Dear Committee Members

by Julie Schumacher

She is obviously brilliant, but I find her off-putting and a bit of a cipher. She has a mind like a bric-a-brac storehouse of facts: a surplus of content put to questionable use.

(Blaise Pascal: I apologize that my letter is so long; I lacked the time to make it shorter.)

Be reassured: the literature student has learned to inquire, to question, to interpret, to critique, to compare, to research, to argue, to sift, to analyze, to shape, to express. His intellect can be put to broad use. The computer major, by contrast, is a technician—a plumber clutching a single, albeit shining, box of tools.

carrying their psychic burdens in front of them like infants in arms.

Literature has served me faithfully (no pun intended) as an ersatz religion, and I would wager that the pursuit of the ineffable via aesthetics in various forms has saved as many foundering souls as a belief in god.

panegyrics.

we’ve already hired a semicompetent aphasic at less than half of Louise’s pay.

The worst fate some undergrads can imagine for themselves: full employment, a home, a spouse and kids, a car.