The Gilmore Guide to Books

Connecting Books and Readers One Review at a Time

  • Home
  • About Me
  • Reviews
    • Reviews by Author
    • Reviews by Title
    • Reviews by Genre
  • Podcast
  • Policies
    • Review Policy
    • Cookie Policy
    • Privacy Policy

Dear Committee Members

August 20, 2014

dear committee membersDear Committee Members by Julie Schumacher
Published by Doubleday
Publication date: August 19th 2014
Genres: Fiction, Contemporary, Humor
five-stars
Bookshop

 

If every member of the human race evinced a fondness for literature and even a moderate level of dexterity with the written word, I would be a happier, if not more well-adjusted, man.

Jay Fitger is an underpaid, tortured and tenured English professor at Payne University. His professional life at this B-level college has largely devolved into writing letters of recommendation (LOR) for everyone from his students to a stranger who collared him outside the men’s room the day before Thanksgiving, who was never even a student of his but lay down on his office floor until he wrote said letter. All this and more is found in Julie Schumacher’s hilarious novel, Dear Committee Members. Solely through letters to everyone from department heads to the owner of Flanders Nut House, a portrait of Fitger emerges—a very complete portrait, as he includes personal details in many of his letters—especially those written to his department chair and other faculty members at Payne as he begs them for positions within their departments for students, teaching assistants, and even graduates.

Schumacher is herself a professor of English at a university and the weary, passive-aggressive tone of Fitger as he wheedles and mocks can only be the result of someone who knows the system too well. Her prose is spot-on for someone who spends their life with words and still believes in their ability to effect change. Here Fitger is trying to get a mentorship position in a different department for another person who is a stranger to him:

…I have skimmed her CV and her letter-of-interest, both of which express her theater of the absurd language about pedagogy and the euphoria of learning. Suffering creature! By all means yes, yes! I endorse her bid for the mentorship: may the bump in salary allow her to avoid scurvy by adding fruit to her diet once a week. 

Other tidbits that come to life in Fitger’s epistolary gems are his divorce from the wife he still loves and the inadvertent acknowledgment of that love to his current girlfriend in a reply-all email. All of these combined make it clear life is not working out quite as he imagined and he’s no longer willing to pretend it is.

Dear Committee Members succeeds as a wry, highly intelligent parody of academia but Fitger is not only a caricature of a beleaguered professor churning out letters for B and even C level students. He has real convictions and heartfelt beliefs about some of these people, namely a student and advisee, Darren Browles. Darren is working on a novel but no longer has the money to attend school. Fitger writes letters first to residency programs, then MFA programs, his agent, and finally to an RV park looking for a manager. None of these letters go anywhere and we feel Fitger’s very real despair over the young man’s situation. It creates a poignancy that makes Dear Committee Members more than just a sly, sulky, funny look at what is happening to the arts in colleges today. Instead, by the end of the novel Fitger shows us the reality behind the humor.

five-stars

Related Posts

  • Related Posts
  • Same Genre
  • 5 Star Books
  • By Julie Schumacher
other people
Other People’s Houses
lessons in chemistry
Lessons in Chemistry
belle cora
Belle Cora
Billy lynn
Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk
paper
The Paper Palace
dancer in the dust
A Dancer in the Dust
shrines
Shrines of Gaiety by Kate Atkinson
hausfrau
Hausfrau
diva
Diva: A Novel
exciting
Exciting Times by Naoise Dolan
October
October Reading Wrap-Up
ask again
Ask Again, Yes
we
We Are Not Like Them: A Novel
song
Song of a Captive Bird
lookaway lookaway
Lookaway, Lookaway
english
The English Experience
Fun Summer Reading
last
Last Bit of Summer: Mini-Reviews

7 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: contemporary life, Doubleday, humor

Comments

  1. Lianne @ caffeinatedlife.net says

    August 20, 2014 at 7:09 am

    Great review! The premise of this novel was what caught my attention to it some time ago and I look forward to picking it up at some point 🙂

    Reply
  2. Andi (@estellasrevenge) says

    August 20, 2014 at 8:53 am

    OMG! I must read this. After 10 years in higher ed, I think it’s RIGHT up my alley!

    Reply
    • Catherine says

      August 21, 2014 at 3:00 pm

      You SO need this book! If I hadn’t already given away my copy I would send it to you.

      Reply
  3. Kelly says

    August 21, 2014 at 11:30 am

    OMG, I must read this, for I will surely love it after working at a college for 8 years. With a LOT of downtrodden faculty! 🙂 Plus I just love books set on college campuses. Win x10.

    Reply
    • Catherine says

      August 21, 2014 at 3:00 pm

      I loved it because it was nothing but letters from one poor professor to the rest of the world and he covers it all.

      Reply
  4. tanya (52 books or bust) says

    August 30, 2014 at 4:28 am

    Yes, yes, yes. I have to read this. Novels about academia are sort of my thing, or at least one of my things, and this sounds so much like my own personal experience. I can’t wait to crack it open.

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Goodreads
  • Instagram

Save time and subscribe via email

No time to keep checking for new reviews? Enter your email address to subscribe and receive notifications of new posts by email. No spam!

Bookshop

Currently Reading

Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle
Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle
by Emily Nagoski
The Dutch House
The Dutch House
by Ann Patchett
Wild Game: My Mother, Her Lover, and Me
Wild Game: My Mother, Her Lover, and Me
by Adrienne Brodeur

goodreads.com

Affiliate Disclosure

I’m an affiliate for Bookshop. If you click on a link that takes you to their site and make a purchase I’ll earn a small fee, which goes towards the costs of maintaining this site. Your support is appreciated. Thank you!

Archives

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States License.

Theme Design By Studio Mommy · Copyright © 2025

Copyright © 2025 · Beyond Madison Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in