On the HahaFiction shelf
Dear Committee Members
by Julie Schumacher
Jason Fitger teaches writing at Payne University, where his department is losing resources and his own literary career has stalled. Asked to recommend students and colleagues, he keeps finding room in the letters for his professional resentments and personal disasters.
From the publisher’s blurb
“Finally a novel that puts the “pissed” back into “epistolary.””Read the full description at Vintage, publisher description
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What makes it funny?
A student’s abrupt nine-word request for a reference receives a grandiloquent response. Fitger also has to champion a student novel that relocates Bartleby to a bordello while the newly improved economics department leaks wastewater into his office.
The comedy at work
Recommendation letters require tact and praise, precisely the qualities Fitger struggles to supply. His digressions turn supposedly helpful endorsements into complaints about the university and revelations about himself.
Try this if…
Office politics and elaborate written insults are the attraction here, especially for readers familiar with departments that have less money than paperwork.
Good to know
The novel consists of recommendation letters, so the larger story develops through what Fitger reveals in them. His concern for students gives the institutional satire a more sympathetic side.
More funny campus novel
Sources & further reading
- Publisher
Publisher
- Kirkus review
Review
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