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-Hello and welcome to Book Lust.
I'm Nancy Pearl. My guest today at Folio, via
Zoom in downtown Seattle, is Julie Schumacher.
Her new book is called “The English Experience.”
And it concludes a wonderful, wonderful trilogy
that I wish would go on for more books.
Julie, thank you so much for joining us today.
-Thanks so much for having me.
-So, so where did the idea
for this trilogy begin?
-Well, it never started as a trilogy.
-Right, Right.
-I don't know how other people
who come up with series begin.
Maybe Sue Grafton with her “Alphabet,” that was planned out
beforehand, but it was just a one and done:
“Dear Committee Members.”
I was going to be finished with Jason Fitger,
but he warmed his way into my brain,
so I continued with him.
And the second book again thought I was finished.
And then I started
leading trips abroad with undergraduates.
-Oh, really?
-Every time I got I got to Madrid,
where I brought the students, I couldn't help thinking,
what would Jason Fitger, my character, make of this?
He was all over my all over my head.
-So it's a series of books
that feature a English professor
at a Midwestern university called Payne...
P-A-Y-N-E, Payne U.,
which I have to say what I when I was reading it,
I didn't get that joke right away until it took me
a while to get to that to to get that joke.
But “Dear Committee Members” is set in
it's an academic comedy and it is a it's composed
of letters,
emails, different ways of communication between
Jason Fitger your your, your hero and
the people that he's corresponding with.
So was that the way that you initially...
I mean, so here's what I thought.
I thought there was just one day...
You teach at the University of Minnesota, right?
-Yes. -And I just thought there was...
[coughs] Excuse me. One day that you were just deluged
with emails,
you know, from department head and students
and everybody and
and it just came to you that it would be fun to do this?
-Well, it started in part as an experiment with form.
You know, I was I was challenging myself.
Would it be possible
to write a novel in the form of letters of reference?
Because I had always admired
essays and short stories that had particular forms,
and I was frustrated with the number of letters
of recommendation that one needs
to write and receive and send in higher ed.
You know, it's a constant
environment of evaluating and being evaluated.
And I kept asking myself, “How many of these are actually
being read?”
All these letters that were constantly
scribbling and emailing to each other.
So I thought, “Well, I'll create this form
and this character
who is in some ways raging against the confines
of that form.”
What can you actually do within the confines of that
“Dear Sir, I heartily recommend so and so for this position.”
I thought it would be great fun to break
the form wide open and have someone just violate
all traditional bounds of protocol.
-And was it always...Was Jason Fitger always,
did he just come to you whole?
-He really did.
He really did.
He came from that form.
I thought,
what sort of person
would in, for example, a letter of reference for a
student talking about his sex life or his divorce or,
you know, being sure that someone
will probably not read his letter,
he would feel free to talk about anything.
And I thought, well, it has to be a massive egotist,
you know, a person who is wildly inappropriate,
[giggling] just insistent on
raging against
the confines of the system in which he finds himself.
So he he came, just he sprang almost entirely from
that letter of recommendation and restrictive form.
-Was there...
were there things, because you didn't plan it as a trilogy,
or you hadn't planned
at the beginning
that there would ever be other books about Jason Fitger,
were there decisions
that you made in that first novel that
made it harder
in the subsequent novels that you had to deal with?
I'm always interested in that kind of.
-That's an interesting question because,
you know,
when writing the second and the third,
I had to constantly go back.
I developed a lot of respect for people
who do write series of books because I thought,
what did this character look like?
[laughter] What is this person, old or young?
You know,
did they teach this discipline or that discipline?
I couldn't remember.
You know, often
somebody will ask me about a passage or a character
in an earlier novel, and I think
“I have no idea anymore when I made that decision
or why I wrote that paragraph or included that in a book.”
So it did take it felt like I was researching
my own work in a weird way.
[laughter] But I do like to have, and this was the genesis
for the first book that that form,
I do like to have some sort of confinement
or restriction in
and a writing project. Because if
you just have to face the wide
open white page day after day,
it's a terror. There are too many choices.
I feel like part of the object in writing a first draft
is to limit your choices, just to confine yourself
to something. -Sort of like what Robert Frost said about
free verse, that it was like playing tennis
without a net, you know, that kind of thing.
Yeah.
-There's a great phrase in Coetzee novel,
“Waiting for the Barbarians,” where the main character,
the magistrate, talks about the liberation of confinement.
It's a very different context, but I think about that.
You know, there's a freedom in having a restriction as a writer.
You just feel more secure and it gives you a momentum.
-Mm hmm. And and how much of
how much of Jason Fitzger is...
