Julie Schumacher - Dear Committee Members

Colleagues have warned me that the departure of Mr. Napp, our only remaining Tech Help employee, will leave us in darkness. I am ready. I have girded my loins and dispatched a secular prayer in the hope that, given the abysmal job market, a former mason or carpenter or salesman — someone over the age of twenty-five — is at this very moment being retrained in the subtle art of the computer and will, upon taking over from Mr. Napp, refrain (at least in the presence of anxious faculty seeking his or her help) from sending text messages or videos of costumed dogs to both colleagues and friends. I can almost imagine it: a person who would speak in full sentences — perhaps a person raised by a Hutterite grandparent on a working farm.

As for Mr. Napp: you are welcome to him.

Your sincere correspondent,

Jay Fitger

Professor of Creative Writing and English

KBPZ Payne University Radio

“The Sound of Payne”

Butler Union, 4th floor

Attention: Brian Lefkowitz

Salutations, Brian!

Having just learned of KBPZ’s recent windfall — every campus radio station should have an aging millionaire alum — I am delighted to come to your aid by recommending for one of your soon-to-be-expanded programs a graduate student and future blockbuster novelist, Darren Browles. Browles is not just a cut above the usual palaverers and symposiarchs of the airwaves; he’s three cuts above and would be an ideal anchor for enhanced arts and literature coverage (currently scheduled at an hour when no sane or well-adjusted person is awake to hear it), or for film reviews, or editorial work behind the scenes. Browles is exceptional — bright, articulate, and extremely well read. And in case you’re concerned that he might resemble his advisor: be assured that he would sooner elicit others’ views than spout his own.

If you could hire him by the end of the month, I’d appreciate it. To be honest, Brian — honesty is my new ambition, a belated New Year’s resolution — Browles is in a troublesome place. He owes back rent, he’s staggering under his student loans like Atlas with his sphere of the heavens, and I need him to finish this blasted book and sell it so I can argue for the continuance of our graduate program. For god’s sake, give him a job that will help him keep the wolf from his door. If I had research money (those days are long gone), I’d pay him to do something: to purge my file drawer of incriminating correspondence or starch and iron my cap and gown. I’ll send him over to your office in Butler this week. He may look a bit gaunt (these twenty-somethings love to dress as if each day required their presence at an Irish wake), but I assure you he is diligent, quick, modest, clearheaded, and thorough — and he will be grateful for any manner of work. I’ll owe you one, Brian.

Planting yet another bright seed in Payne’s fertile soil,

Jay

P.S.: I hope the minor dustup you and I experienced last fall during KBPZ’s coverage of the arts fair is well behind us. I bear no grudges …

Thank you for responding to the Pentalion Corporation’s request for a reference for David Cormier . Pentalion values confidentiality and will not share your answers to it’s inquiries with the applicant.

1. In what capacity and how long have you known the applicant?

David Cormier is an English major and my advisee, due to receive his BA degree at the end of the current semester. I have known him for approximately two years.

2. Describe the applicant’s skills and preparedness for a career with Pentalion.

Mr. Cormier, a survivor of my expository writing class, will assuredly not — as the Pentalion Corporation has done above — confuse “its” with “it’s,” the latter to be used only as a contraction for the two words “it is.” Nor will he ever again confuse “lie” and “lay”: these are two distinct verbs.

3. Can you think of any reasons why the Pentalion Corporation should not hire the applicant?

Yes. Pentalion is a subsidiary of Koron Chemical, a government contractor known to be a major producer of weaponry used overseas. I would not wish any current or former student to be employed by Pentalion; once its leadership masters the basics of punctuation, it should be closed down.

Thank you.

Eleanor Acton, Frau Direktor

Bentham Literary Residency Program

P.O. Box 1572

Bentham, ME 04976

Dear Eleanor,

Before you consign this letter to the shredder that surely waits, voraciously humming, at the edge of your desk for any sign of correspondence from me, let me assure you that I write today not on my own behalf or that of my “protégé” (your word), but to ask you to create a spot at Bentham for Troy. You saw the William Gass essay in the latest New York Review of Books ? Gass called Troy’s Second Mind a “work of acute intelligence, beautifully formed and undeservedly neglected.” WILLIAM. GASS . I made three copies of the essay and sent them to Troy. I’ve asked for his street address but he still admits only to the P.O.

Here’s my question for you, as director of Bentham: Do you intend to invite Troy for a residency before the literazzi find out how to reach him? Or are you planning to wait until after he’s (re)discovered and his dance card is filled? Yes, I know that Bentham residents are admitted or invited based on a written proposal; but Troy is constitutionally incapable of promoting his work, and if you ask him to submit a sample he’ll claim he’s given up writing, which is completely untrue. Do you remember how self-effacing he was in the Seminar, even with HRH busting his chops— Mr. Larpenteur, do you have work for us or don’t you? And Troy absently finger tracing a burl in the wooden table, his Tennessee voice soft like thick syrup, I don’t believe I have much to show for myself this week, Reg, I’m not certain yet whether I … until someone threatened to ransack the canvas bag that always slumped like a dog at his feet, at which point Troy would finally distribute a handful of pages. And whatever he had written was un-fucking-believable, we’d reread it later with our mouths half open because he was so brilliant, his work so staggering, he made you want to run your fingers through a table saw and never pick up a pencil again.

In any case, I can assure you he’s writing. About a month ago he called me near midnight, and after we went through our usual ritual — I offered to loan him money and he refused — he segued from desultory conversation into a monologue; it took me a moment, but hearing the crinkle of a page I finally understood that he was reading. I listened for forty or forty-five minutes, without comment, and roughly once a week since then we’ve engaged in similar telephonic performances about which, not being the idiot you believe me to be, I have said nothing: if I spoke, he’d clam up. But I tell you, Eleanor, he is even better than he was before Navia died; he has inscribed his suffering into this work. The piece he read to me a few nights ago was astonishing, crystalline, elliptically structured, an ouroboros devouring its own exquisite tail. The point is: Troy Larpenteur is alive and writing, and with the blessing of William Gass you and Bentham can save him from the anonymous tin enclosure of his P.O. box and be the conduit to his second career. Don’t ask him to teach (I doubt he’s ready for that); just put him in one of the isolated cabins — the ones near the lake — and let him get his work done.

If you’re worried (reasonably so; Troy has always been a perfectionist) that he’ll move too slowly and sit on the second book forever, well: you’re friendly with his editor — Andrews — at Folkstone, aren’t you? He’s not speaking to me, for various reasons, but if you were to wave the Gass essay under his nose and tell him that Folkstone needs to reissue Second Mind … It’s much better than the waterlogged tripe they’ve been publishing lately, and the reissue will stir up interest and give Troy the kick in the pants he’ll need to complete the next book. A simple phone call to Andrews, to let him know that Troy is at Bentham and writing again, may be enough.