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Ratings13
Average rating3.9
15
Ratings13
Average rating3.9
"Jason Fitger is a beleaguered professor of creative writing and literature at Payne University, a small and not very distinguished liberal arts college in the Midwest ... His once-promising writing career is in the doldrums, as is his romantic life, in part as the result of his unwise use of his private affairs for his novels ... In short, his life is a tale of woe, and the vehicle this ... novel uses to tell that tale is a series of ... letters of recommendation that Fitger is endlessly called upon by his students and colleagues to produce, each one of which is a small masterpiece of high dudgeon, low spirits, and passive-aggressive strategies"--Amazon.com.
Featured Series
2 primary booksJason Fitger is a 2-book series with 2 primary works first released in 2014 with contributions by Julie Schumacher.
Reviews with the most likes.
My hangover prevents me from trying to be witty in this review, so I'll just list why I liked - LOVED - this book.
1. It is really funny. Actual laughing out loud happened when I read it.
2. The format is interesting. At times I had to go back and find the first letter that mentions someone to get the context, but that small inconvenience was balanced by the pleasure I got from the way the format allowed things to unfold.
3. Jay is mad at/resigned to the stupidity of our modern culture, especially the damn kids these days. I too am mad about this.
4. The English Department is being slowly killed off in favor of the sciences, and Jay is fighting the good fight to preserve literature at his school. Some of the funniest passages in the book.
5. The writing is smart, never shying away from a big word or a slyly-cutting turn of phrase. I wish I spoke like this book.
Verdict: fantastic. Easily one of my favorite books that I have read this year.
An acerbic, disillusioned professor of English and Creative Writing writes a series of letters of recommendation, revealing himself and the lives of those around him in the process. This book grew on me. I wasn't very engaged when I started, but about halfway through I realized I was enjoying it quite a bit. The letters are outrageously funny, sometimes because they accomplish the opposite of what a letter of recommendation is normally supposed to do. By the end, the book had done much more than make me laugh (at how little English departments are appreciated, at how eccentric and quarrelsome academics are, at how maddening administrative procedures can be)–it had filled me with sympathy for people dealing with the pain of being alive, and with appreciation for a well-written and hilarious, if completely counterproductive, letter of recommendation.
Clever and funny. There are lots of terrific passages and lines.
But the format does wear after a while and I found that I was missing a “story.”
I very much enjoyed this little book. I haven't read very many epistolary novels, and I thought it was an interesting choice to have letters from only one character, with no replies or responses included. In my opinion, that decision paid off beautifully for two reasons. Firstly, many of the letters are letters of recommendation, which inherently have that screaming-into-the-void quality about them. But also, I got the impression that replies wouldn't have had even the smallest impact on Fitger, the letter writer. The risk with the approach, of course, is that hearing only one voice for the entirety of the book would get tiresome, but Schumacher handled it beautifully, balancing Fitger's snark with a healthy dose of sincerity. I'm hoping that the fact that Goodreads lists this as Fitger #1 means that there's a sequel on the way.
