Dear Committee Members: A Novel by Julie Schumacher Page A

religion, and I would wager that the pursuit of the ineffable via aesthetics in various forms has saved as many foundering souls as a belief in god.
    Forgive the tirade. My point: you are searching for an intellectually and morally fit young person, presumably one with leadership ability, empathy, integrity, an inquiring nature, and rhetorical skills. To the best of my knowledge, all of the above reside in Mr. White, in whom you will also find a restless attraction to the inexplicable, to loss and sadness and cruelty, to fear. I am willing to go out on a proverbial limb here for Mr. White—I can feel myself beginning to advocate for him more strongly as I type these words—and predict that his penchant for dybbuks and nightmares might one day assume the shape of a search for grace.
    Mr. White is not yet a candle ready to illuminate anyone else’s darkness, but he understands that the darkness exists, and he does not turn away.
    I beg your indulgence for this overlong letter, which clearly betrays its author’s own internal struggles (especially piquant at this time of year, with its leaden sky and its slag heaps of snow)and concludes by highly recommending Mr. White to you, your colleagues, and your institution.
    In ambiguity and continuing the search, J. T. Fitger, Professor of English and Creative Writing Payne University
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    * Mainly because my mother believed that Episcopalian women dressed better than Catholics, and I suspect she was right.

March 22, 2010
    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