Ms. Castle was a student in my American Literature Survey a year ago. She is a serious-minded young woman whose analytical skills and arguments demonstrate a subtle acumen. More than once, in class, I saw her politely demolish another student’s interpretation of a work of literature by asking a series of seemingly innocent but progressively incisive questions. Perhaps oddly, I remember thinking of Ms. Castle as a highly articulate snake: sliding gracefully into an argument, speaking in lucid, sibilant phrases (she endows the letter S with the faintest suggestion of a whistle), and then striking to inject the requisite venom.
Ms. Castle wrote a final, exquisite essay on Willa Cather’s The Professor’s House—probably a lost tome as far as you policy wonks are concerned—on which she received a well-deserved A.
I recommend her to you very highly. She is excellent. She will not fit into any of your miniature boxes. I will now insert this letter in an envelope, maintaining a paper copy for safekeeping in a drawer by my desk, after which I will take a short stroll to the picturesque blue mailbox on the corner, opening its creaking rectangular metal mouth and dropping the envelope within.
Trusting the U.S. Postal Service to deliver this missive to you in a timely fashion, I am
J. Fitger
Professor and Upholder of the Ancient Flame
Payne University
October 5, 2009
Eleanor Acton, Director
Bentham Literary Residency Program
P.O. Box 1572
Bentham, ME 04976
Dear Eleanor,
Congratulations on the dictatorship (haha!) directorship! Well done! Who would have guessed, twenty-some years ago when we were living on pizza crust and challenging the poets to recitation games* in the student lounge, that you’d be in charge of Bentham and I’d be sending you my best and my brightest? In any case, kudos. Toiling for decades through the murk of the corporate world and then the nonprofits must not have been easy, but I’m sure you’ve garnered some valuable expertise.
I’m appealing to you directly to recommend in emphatic terms an advisee and student, Darren Browles. I’m aware that your committees are beavering through mountains of applications for the January residencies, and while winter seems distant at this time of year (as I type this letter, shirtless undergrads are frolicking on the quad), I assume that decisions will be made under pressure, and soon. Hence this additional recommendation on behalf of Mr. Browles, who shuffled into my office this morning, dejected, to tell me he will be taking a leave of absence this spring for financial reasons. He should have had a teaching assistantship, but our graduate program has been put on the chopping block, all funds to be diverted to the technical fields.
Eleanor: If Bentham could offer Browles a residency not only for the January term but through spring, I’m confident he can finish his manuscript, Accountant in a Bordello, and then his degree. As a prose stylist, Browles is a high-wire performer—but if he loses momentum … We’ve both been there, Eleanor: I have a desk half full of projects that, lacking time and attention, have succumbed to these small, pitiful deaths; and I’m sure your slender volume of stories (Janet bought two copies the week it came out) would have been followed by a novel, had your schedule allowed. The bottom line: I’m making a personal appeal, for the sake of our years together in the Seminar, that you arrange to float Browles financially at Bentham through winter and spring.
Anticipating a positive reply,
Jay
P.S.: I’m aware that you and Janet reestablished a correspondence during the period of our marriage’s dissolution and I hope any vitriol she might have expressed won’t compromise my professional relationship with you. (In case you’re waiting for me to acknowledge that I behaved like an ass, I hereby admit it; but Janet has forgiven me: we see each other twice a year on what was our wedding anniversary, in August, and on the date when we signed our divorce agreement, February 3.) There’s no changing the past; we can only stumble haphazardly forward. I appreciate any particular attention you can devote to Darren Browles.
* * *
* They usually beat us, of course, but we were reading several novels a week, while their coursework fit comfortably on a single folded sheet of loose-leaf in a pants pocket. Ah, the strenuous life of the poet: he snips a few adjectives from the daily paper, tapes them in a spiral to his office door, and calls the workweek done.
October 8, 2009
Philip Hinckler, Dean
College of Arts and Sciences
1 MacNeil Hall
Dear Dean Hinckler,
I write in support of my colleague, Assistant Professor Lance West, regarding his nomination for the university’s Campiello Undergraduate Advising and Service Award. West is a solid junior scholar; more apropos of the current occasion, he has served for three of his four short years at Payne in administration, directing the undergraduate writing center and the much contested/maligned composition program. (No reasonable person outside a university would believe the teaching of composition to be controversial, but of course it is.) Professor West has an open-door policy and a rapport—one is almost tempted to call it a flair—with the incoming freshmen. He has worked hard, he has done what was asked of him, and—in the wake of the deliberate gutting of the liberal arts, English in particular, in favor of the technological sciences—he has held together the tattered scraps of the literature and writing programs, which the faceless gremlins in your office have condemned to indigence and ruin.
Furthermore, West is not yet jaded or cynical; a former Eagle Scout, he maintains a “team spirit” approach to the institution. Before construction forced us to seal ourselves into our offices like agoraphobic strangers in a cut-rate motel, I could frequently hear, across the hall and three doors down, in West’s office, the contented chatter of freshmen being persuaded that clarity of expression might be achievable as well as worthwhile.