Well, so much of it must come from.
-Me? -Yes, yes.
[laughter] So much of it must come from your experience.
-I know.
I know that one of the editors I worked with
was talking to another at Doubleday who asked him,
“Is she really a scary person?”
You know, “What is this woman like?”
And he said, “No, she's she's a nice person.”
That’s what he told me he said.
And I feel like there's so many things
I would never say or do or,
you know, voice, but I could give all those things.
-Right. -To Jason Fitger. And it was wonderfully cathartic.
-Yeah. [laughter]
-You know,
you're in the middle
of a conversation
and you say,
“Oh, man,
I could come back with something.”
But you don't because you're talking to another nice person
and you want to be civil, etc..
But you wouldn't wouldn't have to do that.
He wouldn't need to play by those those rules.
So I loved playing with him.
Often he regrets the things that he says.
-Yeah -But it takes him a while.
-I always wanted to do a second Twitter
handle like “@BadNancy.”
Just saying.
Where I could say everything.
-”@BadNancy,” I'd subscribe. -[laughter] Right?
-And so the first book won The Thurber Prize for humor,
which which I thought was just absolutely wonderful,
because there aren't that many
humorous novels that
that are clever
and fun and interesting. I think which
which “Dear Committee Members” absolutely was.
But Jason Fitger,
when I was thinking about him, he's not an anti-hero.
I mean, he is the hero and he...you very cleverly,
in all the books, shown his humanity
and and, you know, his regret
for some of the things he says and for
and just just shown him to be a caring person,
especially toward his students,
and at a certain level, his ex-wife.
-I never wanted him to be 100% jerk.
-Right. -He's often a jerk.
You know, he has no diplomatic qualities.
He's just, you know, he's
voicey and absurd often.
But I do want the reader to care about him.
I feel like
it's always more interesting to deal with characters
who are flawed, you know, who wants to deal
with the saintly character all the time.
There's nothing to say about a saintly character.
They just. -Right.
-Do it.
So I.
I really like the idea of Fitger’s virtues
shining through the cracks and all those flaws
that he has, which are numerous, but
he cares deeply about the things that I care about,
you know, the arts
and humanities, which are, as ever under siege.
-Yeah. -You know,
especially arts and education.
Not just higher ed, but K through 12.
They're always the first things to to be cut.
And he rages against that.
So, yeah, I don't think of him
as an anti-hero as much as a very, very flawed hero.
-Yeah.
And somebody I think that
so many of us could identify with because, you know,
no matter who we are,
we do say stupid things sometimes, I think.
And Jason just happens to say perhaps more of them
than others.
But then in the second book, “The Shakespeare Requirement,”
you know, I think even more he comes into his own,
you know, as as somebody who
who who, as you said, cares about the things
that many of us care
about the arts and education and,
you know, the whole overtaking of the college experience
as as a job development rather than growing as a person.
-Mm hmm. Yeah.
And I think in each of the books,
it is the students that, yes, most allow him
or cause him to change, to develop as a human being.
You know, he's he's very bristly.
His ex-wife, at the beginning
of the English experiences him.
You don't even like students.
You know, you are the worst person
to be leading a trip abroad, which is is true.
He's not nurturing, she points out.
And he's never been together with students
24/7.
He's used to teaching an hour
and then the students leave, etc.
It's a shock to his system to be with them all the time,
but it does cause him to
understand things that he might not have understood
otherwise to.
Yeah, to change. Not radically.
He never radically changes.
He sounds... -Right, but he.
-You know, he does learn. -Yes.
Yeah.
And he and, you know, to give him credit,
he he didn't want to be the person
to escort those 11 kids to England.
He recognized how how you know,
how inadequate he would be in that position.
-And and he hates England.
England as a country he really does not care for.
He complains about the weather.
He complains about the food. -Right.
-He doesn't want to go, but he is basically strong armed
into going. -Right -To threaten them financially.
...from his department. -Right. Right.
Because by then he's the head of the English department,
which which was which occurred in
in the second book, “The Shakespeare Requirement.”
Did you enjoy writing these?
-I loved, loved, I loved it.
I mean “Dear Committee Members” in particular,
because I started it thinking this is
just a silly experiment and low stakes.
I'll probably throw it out.
It's just something I'm writing to amuse myself.
I didn't really think about it as a book.
It was sensible to silly things
I was scrawling in a notebook.
But after I had a number of the letters,
I kept thinking, “There must be a way
to really glue this thing together
to make it stand as a as a novel.”
