Dear Committee Members: A Novel (5 page)

I understand that Troy has applied for the position of sales associate. This is a foreign concept to me: here in the academy we are unaccustomed to salesmanship of any kind, even to the faintest of efforts to make ourselves presentable or attractive to others. Nevertheless I can readily attest to Troy Larpenteur’s seriousness, his quick intelligence, and his kindness. He is not gregarious—I do not envision him cracking jokes by the water cooler—but he is a man of great integrity and depth.

Forgive the meanderings in what should have been a more businesslike letter. (Blaise Pascal:
I apologize that my letter is so long; I lacked the time to make it shorter
.) I have written more than 1,300 letters of recommendation (I keep precise records), and were it possible I would assemble the many laudatory phrases from this bloated collection and apply them like a poultice to Troy Larpenteur’s pain.

Of course I have failed to do here what he asked of me: I seldom lived up to his example. For reasons I won’t bother to go into now, Troy might once have harbored an unfavorable opinion of me, but he is too generous. I will be forever in his debt.

Please hire this exceptional man, whose many fine qualities must surely find an appreciative home in your corporation.

Sincerely,

Jason T. Fitger

Professor of Creative Writing and English

Author,
Stain; Alphabetical Stars; Save Me for Later;
and
Transfer of Affection

November 23, 2009

Carole Samarkind, Associate Director Student Services/Fellowship Office

14 Gilbert Hall

Dear Carole—and Relevant Committee Members, Pa Vang has requested that I support her application to Payne’s Students of Distinction Fellowship Fund. A cursory glance at her transcript, with its tidy, monotonous fishing line of A’s, should suffice to recommend her. All I have to add is that she is as bright in person as she is on paper; she has not accumulated her perfect scores by fraudulent or suspicious means; and she appears to be a pleasant human being. (I am of the opinion that pleasantness is immaterial, but I am aware of brilliant but “difficult” students who have been denied funds.) Ms. Vang is not difficult. She is ambitious and diligent, a sophomore literature major with—may god offer her succor—a desire to become a professor of Engli_h.

The VP’s hectoring campaign about our paucity of resources continues, but you and I know that for students like Vang, the money is out there. Tell Sidney to open his purse strings and cough up the funds.

Carole: I’m still hoping you’ll agree to have lunch with me—nothing formal or off-campus if you aren’t comfortable yet with the idea. But maybe I could swing by your office with that artichoke salad you used to favor?

JTF

P.S.: I heard about the altercation at the diversity committee meeting, and I understand that my name was invoked. Didn’t I warn you about sitting near Janet? Did she take you on her favorite fault-finding tour through
Transfer of Affection
?

November 24, 2009

Confidential Reference for WJRX17794 Cynthia Goldberg Please complete the following to the best of your knowledge:

1. How long and in what capacity have you known the applicant?

Greetings, committee members. I have known Ms. Goldberg for almost three years. She was my student in two undergraduate classes: the twentieth-century American survey, which begins with

2. Give a brief description of the applicant’s aptitude and/or past performance
.

Ms. Goldberg received a B+ in the chaotic welter of the survey, an introductory course designed by the university to function as part academic lecture, part flash mob, because of the unrestricted and steadily rising numbers of enrolled students, 10 percent of whom failed due to ennui or inebriation (the class met at 8:00 a.m.) and subsequently faded back into the larger undifferentiated ooze of the campus. In the short story class she received a B-, perhaps unfairly. The size of the group

3. Do you know of any reasons why the applicant should not be given responsibility as stated on the list of qualifications above?

