Book of the Week for December 28-Janaury 3

Dear Committee Members by Julie Schumacher

Why it’s interesting:

The blurb:

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.

If you like this, you might also like:

The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. I had a really hard time coming up with a book to pair this with, and the Amazon recommendations didn’t really help until I got to this one on the fourth page. But it does seem like a good option. I read it about the same time last year and had a lot of the same feelings about it as Dear Committee Members.