Dear Committee Members

 

Author:  Julie Schumacher

Begun: March 24th 2025

Finished: March 24th 2025

Type: Audiobook and ebook on Libby

Narrator: Robertson Dean

Rating: 8/10

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 student can't catch a break with his brilliant 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.

In the beginning:  Huh.  It's going to take a minute to figure out the threads of what's going on. 

In the middle: 

a. This guy is in love with himself and his novels.  

b. He's constantly advocating for his students 

c. My gosh this makes me want to have absolutely nothing to do with academia

d. The shade thrown on the Economics department.  Hahahaha!!!  =D

e. Oh my gosh this is absolutely brilliant.  The letter to the catfish shack or whatever it's called was absolutely hilarious.  

f. It is deeply DEEPLY disturbing how so many students end up in dead end jobs, not using the talents they honed while at university.  

g. The erosion of faculty is even more disturbing. 

h. Many many laughs out loud, and some gasps of "He did WHAT?".  Very funny. Lots of laughter.

In the end: Oh my gosh.  That hurts.  That really really deeply hurts.  I put down the book and let out a giant f-bomb.  

Also the seminar advisor back in the day was and is a thieving bastard who destroyed people's lives and I hate him. 

All this to say, I am completely conflicted.  I LOVED most of the book, but the ending was just too real.  I could do with a good cry.  And the worst of it is, it's not like fantasy or anything.  I can totally see this happening in real life, and it's just too damn painful.  

Robertson Dean was an excellent narrator.