florid and mostly cynical: "Mr. Duffy Napp has just transmitted a nine-word email asking that I immediately send a letter of reference to your firm on his behalf; his request has summoned from the basement of my heart a star-spangled constellation of joy, so eager am I to see Mr. Napp well established at Maladin IT." Most of all, we learn that the failed novelist still has hope for the future—if not for himself, then for one of his students, Darren Browles, whom he's mentoring through a difficult first novel. It's an unusual form for comedy, but it works.Truth is stranger than fiction in this acid satire of the academic doldrums.