Only by rewarding West and others of his happy ilk, and perhaps by killing off senior faculty, myself included, will it be possible for that elusive and almost mythical beast—collegiality—to prevail. (You may have thought that plunging us into receivership and imposing an outsider as our chair would serve to unite us, but Boti is sadly out of his element; he wanders the halls, bewildered, with a soiled bandanna affixed to his face* like a madman descending into a dream.)
Other LORs cascading onto your desk like autumn leaves may suggest that the Campiello Award, associated with a modest financial settlement and a plaque on which the administration does its best to spell the awardee’s name correctly, should be given to a colleague more senior than West. This is shortsighted thinking. West is not yet entrenched, and because of the caliber of his scholarship and his regular presence at the requisite conferences, he is rapidly making a name for himself. If we don’t engage in an aggressive effort to retain him, other (more prestigious) institutions will poach. West is unprepossessing—but he is also a striver. Put a ladder in front of him and he will eagerly climb it. So much intellectual will and ambition! I confess: at this point of my career, that sort of enthusiasm fatigues me. The role that is left to me is to stand in the patronizing shadow of my younger and more aspiring colleagues and push. Up the chimney with you, and don’t get soot on your knickers along the way!
Those of you in the superior ranks of the Land of Red Tape would do well to watch your backs: if West hasn’t yet fled the institution, he’ll have one of your jobs in a few short years.
With the customary respect and a nod of deference,
Jason Fitger, Professor/Hazardous Materials Specialist
Willard Hall
* * *
* We are inhaling more dust over here in Willard Hall than an average coal miner—please send a backup supply of medical masks ASAP.
October 16, 2009
Avengers Paintball, Inc.
1778 Industrial Blvd.
Lakeville, MN 55044
Esteemed Avengers,
This letter recommends Mr. Allen Trent for a position at your pai
ntball emporium. Mr. Trent received a C– in my expository writing class last spring, which—given my newly streamlined and increasingly generous grading criteria—is quite the accomplishment. His final project consisted of a ten-page autobiographical essay on the topic of his own rageful impulses and his (often futile) attempts to control them. He cited his dentist and his roommate as primary sources.
Consider this missive a testament to Mr. Trent’s preparedness for the work your place of business undoubtedly has in store.
Hoping to maintain a distance of at least one hundred yards,
Jason T. Fitger
Professor of Creative Writing and English
Payne University (“Teach ’til It Hurts”)
October 17, 2009
(My all-inclusive calendar invites me to celebrate Diwali today)
Ken Doyle
Hautman and Doyle Literary Agency
141 West 27th Street
New York, NY 10001
Dear Ken—
Business first: I’m writing on behalf of a student—you remember students from our Seminar days, I’m sure—Darren Browles, who is currently putting the finishing touches on a powerhouse work of fiction: a debut novel, an excerpt from which, if I manage to knock some sense into his rocky skull, will be on your desk next week.
Accountant in a Bordello is a shattering reinterpretation of “Bartleby” the main character, tight-lipped introvert Herman Crown, is an accountant at one of the biggest legal whorehouses in the state of Nevada, spending his days tallying expenses, passing up opportunities at wealth and advancement, eschewing friendships, and generally maintaining, amidst the titillating hubbub of his surroundings, a dispassionate isolation, an existential solitude. The prose—at one moment profoundly spare, the next moment rococo—is entirely his own; Ken, it’s like nothing you’ve ever seen. I urged him to send you the entire manuscript (which, admittedly, should be trimmed, at five-hundred-plus pages), but Browles is cautious and will probably submit only the first several chapters. As his advisor, even I haven’t read the book straight through—Browles hands me a chunk, scuttles back to his hidey-hole to revise, then reappears with another. Ken: take him on. This is a book that—after a little light housework—should garner multiple bids at auction. And a healthy advance will allow Browles to trim and to work with a top-notch editor on the final version.
On the personal side: I’m sorry about the tone of the conversation we had last year. Transfer of Affection didn’t sell the way either of us had hoped (where did that pinhead in the Inquirer get off calling it an “embarrassment for both author and reviewer”?), but that was a blip, not a moratorium—and for you to hand the excerpt of my novel in progress to your assistant … Well, never mind. Water under the bridge and all that; I’m sure the twelve-year-old you assigned the task of evaluating my work did her utmost. In any case, I hope you won’t let the memory of any previous quibbles prevent you from recognizing a phenomenon like Browles, who, I believe, will soon be enjoying some literary solitude at Bentham.
You’ve heard that Eleanor A. is now Bentham’s director? Do you remember her throwing an apple core at me across the Seminar table in HRH’s class? She was ill-disposed toward me even before I wrote and published Stain. Here’s hoping her directorial skills are better than her throwing arm.
