Dear Committee Members - Julie Schumacher

A Best
Book of the Year: NPR and Boston
Globe

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.