Intent on figuring out how to construct solid plots, Professor Julie Schumacher wrote her first book for younger readers in 2004, a decade before young adult fiction became so popular it spawned an abstinence movement. Schumacher's third such effort, The Book of One Hundred Truths (2006), won a Minnesota Book Award for Young Adult Fiction. This summer she shows off her plot chops with the adult comic novel Dear Committee Members, a book consisting only of fictional letters of recommendation--from a single imagined Creative Writing professor--that nevertheless contains classic (and compelling) exposition, conflict, climax, and denouement. Indeed, as an admiring Slate review points out, what finally happens in the tale "turn[s] the book's theme upside down," revealing the moral weight beneath the undeniably funny characterizations. For Schumacher's favorite novel-in-letters and other revelations, read on.1. Your past novels thrive on witty, awkward, and very telling dialogue. What were the challenges of writing a book-length monologue?
I definitely worried about wearying the reader and thought about ways I could avoid doing so (other than keeping the book fairly short). I knew I would need to introduce and develop characters other than my letter-of-recommendation writer, Professor Jay Fitger; and that need to portray multiple characters in the context of Fitger's one-sided correspondence gave the book (I hope) its sense of humor.
An aside here: I'd like to credit my colleague John Watkins, who--during a coffee break conversation on the West Bank a few years ago--heard my wacky half-formed idea about a novel written in the form of letters of recommendation and said, "You have to write that." Thank you, John.
2. Fitger's protégé is writing an updated take on Bartleby, the Scrivener, an obscure story by Melville. How did you come up with that tale as a reference/template?
I read Bartleby as an undergraduate and thought, That is one absurdly dull piece of fiction. I still don't much like it. So when I decided that Professor Jay Fitger would, in his letters of recommendation, futilely champion the work of a graduate creative writing student, I wanted that student to be working on a literary dead end. A 500-page homage to Bartleby (the grad student's grotesquely inflated version is titled Accountant in a Bordello) seemed just the ticket.3. What's your favorite epistolary novel?
I have two favorites, but one isn't a novel: Nicholson Baker's A Box of Matches (essentially a fictional writer's diary), and Helene Hanff's very charming nonfiction World War II correspondence, 84, Charing Cross Road. I also have a real soft spot for Bram Stoker's Dracula, but that's less strictly epistolary than the others.
4. You don't write many essays, but when you do they get talked about. In 2008, your New York Times article, "A Support Group Is My Higher Power," was passed around enough that you were invited on NBC's The Today Show. This summer, your New York Times Opinion article "Was This Student Dangerous?" went viral and led to larger discussion of how universities/colleges deal with student mental illness. Have you ever thought of becoming an essayist?
I love the mix of urgency and candor present in many short works of nonfiction, but I don't think of myself as an essayist--the temptation to invent or at least bend the truth is generally too strong. I've turned to that form only when the subject matter seemed to require it. (C.S. Lewis similarly commented that "a composer might write a Dead March not because there was a public funeral in view but because certain musical ideas that had occurred to him went best into that form.")
5. Dear Committee Members mocks some types of student writing, especially undergraduate stories having to do with vampires, werewolves, and murderers. Is the dedication--"To my students"--meant to offset possible student anxiety about your future writings and judgments?
I adore my students at the U of M, both grads and undergrads, and the book's dedication, though appropriate to the subject matter of the novel, is completely sincere. The stickier issue, I think, will be students potentially feeling hesitant about requesting a letter of reference if or when they learn about Professor Jay Fitger's wildly inappropriate recommendations. I swear I've never written a letter like the ones he writes in Dear Committee Members. I love poor Jason T. Fitger, but he isn't me.