First, I’ll finish my response to question #2—your blasted form cut me off. The survey class enrolled seventy-five undergraduates, many of whom signed up because of my reputation for Sturm und Drang; bored by the material—that is,
books
—they nonetheless enjoy watching me pull at what remains of my hair while I stamp back and forth in paroxysms of incredulity caused by the half-baked ideas casually lobbed in my direction from the back of the room. Not granted a teaching assistant to help with the evaluation of essays, I was forced to require inclass exams rather than allow the students to draft and revise their work in the quiet sanctity of their dorm rooms. In an ideal world, I would outlaw literature exams entirely; I would also eschew the twin barbarities of “attendance” and “participation” as grading criteria, necessitated by workload increase. Ms. Goldberg

4. Are there any other comments you would like to add?

Yes: I would like to finish my fucking sentences. I suppose your organization is to be commended for not resorting to the absurd array of little black boxes in which recommenders like me are asked to rate applicants according to [ ] likelihood of earning a Nobel Prize, [ ] personal hygiene, [ ] ability to form coherent sentences not randomly punctuated by “like” or “really” or other verbal fluff, but given that your damnable form has cut me off every time I initiate a

5. Thank you!

November 25, 2009

Neologisms Conference Committee Denwood University

42A Roosevelt Hall

Denwood, NC 28078

Attention: Harold Duvlavsky Dear Harold:

Ms. Rowena Handel has recently submitted a proposal to your Neologisms Conference—a proposal, she now belatedly understands, that was to be accompanied by a letter of reference.

Ms. Handel is neither my advisee nor my student: she pinned me down outside the men’s room—conveniently adjacent to my office, so that my writing and research are invariably conducted to the flushing of waste—and, with the anxious desperation for which PhD candidates are justifiably known, trailed behind me into my office, installed herself in the red vinyl chair that has cradled the backsides of thousands, and insisted I listen to a frantic rendition of her proposal for the purposes of writing, on her behalf, this exalted document.

It is 2:00 p.m., tomorrow is Thanksgiving, and here in my office the snow is accreting in small picturesque clumps against the ill-fitting window, which rattles in its Dickensian casement.
The other faculty, including Ms. Handel’s advisors, have retreated like whack-a-moles into obscure campus locales or left town on vacation. Divorced, somewhat recently spurned, and therefore doomed to spend the holiday with two vegetarians from the Classics Department, I was apparently the only living member of the faculty the unfortunate Ms. Handel was able to find. That said: her proposal—entirely outside my field—appears to have merit. In particular, her examination of inventive phrases related to issues of gender identity—though of no interest to me—is probably worth sharing with a collegiate audience.

Note: My magnanimity and spirit of service will not extend so far as to persuade me to submit to your online recommendation, despite Ms. Handel’s willingness to enlighten me as to its mysteries or to prostrate herself on my linoleum floor. True, her proposal’s endorsement will be delayed until next week, but Thanksgiving—though tainted with oppression and bloodshed—is a national holiday, and your request for an LOR specifies only a date of
submission
, not receipt. Therefore by 3:20 p.m. this letter will be deposited in the quaint rectangular mouth of the blue mailbox, now quite sparkling and emphatic in the new-fallen snow; and I presume you will note the date of its postmark. Ms. Handel clawed repeatedly at her arms when I mentioned the mailbox (she asked if I had considered using the Pony Express), but, in the absence of an alternative mutually agreed-upon plan, she acquiesced.

Wishing you a scintillating conference, Jay Fitger, Professor, Recommender-for-Hire Payne University

P.S.: Harold—I saw your name on the list of Bentham advisory board members. While I don’t doubt your qualifications or your caliber as a scholar, I was under the impression that Bentham advisors (and obviously residents) were to be literary artists rather than academicians. Has that policy changed? Eleanor Acton—the new director—and I are long-ago classmates and onetime friends, and I’ve sent her several recommendations on behalf of a student novelist, Darren Browles, but have received no positive reply. Now I’m wondering if Eleanor’s years in the corporate world have warped her—and if any promising writer I might recommend to Bentham will, in favor of scholars regurgitating rancid tidbits of Derrida or Cixous, be turned away. Would you put in a good word for Browles? And: any insight—confidential of course—that you could provide on a possible seismic shift in Bentham’s raison d’être would be most appreciated.

December 2, 2009

Catfish Catering

790 South Campus Boulevard

Rana Abdul, General Manager Dear Ms. Abdul,

Seth Padoman has asked that I serve as a reference vis-à-vis his bid to secure an entry-level job in your catering establishment.