I had reread a bunch of times that “84 Charing Cross Road,”
“Cycling Lane,”
and I loved the way that that fit together,
even though it was just the correspondence.
-Right.
Always admired the way that that fit together.
And I
read it over and over, figuring
I've got to be able to do this.
-So you teach creative writing
at the University of Minnesota.
I've often thought that if you go
into a writing project thinking about
not doing it for yourself,
I guess I guess I'll put that positively
that it seems to me the way to write
a novel is to write it for yourself.
Just what you just what you did.
Because.
Because I think if you start thinking about,
“Oh, maybe this will be published,
or will my agent like it or, you know,
can he or she sell it?”
I mean, then that
that kind of hamstrings you.
And but if you're doing it for yourself, then
you can be as sort of wild as you want.
-Yeah, I think so.
It sounds egotistical, but you often
hear writers say, “Well, I wrote it.
I was my first audience, you know,
and then I gave it to my spouse or to my right friend,
you know.”
Then I'm
writing it for two people and then three people
and only then when you feel like it's
successful to that small group of one or two or five.
-Yeah. -And you send it out. The few times that I have,
you know, written to
an assignment or to someone else's specifications,
I've not enjoyed the process at all.
Originally graduating from college, I thought,
Oh, I'll be a journalist because I like to write
and I just couldn't do it.
I didn't like writing what somebody else told me
to write. It has to be this long.
It needs to be about X, Y, and Z.
-Right. -Now I'm more of a daydreamer.
-In “The English Experience,”
one one of the reasons this is just
I mean, I have to say I chuckled
throughout this whole thing.
I just couldn't wait till it was published
because I so wanted to interview you to talk about it
and just, you know, to sort of laugh together.
Because right at the beginning
when Jason is kind of has his arm
twisted to, to be the leader of
of this group of 11 student undergraduate students.
He hates the whole idea of because there is a colon,
you know, a kind of misplaced colon
he thinks misplaced and he's just
and then and then he and his wife had a terrible trip
to England, as you as you alluded to.
So the whole thing gets off to a very bad start.
And then, but it's the kids in all of your books,
I think, who humanize the book
and humanize Jason
and I, I thought
I mean, especially the kids in “The English Experience.”
So one of the things that I most got a kick out of
was the student who's never there D.B.,
[laughter] who's who and everybody
else's, you know, going to Stonehenge and Bath,
D.B. is... -Sending text.
-Right, right, right.
And right. [inaudible]
-He sees yeah,
way over on the plane, but then the guy
just disappears, right?
-Yeah.
And and I mean, I think you just captured the
the students so remarkably well,
and they're writing because we read their essays.
And and and sort of like Jason and his writing,
the students are supposed to write
like a daily
a daily essay of 500 words I think
it is
about the experience that they had during the day.
And and yet even in those essays,
supposedly with a topic sentence, it's about this.
You learn so much about the students.
The students write about themselves.
-Yeah.
I feel like it's
I wanted it to feel a bit
like a bookend to “Dear Committee Members,”
because in “Dear Committee Members”
Fitgers writing about himself and letters
he's supposed to be writing about other people.
And in “The English Experience”
the students are supposed to be writing about, for example,
what did I see in the British Museum that was adventurous?
And they're writing about their love lives
and the fact that they don't like
the other person on the trip that they're rooming with or,
you know, their anger about various issues.
They overshare.
-Yes. -You over shared.
-Yes. -In the first of the three.
I mean, that to me is so
interesting about writing is there's a rule.
You're given a rule: write 500 words about X.
But it's always more interesting to break the rule.
Although, not correct if you're
turning in a paper in a class.
But I had great fun having the students violate
everything the way that Fitger had violated everything.
-Yeah... [muttering]
And it just it does make a lovely bookend
to “Dear Committee Members” and and I mean,
I think Jason Fitger ends
up caring about the students as much as he can care
about the students as he's able to.
But you as you as the reader
really care about about the students.
And you always put these little kickers in
which which I just appreciated.
You know, there's a couple on the trip.
I'm not going to
give anything away, but there's a couple on the trip
who have been like together since the seventh grade.
And he betrayed her.
And and then you hear about them in the epilog
about what happens to them.
And it was just so,
oh, Julie, I just thought you did such a great job.
I mean, I feel like you just wrote it for me
and anybody else who's looking.
[laughter] -I did write it for you.
I really do.
Oh, I had great fun with that epilog.
Because, you know, traditionally
you get to the end of a book, and I feel like
at the end of a good novel,
a reader often thinks,
Oh, I wish I knew what happened to those people.
And I wanted to give a bit of a hint
as to
what happened to those students
because he sees them for three weeks
where they're gone.
