Julie Schumacher - Dear Committee Members

In ambiguity and continuing the search,

J. T. Fitger, Professor of English and Creative Writing

Payne University

* Mainly because my mother believed that Episcopalian women dressed better than Catholics, and I suspect she was right.

Rene DeClerc, Chair

Department of Politics and Government

11 Tenafield Hall West

Dear Rene—

Louise Frame is applying for the position of associate administrator in your department; happily, I am able to recommend her to you without reservation and with a clear conscience. Ms. Frame has served as associate administrator in the Department of English for nineteen years (I remember when she arrived, fresh faced and vibrant, having no idea of the devastating environment into which she had come); she is fully adept at accounts and billing; she is responsible and highly professional (the young man who will undoubtedly rise through the ranks to replace her in our unit dresses like a sanitation worker); and she has taken only three sick days (three!) in the past eight years.

Typically in a letter such as this one, it behooves the writer to address the applicant’s motive or incentive to seek a new job. We both know that shouldn’t be necessary in this case: one can only interpret a desire to exit the Department of English as a mark of sound judgment. It is an indication of Ms. Frame’s loyalty to Sarah Lempert (now retired — she chaired for eight of Louise’s nineteen years) that it took her so long to decide to go.

Poor Ms. Frame is too discreet an employee to reveal the particular absurdity or humiliation that tipped the scales and persuaded her to seek reassignment: it might have been the fisticuffs in the lounge over the issue of undergraduate curriculum, or the faculty meeting (Ms. Frame faithfully taking minutes) during which a senior colleague, out of his mind over the issue of punctuation in the department’s mission statement, threatened to “take a dump” (there was a pun on the word “colon” which I won’t belabor here) at a junior faculty member’s door.

We have long vied for recognition as the most dysfunctional of departments (Psychology, of course, with “Madman” Tollson at the helm has generally been first); now, with a paper-pushing outsider (Ted B.) as chair, we are living in a Brave New Department, in a building half of which has been cordoned off with tape as a hazardous zone. Those of us who remain in Willard Hall abandon the relative safety of our offices only to tiptoe into the hallway to use the restroom. (In fact, one member of the department has created his own intra-office relief station — but I will spare you those details or offer them up at a more opportune time.)

In sum, Louise Frame is an exemplary employee. Take pity on her, throw her a lifeline, and allow her to dry herself off among friends.

From the prow of the Titanic ,

JTF

H. Reginald Hanf, Professor Emeritus

Hollyhock Terrace, Grovewood Homes

19803 Wellington Avenue

Hartford, CT 06120

Dear Reg,

After some effort, I believe I have tracked you down at the above address. I hope you’re well. I was sorry to hear about the stroke (news of your retirement traveled in seismic shivers through the daily papers), and I can appreciate your desire for privacy as well as rest. I wouldn’t bother you on my own behalf: I’m writing for the benefit of and unbeknownst to my advisee, Darren Browles, truly a diamond in the rough and one of the most original student writers I have encountered in the twenty-two years since I graduated, grateful for everything you did for me, from the Seminar.

Briefly: Browles’s funding at Payne has been cut by the technocrats who have lately seized power over this institution, and he can’t afford to finish his degree or — more crucially — his novel, currently titled For the Sake of a Scrivener . Remembering how crucial your support of Stain was for me, I’m taking the liberty of enclosing several of Browles’s chapters: I’m hoping you can peruse them, see the raw potential, and use your influence — either to connect Browles with an agent (Ken Doyle is not the right fit for this project) or to recommend that he be admitted, belatedly and with funding (and I know it’s not the same now, without you), to the Seminar.

You might logically suggest that the easier route would be to send Browles to Bentham. I’ve already tried: I wrote him an over-the-top letter, but Eleanor has rejected him repeatedly, despite or because of my panegyrics. Her rancor is personal and dates back to Stain: she claimed that my object in writing the novel was humiliation — specifically, that I made her the unwilling model for my character, Esther, and that the sex scenes in the book (though I did eliminate one of the most lurid) too nearly depicted the stormy liaison in which we briefly engaged. She said your enthusiasm for Stain was misogynistic — and that it was vanity and a “puppeteer’s obsession with control” that led you to help me win that first publication. My ex-wife, Janet (I’m sure you remember her: you described her work as “unrealized” and “sterile”), originally dismissed Eleanor’s complaints as overreaction. She pointed out that the book wouldn’t have gone into paperback and a third printing if its only attribute was the embarrassment of a former flame. Now that we are divorced, Janet sympathizes with Eleanor; they correspond. As for Stain: how excruciating two decades later, those blowsy fanfaronades of the prose; and who is that beady-eyed intense young author with the full head of hair?

I’m not asking for eleventh-hour honesty here: you were a terrific advisor, whether you believed in what I was writing or whether — amused by Stain ’s teasing references to the intimate lives of those who gathered around you at the Seminar table — you viewed my work as an experiment, a test of your influence, both on me and the market. The outcome for me, no matter your motive, was the same, and in either case, I am grateful. Though most of my work is out of print (perhaps deservedly so, in regard to Save Me for Later and Alphabetical Stars ), Stain secured me a job, a tenured position that many would envy. (My pre-Seminar career involved the sale of cleaning products from the back of a Chevy Chevette.) Still, I feel a moment of reckoning approaching. My own writing interests me less than it used to; and while I know that to teach and to mentor is truly a calling, on a day-to-day basis I often find myself overwhelmed by the needs of my students — who seem to trust in an influence I no longer have, and in a knowledge of which, increasingly, I am uncertain — and by the university’s mindless adherence to bureaucratic demands.

I’m sure you have your own frustrations, but if there’s anything you can do for Browles, any assistance similar to that which, twenty-two years ago, you extended to me, I would so appreciate the favor. Please note that I’m enclosing these pages from his proposal and his opening chapters without his knowledge; unlike his advisor, Browles does not advocate for himself and is an unassuming man.

Thank you, Reg. Still gazing up at you on that pedestal, fondly,

Jay

Amis and Portman Associates

165 South First Avenue

Baxton, MI 48103

Attention: Mary T. Radziwill

Dear Ms. Radziwill:

Abhinav Mehta has requested that I send a letter of recommendation to your firm on his behalf and, though I am supposed to be enjoying the one-week hiatus known and dreaded in vacation spots across the globe as “spring break,” I am happy to do so; but I have encountered several obstacles. The first is that Mr. Mehta, despite the desperate language in which he couched his desire for me to attend to this letter with the utmost speed, no longer responds to his university e-mail or phone, and did not deign to inform me of the position for which he is applying. Such are the communication skills of the up-and-coming generation: they post drunken photos of themselves at parties, they share statuses, they emit tweets and send all sorts of intimate pronouncements into the void — but they are incapable of returning a simple phone call. Second, my inquiry to your firm, Amis and Portman, fails to shed any light on the subject of a possible hire. Your website requests that I load particular software into my own irregularly functioning computer (no, I will not), and your answering service functions as an impenetrable barrier, insisting that I press, in numeric form, the first three letters of the last name of the individual to whom I wish to speak. I tried entering a few letters at random, but to no avail.