Julie Schumacher (novelist and University of Minnesota English department faculty member) has crafted Dear Committee Members as a series of letters of recommendation from curmudgeonly Jason Fitger, tenured professor of Creative Writing and English at fictional Payne University. Amid the defunding of his department, Fitger's modest academic life is one of divorce, disappointment and disgruntlement. But he takes seriously his responsibility to support his students and agrees to all requests to send recommendations, no matter how far-fetched the employment opportunity. His often rambling missives not only display his caustic distaste for university administrative bureaucracy, but cumulatively paint a picture of a once-optimistic graduate student who has lost his wife, his literary agent and his self-respect.
Gradually, Schumacher peels aside Fitger's tough façade to show a man who still believes in the power of literature and the role of teaching. He is perhaps most genuine in one letter where he describes his student as "not yet a candle ready to illuminate anyone else's darkness, but he understands that darkness exists, and he does not turn away." Can we ask anything more than this from a college education? In this clever send-up of academic logrolling, Julie Schumacher has written one of the funniest (and most poignant) books of the year. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.