Dear Committee Members ~ Julie Schumacher

Schumacher, Julie. 2014. Dear Committee Members. New York, NY: Doubleday, a division of Penguin Random House. ISBN 978-0385538138. $22.95

Every month Librarians in my library, known also as “Selectors,” receive a HOT list from our vendors (Brodart and Baker & Taylor) containing a list of the books publishing three months hence that various metrics and research indicate will be popular and “musts” for the library to acquire.  I select books for technology, self-help, art/crafts/decorating and Science Fiction and Fantasy.  But I always peek at the mystery and fiction books coming out because I want to see what’s buzzing and want to put them on hold as soon as we order them.  Not everyone knows this, but libraries usually order books 3 months in advance, so you can put your favorites on hold and get to the head of the line for the next big blockbuster!

This month a fiction title caught my eye that will be published in August: The Shakespeare Requirement by Julie Schumacher, a faculty member in the Creative Writing Program and the Department of English at the University of Minnesota. Based on the description, the book is a sequel to Dear Committee Members which our library didn’t own.  So I promptly put it on hold at another local library where I have check-out privileges and read it in one sitting!

Written in epistolary form, Dear Committee Members consists almost entirely of Letters of Recommendation written by a beleaguered, curmudgeonly English professor at a fictitious Midwestern university. Beginning at the first part of the academic term, it follows a year in the life of Jason Fitger as he tries, unsuccessfully, to promote the work of one of his graduate students who is writing a “promising” novel, and includes Letters of Recommendation for other students he barely knows (or likes)!  Within the letters Jay inserts extremely sardonic, passive-aggressive and downright hilarious commentary about all sorts of things going on in the English department where he works.

Sparing none of his colleagues or ex-wives or girlfriends, we learn that Jay had one successful novel published as the result of attending a writing seminar some 20 years previously and used personal details of his own life in the fictional novel which destroyed a number of personal relationships. Other written communications in this short novel reveal his attempts to repair some of those relationships.

Dear Committee Members is an extremely well-written literary novel that puts the "pissed" in epistolary, and it has many laugh-out-loud moments. It is full of academic shenanigans and bitter back-stabbing, but also contains themes of aging, the fear of failure, perseverance, and is not necessarily a happily-ever-after tale.  Still, I loved it so much.

The next novel, The Shakespeare Requirement, apparently continues the life of Jason Fitzger, now Chair of the English Department, but is written in narrative, rather than epistolary form, and I can't wait to read it!




Happy Reading!