Let me be candid: the job market for young employment seekers is abysmal; otherwise, Mr. Padoman, who graduated with a BA in English last spring, would set his sights considerably higher. When last I spoke with him he was sheepishly dejected and confessed to living on microwaved food in his sister’s basement; I advised him to man up, polish his résumé, marshal his references (including mine), and retain an optimistic façade.

Still. Catfish Catering—all too familiar to those of us immured in the culinary universe of inexpensive university-sanctioned cuisine—is one of the most gruesome sources of provender on the planet. Oil (god only knows whether you’re using K-Y Jelly, lard, or some less well recognized lubricant) appears to be your primary ingredient regardless of the category of food. Last year at the banquet honoring the installation of our new provost, I made the mistake (yes, it was my error, I admit it) of consuming
a modest portion of tilapia from the groaning board; I was ill for three days. Substances I would never knowingly introduce to my body had apparently proliferated within it and were then rapidly expelled in unspeakable gouts. I counted myself fortunate, at the end of a week of gastrointestinal crisis, to be able to walk.

Seth Padoman is a bright-eyed, well-intentioned young man: not the most accomplished among recent clusters (in class he was perhaps best known as the author of a sci-fi tale about a mutant clan of gun-wielding arachnids that assumed control of a cocaine factory in Mexico), but eager and ambitious. He deserves a future, and therefore I recommend him to you on the condition that you not allow him to consume any foodstuffs produced by your place of business.

Yours in digestive health, J. T. Fitger

Professor, Department of English

December 7, 2009

Student Services/Fellowship Office

Carole “The Beneficent” Samarkind, Associate Director

14 Gilbert Hall

Carole:

Let this humble communiqué serve as my recommendation for Lee Rosenthal: the poor kid tells me he has applied for a spring semester job in your office. He can read and write; he’s not unsightly; and he doesn’t appear to be addicted to illegal substances prior to 3:00 p.m. Set him to work typing something. He finished the first half of my Junior/Senior Creative Writing Workshop with a B+ and is currently laboring away on a final short story—prescient soul—about a college graduate who lands a meaningless entry-level position in his father’s law firm, compromising his iconoclastic ideals and ambitions to make some cold hard cash.

Which reminds me: I heard what I sincerely hope was a scurrilous rumor to the effect that you are searching for work outside the velvet bonds of our institution. Be honest with me: Did Janet say something truly objectionable at the diversity committee meeting? (At an all-campus congress just before we divorced, she actually read aloud from
Transfer of Affection
, as if the novel itself were some sort of indictment. I admit to weaving
with the threads of real life on my loom, in
Transfer
and especially in
Stain
;
*
but the fictional, philandering George Fitzgerald in those books isn’t me [I only cheated on Janet once], and the fictional Nella, despite her rapaciousness, is not my ex-wife.)

To the point: Carole—it would be shortsighted and foolish for you to leave campus on my account. From this day forward, I won’t call your office more than once a week, and I promise never again to stop by unannounced with your favorite artichoke salad—which I ended up eating alone, by the way, on a cold metal bench on the quad, attracting the attention of itinerant polemicists and pamphleteers.

I will leave you in peace. And of course if I can’t persuade you to stay, I’d be willing to write you a recommendation …

Deep breath and new subject. Interview Rosenthal. Just ask him to keep his left arm covered, unless you want to be exposed to a fleshy panoply of R-rated tattoos.

With the usual professionalism and longing,

JF

*
The
Times
called it “an insider’s seedy, salacious guide to the notorious Seminar”—which probably nudged the book toward a second printing.

December 11, 2009

Theodore Boti, Sociologist and Commander-in-Chief Department of English Dear Ted:

Via this LOR I hereby nominate Gwendolyn Hoch-Dunn for this semester’s English Undergraduate Thesis Award. Ms. Hoch-Dunn has a 3.9 GPA and is currently completing, under my supervision, a thirty-five-page monograph on Edith Wharton’s
The House of Mirth:
specifically, an examination of romantic and economic trajectories in the novel. Hoch-Dunn is a superb student: she will graduate magna cum laude in spring, spend a year enlarging her personal horizon by teaching English abroad, and then succeed at whatever she chooses.