Nostalgically,
Jay
October 20, 2009
Confidential Reference for LTZ39JN7 Jervana Natal
1. How long and in what capacity have you known the applicant?
Ms. Natal is a senior due to graduate in May of this coming year. I have known her for
Confidential Reference for LTZ39JN7 Jervana Natal
1. How long and in what capacity have you known the applicant?
I have known Ms. Natal for approximately eight weeks. She is a senior due to graduate in
Confidential Reference for LTZ39JN7 Jervana Natal
You have requested technological assistance regarding the submission of the above-named reference. Please describe the problem you are experiencing.
The problem I am experiencing is that every time I hit the fucking return key or try to indent a
Confidential Reference for LTZ39JN7 Jervana Natal
the fucking return key or try to indent or god forbid fit a coherent sentence into your fucking
October 23, 2009
Student Services/Fellowship Office
14 Gilbert Hall
Attn: The Gentle Carole Samarkind, Associate Director
Dear Carole:
This letter’s purpose is to provide the usual gratuitous language recommending a student, one Gunnar Lang, for a work-study fellowship. Lang—a sophomore with a mop of blond dreadlocks erupting from the top of his head like the yellow coils of an excess brain—tells me that he has applied, unsuccessfully, for this same golden opportunity three times and that this is his final attempt to satisfy our university’s endless requests for redundant documentation. He needs a minimum of eight to ten hours of work-study per week—preferably in the library rather than the slops of food service. Deny him the fellowship and he will undoubtedly turn his hand to something more lucrative, probably hawking illegal substances between the athletic facilities and the Pizza Barn.
I’ll go ahead and point out the obvious: Lang’s GPA is a respectable 3.4; he’s on track, academically, despite a shift from psychology to English; and a ten-minute conversation with the subject himself reveals that he has bona fide thoughts and knows how to apportion them into relatively grammatical sentences. You should do yourself a favor and invent a reason to meet him. He’s charming in a saucy, loose-limbed way, and his hair—his parents did right to name him Gunnar—is a phenomenon unto itself that I suspect you’ll enjoy.
There: Lang has my stamp of approval and imprimatur. Now let me say how appreciative I am of the cordial professionalism you’ve reestablished between us. I’m sure you know how profoundly I regret that boneheaded e-mail in August, and of course I don’t blame you for cutting things off (though I wish you’d told me you’d be reclaiming the coffee machine, which was a gift, after all; I’m reminded of its absence every day by a circle of grime on the Formica).
Side note: I saw that you and Janet are both serving on the diversity committee.* Might that be … awkward? I do hope you won’t sit next to each other. Even six years after our divorce, Janet considers herself an expert on the subject of my many foibles, and she is often eager to share her questionable wisdom with others. Fair warning here, Carole: though smooth-spoken and polished, Janet is as cunning as a wolverine.
Back to business. Please get the work-study fellowship for Lang and put him in the library, or even here in the department. He needs to acquaint himself with the nineteenth century before I let him loose in Donna Lovejoy’s class.
Missing you (and missing my coffee),
J.
* * *
* I was barred from that committee myself; my filibuster last year (I argued that the arts are a form of diversity) was sadly characterized as “divisive.”
October 28, 2009
Payne University Medical School*
Admissions Office
375 Newton Hall
Dear Committee Members,
This letter recommends Vivian Zelles for admission to Payne University’s medical school. Ms. Zelles is an excellent student, as will be obvious from her scores and transcripts. The recipient of an undergraduate double degree in biochemistry and music (enhanced by a minor in English), she is currently pursuing a master’s in comparative literature while simultaneously composing a book-length novel/memoir, a coy mishmash of forms. She is a member of that rare breed whose feet are planted as firmly in the arts as in the sciences.
I have known Ms. Zelles for approximately nine months, in the context of two creative writing workshops. She is a fastidious and methodical stylist: one imagines her setting each word in place with a jeweler’s loupe. Her ultimate plan, in applying to med school, may be to join the ranks of physician-w
riters who, not content to leave the pursuit of literary success to the starving artist, complement their million-dollar medical salaries with Random House contracts. (Move over, Gawande and Hosseini!)
I recommend Ms. Zelles to you with all the usual accolades these letters are expected to provide.
Yours on the underfunded wing of the campus,
Jay Fitger, Professor of Creative Writing and English
Author
Provocateur
* * *
* You must have more fun with the name over there than we do.
October 29, 2009
Janet Matthias … Fitger
Payne University Law School—Admissions
17 Pitlinger Hall
Dear Law School Admissions Committee/Janet:
This letter recommends Vivian Zelles to your esteemed body. Ms. Zelles is an excellent student as will be obvious from her scores and transcripts. She is applying for a residency at Bentham and to Payne’s medical school as well as the law school; whether this diffuse approach indicates a wide range of interests or some sort of chemical imbalance or illness, I haven’t a clue.
Dear Committee Members: A novel Page 2
