Schumacher - Dear Committee Members (9780385538145)

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright 2014 by Julie Schumacher

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Doubleday, a division of Random House LLC, New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto, Penguin Random House companies.

www.doubleday.com

DOUBLEDAY and the portrayal of an anchor with a dolphin are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.

Jacket design by Emily Mahon
Jacket photograph Masterfile

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Schumacher, Julie, 1958
Dear Committee Members / Julie Schumacher.
pages cm
ISBN 978-0-385-53813-8 (hardcover) ISBN 978-0-385-53814-5 (eBook)
1. Employment referencesFiction. 2. LettersFiction. I. Title.
PS3569.C5548D34 2014
813.54dc23
2013043014

v3.1

To my students

September 3, 2009

Bentham Literary Residency Program

P.O. Box 1572

Bentham, ME 04976

Dear Committee Members,

Over the past twenty-odd years Ive recommended god only knows how many talented candidates for the Bentham January residencythat enviable literary oasis in the woods south of Skowhegan: the solitude, the pristine cabins, the artistic camaraderie, and those exquisite hand-delivered satchels of apples and cheese Well, you can scratch all prior nominees and pretenders from your mailing lists, because none is as provocative or as promising as Darren Browles.

Mr. Browles is my advisee; hes taken two of my workshops, and his novel-in-progress, a retelling of Melvilles Bartleby (but in which the eponymous character is hired to keep the books at a brothel, circa 1960, just outside Las Vegas), is both tender satire and blistering adaptation/homage. In brief: this tour de force is witty, incisive, original, brutally sophisticated, erotic. You dont need me to summarize ityoull have received his two opening chapters. My agent, Ken Doyle, is apprised of the project and is gnashing his pearly incisors in the hope of receiving the completed manuscript soon. Any additional perks or funding you can provide for Browles during the residency will be appreciated; hes likely to be wooed by editors all over New York.

A personal aside: I was very sorry to hear of Mikes death. He was a terrific director, and I always enjoyed talking to him in the row of blue rocking chairs out on the porch during the occasions (too rare!) when I was able to escape my academic duties here in the Midwest and accept his invitations to Bentham. Hell be terribly hard to replace. Whoever tries to step into them will find he wore sizeable, generous shoes.

In sadness but looking to the future,

Jason T. Fitger

Professor of Creative Writing and English

Department of English

Payne University

September 4, 2009

Theodore Boti, Chair

Department of English

Dear Ted,

Your memo of August 30 requests that we on the English faculty recommend some luckless colleague for the position of director of graduate studies. (You may have been surprised to find this position vacant upon your assumption of the chair-ship last monthif so, trust me, you will encounter many such surprises here.)

A quick aside, Ted: god knows what enticements were employed during the heat of summer to persuade youa sociologist!to accept the position of chair in a department not your own, an academic unit whose reputation for eccentricity and discord has inspired the upper echelon to punish us by withholding favors as if from a six-year-old at a birthday party: No raises or research funds for you, you ungovernable rascals! And no fudge before dinner! Perhaps, as the subject of a sociological study, you will find the problem of our dwindling status intriguing.

To the matter at hand: though English has traditionally been a largish department, you will find there are very few viable candidates capable of assuming the mantle of DGS. In fact, if I were a betting man, Id wager that only 10 percent of the English instruction list will answer your call for nominations. Why? First, because more than a third of our faculty now consists of temporary (adjunct) instructors who creep into the building under cover of darkness to teach their graveyard shifts of freshman comp; they are not eligible to vote or to serve. Second, because the remaining two-thirds of the faculty, bearing the scars of disenfranchisement and long-term abuse, are busy tending to personal grudges like scraps of carrion on which they gnaw in the gloom of their offices. Long story short: your options arent pretty.

After subtracting the names of those who are on leave or close to retirement, and those already serving in the killing fields of administration, you will probably be forced to choose between Franklin Kentrell (NO: spend five consecutive minutes with him and you will understand why); Jennifer Brown-Wilson (a whipping girl for the theory factionalready terrorized, she will decline); Albert Tyne (under no circumstances should you enter his office without several days warningmore on this later); Donna Lovejoy (poor overworked creatureI hereby nominate her [anonymously please] with this letter); and me. Youll soon find that I make myself unpleasant enough to be safe from nomination.

Enfin: Lovejoy will sag under this additional burden, but she will perform.

Ted, in your memo you referred briefly, also, to the need for faculty forbearance during what we were initially told would be Im not sure that you noticed, but the Econ faculty were, in early August, evacuated from the buildingas if theyd been notified, sotto voce, of an oncoming plague. Not so the faculty in English. With the exception of a few individuals both fleet of foot and quick-witted enough to claim status as asthmatics, we have been Left Behind, almost biblically, expected to begin our classes and meet with students while bulldozers snarl at the door. Yesterday afternoon during my Multicultural American Literature class, I watched a wrecking ball swinging like a hypnotists watch just past the window. While I am relieved to know that the economistsdelicate creatures!have been safely installed in a wing of the new geology building where their physical comfort and aesthetic needs can be addressed, those of us who remain as castaways here in Willard Hall risk not only deafness but mutation: as of next week we have been instructed to keep our windows tightly closed due to particulate matterbut my office window (heres the amusing part, Ted) no longer shuts. One theory here: the deanery is annoyed with our requests for parity and, weary of waiting for us to retire, has decided to kill us. Let the academic year begin!

Cordially and with a hearty welcome to the madhouse,

Jay