You might start him off in produce, rather than seafood or meats.
Whimsically,
Jason T. Fitger, Professor of Creative Writing/English
Payne University
September 14, 2009
Ted Boti, Resident Sociologist and Chair
Department of English
Dear Ted:
You’ve asked me to write a letter seconding the nomination of Franklin Kentrell for Payne’s coveted Davidson Chair. I assume Kentrell is behind this request; no sane person would nominate a man whose only recent publications consist of personal genealogical material and who wears visible sock garters in class — all he lacks is a white tin basin to resemble a nineteenth-century barber.
But if you want me to endorse his nomination in order to keep him quiet and away from your office (you will find him as persistent and maddening as a fly), you may excerpt the following sentences and affix my name to them: “Professor Franklin Kentrell has a singular mind and a unique approach to the discipline. He is sui generis. The Davidson Chair has never seen his like before.”
A word on the call for official, written letters of recommendation, Ted: I hope for the sake of all concerned you will cut back on these as much as possible. The LOR has become a rampant absurdity, usurping the place of the quick consultation and the two-minute phone call — not to mention the teaching and research that faculty were supposedly hired to perform. I haven’t published a novel in six years; instead, I fill my departmental hours casting words of praise into the bureaucratic abyss. On multiple occasions, serving on awards committees, I was actually required to write LORs to myself.
Keeping my temper under wraps for the present,
Jay
P.S.: I couldn’t help but notice, following the departure of the economists, that our Tech Help office has been largely vacated as well, a single employee — the appropriately named Mr. Duffy Napp — left behind to respond to faculty requests for computer assistance. This surly somnambulist rarely deigns to answer the most basic of questions and treats with exhausted dismay any individual who is not a specialist in computer arcana. Might it be possible to exchange “the Napper” for someone more civil and less lethargic?
P.P.S.: Thank you for your attention to my office window, which now closes, but due to an impressive crack in the frame — presumably caused by the earsplitting construction on the second floor — rainwater is trickling merrily down the inside of the glass and, as I type these words, entering the rusted slats of the heater. You might want to send someone to take a look.
September 17, 2009
Bentham Literary Residency Program
P.O. Box 1572
Bentham, ME 04976
Dear Overworked Committee Members,
Ms. Vivian Zelles has asked me — three days before your application deadline — to recommend her to your January residency program at Bentham, and herewith I oblige.
Ms. Zelles is an apt and diligent writer, a second-year graduate student in comparative literature currently enrolled, as a sort of academic stowaway, in my fiction workshop. Her project, to date, consists of a series of short, linked narratives on the subject of childhood and family and female relationships, romantic and otherwise. The work is young and presumably autobiographical; still, one can discern a spark of energy here and there in the occasional quirks of the tone. Ms. Zelles is not among the top tier of students I generally prefer to send your way (e.g., Darren Browles — see my LOR of September 3), but in the coming year or two her work may mature.
Feel free to contact me for further information via phone or e-mail. And forgive the brevity of this letter: I do believe that student writing speaks for itself, and though the academic year has just started I fear I am already losing the never-ending battle to catch up with the recommendations requested of me. Suffice it to say that the LOR has usurped the place of my own work, now adorned with cobwebs and dust in a remote corner of my office.
Continuing to wish you well with the search for a new director,
Jason T. Fitger
Professor of Creative Writing and English
Payne University
September 22, 2009
Payne University Law School Admissions
c/o Janet Matthias (aka Janet Matthias-Fitger)
17 Pitlinger Hall
Dear Admissions Committee Members — and Janet:
This letter recommends Melanie deRueda for admission to the law school on the well-heeled side of this campus. I’ve known Ms. deRueda for eleven minutes, ten of which were spent in a fruitless attempt to explain to her that I write letters of recommendation only for students who have signed up for and completed one of my classes. This young woman is certainly tenacious, if that’s what you’re looking for. A transfer student, she appears to be suffering under the delusion that a recommendation from any random faculty member within our august institution will be the key to her application’s success.
Janet: I know your committees aren’t reading these blasted LORs — under the influence of our final martini in August you told me as much. (I wish I had an ex-wife like you in every department; over in the Fellowship Office, the formerly benevolent Carole continues to maintain an icy distance. I should think her decision to quit our relationship would have filled her with a cheerful burst of self-esteem, but she apparently views the end of our three years together in a different light.)
Ms. deRueda claims to be sending her transcripts and LSAT scores at the end of the week. God help you — this is your shot across the bow — should you admit her.
Still affectionately your one-time husband,
Jay
P.S.: I’ve heard a rumor that Eleanor — yes, that Eleanor, from the Seminar — is a finalist for the directorship at Bentham. You got back in touch with her despite her denouncements of me; do you have any intel?
P.P.S.: A correction: you got back in touch with Eleanor because she denounced me. I remember you quoting what she said when I published Transfer of Affection: that I was an egotist prone to repeating his most fatal mistakes. I’ll admit to the egotism — which is undeniable — but I’d like to think that, after fourteen years of marriage, you knew me better than Eleanor did. We were happy for some of those fourteen years, especially before Transfer; why shouldn’t I believe that you were right about me, too?
September 30, 2009
Field-Bantry College of Government and Public Affairs
Office of Graduate Admissions
447 Peck Hall
Whaylon, PA 19522
Dear Committee Members,
This letter recommends Ms. Stella Castle to your graduate institution in the field of public policy. And to begin this recommendation on the proper footing: no, I will not fill out the inane computerized form that is intended to precede or supplant this letter; ranking a student according to his or her placement among the “top 10 percent,” “top 2 percent,” or “top 0.000001 percent” is pointless and absurd. No faculty member will rank any student, no matter how severely lacking in ability or reason, below “top 10 percent.” This would be tantamount to describing the candidate in question as a witless beast. A human being and his or her caliber, intellect, character, and promise are not reducible to a check mark in a box. Faced with a reductionist formula such as yours, I despair for the future, consoling myself with the thought that I and others of my generation, with its archaic modes of discourse, won’t live to see the barren cyberworld the authors of your recommendation form are determined to create.