Dear Committee Members
Julie Schumacher
Anchor Books
Jason Fitger has been an English professor for twenty-something years at a small university in the Midwest. He’s under pressure, overworked, and hardly appreciated. Writer Julie Schumacher tells the prof’s story through the letters he writes: a department head and dean here, fellowship and job recommendations there.
The tone of each letter varies according to Fitger’s feelings about the situation and the recipient. He might 
mock a student’s request for a job recommendation to Avengers Paintball, for instance (“Mr. Trent received a C- in my expository writing class [which] is quite an accomplishment”); implore his editor to take a second look at a promising student’s work (“Accountant in a Bordello is a shattering reinterpretation of “Bartleby”); or rail against university bureaucrats for threatening to defund the creative writing program.
It’s the reader, really, who must unravel the plot (if there even is one in Dear) because our only perspective is Fitger’s–and truth be told, he’s not a very likable guy most of the time. “Irascible” and “curmudgeon” are two adjectives that come to mind.
I liked Dear Committee Members for it’s inventiveness–even the salutations and signatures mirrored the letters’ content–and I begrudgingly came to like tolerate Jason Fitger. But the story sometimes seemed too much like an inside joke. It came highly recommended by NPR’s Maureen Corrigan (you can see her review here), although this is one (very rare!) time her plug failed me. However, nerdy high school English teacher that I am, I will be using a few of Fitger’s letters next year to teach my AP kids about tone.
So a mixed review from me*, but if you know someone enmeshed in the politics of university life, this might be a winner.
*and in reading the reviews on Goodreads and Amazon, it’s clear my reservations are just me–although more than a few of those reviewers admitted to being college instructors.
This is my symphony 