Dear Committee Members

Posted on 11 March 2017 by Julie Schumacher

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. Best Download Dear Committee Members author Julie Schumacher For Kindle ePUB or eBook – kino-fada.fr this is an like epistolary version of Lucky Jim, in which a jovial but pompous and generally unlikeable blowhard of an english professor bloviates and alienates his way through a series of letters of recommendation, straying from the task at hand to insert his own unrelated gripes and personal attacks, destroying bridges he has already burned, while somehow, admirably, also providing a narrative arc.it s just a little wisp of a novel, but anyone who has spent any time at all in the halls of acad this is an like epistolary version of Lucky Jim, in which a jovial but pompous and generally unlikeable blowhard of an english professor bloviates and alienates his way through a series of letters of recommendation, straying from the task at hand to insert his own unrelated gripes and personal attacks, destroying bridges he has already burned, while somehow, admirably, also providing a narrative arc.it s just a little wisp of a novel, but anyone who has spent any time at all in the halls of academia will recognize and giggle at the frustrations and hoop jumping plaguing professor fitger, poor beleaguered dinosaur of the creative writing lit department he, like many of us, bemoans the constant pa...Dear Goodreads friend,I am writing to highly recommend that you read Dear Committee Members, especially if you have a propensity to enjoy sardonic academic satires written in the form of LORs letters of reference written by a cantankerous professor of English literature who has a tendency to irk many colleagues and former spouses, has an endless supply of pet peeves, but nevertheless cares for a handful of histalented students and colleagues and has many valid albeit overwrou...Anyone who has spent time in academia will get a chuckle out of this book It s a collection of letters from a disgruntled English professor at a small college Most of the missives are Letters of Recommendation for students, but there are also emails and memos to colleagues The novel, written by a woman who is a writing professor at the University of Minnesota, smartly touches on a lot of the current problems in higher education, including its overreliance on part time instructors instead of f Anyone who has spent time in academia will get a chuckle out of this book It s a collection of letters from a disgruntled English professor at a small college Most of the missives are Letters of Recommendation for students, but there are also emails and memos to colleagues The novel, written by a woman who is a writing professor at the University of Minnesota, smartly touches on a lot of the current problems in higher education, including its overreliance on part time instructors instead of full time faculty members, the defunding of humanities programs and the emphasis on science and tech , and the rising cost of a college degree, which forces students to take o...Dear Author,It is with deeply felt regret that I have to tell you that I can t recommend your book to the wider Goodreads community, despite the fact that I really liked it It even made me laugh out loud many times, serving as a perfect digression from some heavy reading that I had to digest this weekend Why, you might rightly ask, dear Author, will I then not do you the favour to write something nice about it Something about the hilarious idea to reinvent the epistolary genre with a funny co Dear Author,It is with deeply felt regret that I have to tell you that I can t recommend your book to the wider Goodreads community, despite the fact that I really liked it It even made me laugh out loud many times, serving as a perfect digression from some heavy reading that I had to digest this weekend Why, you might rightly ask, dear Author, will I then not do you the favour to write something nice about it Something about the hilarious idea to reinvent the epistolary genre with a funny collection of letters of recommendation Why not admit that I had the time of my life imagining that I would d...Of course there is a serious commentary on the state of academic affairs here especially of English and Creative Writing Departments, but this book was extremely funny and I loved it I don t mean to diminish the serious underlying message but I laughed out loud Jay Fitger , Professor of Creative Writing and English at Payne University seems to spend a good part of his day writing letters of recommendation for students and former students for jobs, graduate school or literary residence progra Of course there is a serious commentary on the state of academic affairs here especially of English and Creative Writing Departments, but this book was extremely funny and I loved it I don t mean to diminish the serious underlying message but I laughed out loud Jay Fitg...Ms Nan A TaleseDoubleday Publishing1745 BroadwayNew York, NY 10019Dear Ms Talese I saw online that you were the contact person for Doubleday Publishing and that manuscripts must be submitted by agents because you do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.Well, relax Nan, that isn t why I am contacting you No, I have several other reasons I would like to tell you about I became aware of the book Dear Committee Members when several of my respected friends gave it good reviews on Goodreads I als Ms Nan A TaleseDoubleday Publishing1745 BroadwayNew York, NY 10019Dear Ms Talese I saw online that you were the contact person for Doubleday Publishing and that manuscripts must be submitted by agents because you do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.Well, relax Nan, that isn t why I am contacting you No, I have several other reasons I would like to tell you about I became aware of the book Dear Committee Members when several of my respected friends gave it good reviews on Goodreads I also liked the opening line that you all used in your description of the book Finally, a novel that puts the pissed back into epistolaryVery clever It is a clever book Epistolary novels are tricky propositions and Julie Schumacher pulled it off She was able to do that because it is obvious that she is intimately acquainted with the academic world that she describes in the epistles that her protagonist, a profe...This is a very funny and also a very smart look at the contemporary world of academia as seen through the endless numbers of letters of recommendation written by Jason T Fitger, a professor of Creative Writing and English at the fictional Payne University, which is located somewhere in the Midwest Like so many other disciplines in the Humanities, Fitger s English department appears to be under siege Its budget has been slashed full time tenured faculty are being forced out in favor of part t This is a very funny and also a very smart look at the contemporary world of academia as seen ...An entire novel written in the form of passive aggressive recommendation letters sounds like the kind of gimmick that would get old really quick especially with such a whisper thin plot But if you have a weakness for witty, self destructive English professors who can eff...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 form 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 Profess...Let me begin my review of this novel about the lovable eccentricities of academia by providing an anecdote about a lovably eccentric academic I once knew A favorite English professor of mine was constantly in a delightfully manic state of enthusiasm about every scrap of literature ever written, each scrap of which he had personally read He was so overwhelmed with appreciation for every syllable ever put to paper by humankind and had a keen sense of reverence for the critical role any given sub Let me begin my review of this novel about the lovable eccentricities of academia by providing an anecdote about a lovably eccentric academic I once knew A favorite English professor of mine was constantly in a delightfully manic state of enthusiasm about every scrap of literature ever written, each scrap of which he had personally read He was so overwhelmed with appreciation for every syllable ever put to paper by humankind and had a keen sense of reverence for the critical role any given subset of those syllables played in the greater literary and cultural context of whatever era or theme we were ...

English
11 March 2017

Julie Schumacher