Dear Committee Members: A Novel Read Online Free PDF

Committee Members—with cc to Eleanor Acton, Director: This is the third letter I have written on behalf of Mr. Darren Browles, who recently received from your office a computerized notice that, of his three required letters of recommendation, only two have been received. Why each application to Bentham necessitates three written LORs I leave to sages and philosophers to decipher. As for the letters in Mr. Browles’s case (your office has refused to identify their authors): let’s count them. One is mine, dated September 3 (with a follow-up/coda on October 5). Two is the letter from his foreign language advisor; I just wandered across the quad and spoke to Herr Zimmunt to secure his jawohl in regard to this endorsement. Letter # Three , Browles informs me, was originally to have come from Helena Stang, who led him on an e-mail goose chase for over a month until finally reporting, as if from her satin fainting couch, that she was “too busy.” He had no choice at that point but to turn to his administrative advisor, Martin Glenk, who (unbeknownst to poor Browles) wrests fleeting moments of joy from the opportunity to denigrate my students.
    Armed with these bitter herbs of information, I undertook this morning the short but unhappy stroll past the men’s room (the toilets of which send their constant flushing sound through the vent in my office) to the literature wing of our department. Typically I am loath to poke about in that arm of the building, around the corner from the WELCOME TO ENGLI_H sign and the faded sofas on which, after hours, the undergraduates presumably enjoy one another’s favors. To be blunt: many of the literature faculty and I are no longer speaking, and a third of their number, due to a construction project in our hallowed hall, have moved their offices to remote outposts of campus, delighting in the knowledge that their colleagues will be unable to find them. Logically, one might suggest that I solicit the assistance of my department chair, but he is a professor of sociology, appointed by the university’s warlords to rule our asylum until the inmates exhibit greater pliability and calm.
    In any event, I did ultimately locate the elusive Glenk, who, after wiping his nose on the back of his sleeve, refused to confirm or deny the existence of his LOR on Browles’s behalf. In case he sends or has sent a letter, allow me to provide some context for it: Glenk is a merciless and vengeful chucklehead—an Eliot scholar suffering from the delusion that he is a poet, though he hasn’t written a word of any significance for a dozen years.
    Eleanor, I appeal to you: Darren Browles doesn’t need three LORs, and his “Bartleby” novel needn’t be subject to the sordidaspersions of a cretin like Glenk. Don’t let him be punished for my lack of popularity among my colleagues, present or past. (I include the word “past” to encompass any rivalry or unpleasantness between the two of us during the Seminar; our personal discord has no bearing on Browles, and I’d like to spare him the politicized trauma of our earlier years.) Seeking to bury the hatchet or at least dull its blade, Jay
    P.S. (to Eleanor): Speaking of our Seminar years, I got a letter from Troy Larpenteur last week—resurfaced at last, somewhere in Ohio. His tone was cautiously upbeat, but I suspect he has been unwell for a very long time. He needs a recommendation, of course. Do you know if he’s been in touch with anyone else? Would Madelyne TV have kept track of him?

November 16, 2009
    ITech Solutions
    271 Riverview Way
    Dubuque, Iowa 52003
    Attention: Maxine Wells Dear Ms. Wells,
    I am overjoyed by the opportunity to recommend Mr. Duffy Napp to your firm. Mr. Napp currently serves as the sole remaining member of what used to be the “Tech Help team” in our Department of English, and he clearly suffers under the burden of our collective ignorance. Mr. Napp demonstrates all the winsome ebullience one expects these days from a young