That's the nature of teaching.
You see a person during one
small sliver of their life and then often never again.
So yeah. They go with what
I wanted to give the reader a little bit of information
about them.
-There's a there's a wonderful dog in the book
I saw who named Rogaine,
which is a great a great a great name for a dog.
Did you do you have a dog?
-I do, but I got him as I was already writing the book.
-Oh, yeah. -The dog was in “The Shakespeare Requirement” also.
I had to.
That was something I had to look back on.
I thought originally I was going to set this new novel
in more contemporary time.
And then I thought, “Oh, no, the dog would probably
be dead.”
[laughter] I need to make it be earlier.
So yes, Rogaine has a hair growth problem.
So that's yeah, that's his name.
And he's shared between Fitger and his ex-wife.
-Right. Right.
Which which they have a little issue with.
And in, in this book you also write
you've written for
teens for young adults.
What is that how how would you decide
And how would you decide whether
a book that you're writing or an idea that you have
is aimed at that audience versus an adult audience?
-Yeah, that's that's that's a tricky issue.
-Yeah, tricky, especially now.
Yeah.
-Well, the first book I wrote for younger readers,
I did think it was going to be a young adult novel.
And then I was told by the editor,
this is a middle grade book
which I had, and I hadn't even heard the term at the time.
I just thought, “It's a book.”
And everything I wrote, the editor would simply decide,
“This is a young adult, this is middle grade,”
etc., etc.
I did have in-house readership.
My kids were young
when I was writing those books, and once they aged out
of the market,
I thought, “Wow, I
don't have my in-house readers.” [indiscernible]
You know, kids live a very technologically
obsessed life now,
and I am not a technologically savvy person.
I thought I would just have to write historical fiction
[laughter] for kids, because I don't really
I don't know what their lives consist of anymore.
Tweeting, being on TikTok, I just don't
I don't know what that is and how it feels, so
it wouldn't be something I’d do anymore.
-So I would say, you don't you don't think...
-..Rule it out...
I love writing for younger readers because of
the emails that you get from
a ten year old are so much lovelier
often then the ones that you get from adults.
Because you know,
I have one that somebody sent me years ago
who said, “You know, I want you to write another
book with this character because she is me.
I think you know who I am.
This is me. Will you please write another?”
You know, I just. I love. -Yeah,
yeah.
-You know, it's what you want in a book.
And a book can make such a massive impression
if it finds a young reader who, you know, just clicks
with it.
-What a lovely thing to get.
You know that? -Yeah, it was.
It was terrific.
Yeah.
I also had students write to me and say,
“My teacher made me read this book.
It was okay.”
That frankness. Okay.
I can appreciate that.
-Do you, do you read a lot of academic like David Lodge?
When I think about academic fiction,
when I was thinking about placing your book
in a context, you know, I thought about
David Lodge especially.
-Yeah, I had read David Lodge, Richard Russo,
Alison Lurie, Marcus.
But once I started with Jason
Fitger, I didn't look at any of them.
I thought,
“Oh no, I have to stay away because it will infiltrate
my brain and I just want Fitger to be Fitger.
-So you recorded for the audiobook
“The Shakespeare Requirement.”
-And “The English Experience.” -And “The English Experience.”
-Yeah, I wasn't sure about that because it wasn't out yet
when I. -Yeah.
-So did you enjoy that?
-I did.
Although this new one
“The English Experience,” was much more challenging
because there are
so many different voices. The undergraduate students
turn in these pieces of writing
and as I was recording, the audio engineer kept
saying to me,
“Can you give a little more, you know, more expression?
Can you differentiate these voices?”
And I thought, “I never even acted in high school.
I am not an actor.”
So at one point he asked me to do a British accent.
I thought,
“I know what a British accent sounds like, but I don't know
that I can do it.”
He was coaching me, you know, just two lines
for the British accent.
He would do a repeat after me, but it was kind of hilarious.
-I once read a
and I did an audio
recording for a 500 word picture book,
and the publisher was there,
you know,
and and she would be the one I mean, 500 words and
and she would say, “Can you put a little more oomph in it?”
And I, you know, and I had the same response like
“If you want somebody to do that, get an actor.”
You know I'm just this reader. -They had originally sent me
via email voices of several actors
reading the beginning of a novel
and asking me, which one would you choose?
And these are professional people.
They're terrific.
It's possible they would have done a better job than I,
but every time I listened to them,
I just thought, “No, the sentence shouldn't
fall that way. It should fall this way.”
You know,
I repeated everything that I've written down
so many times that it has a certain
rhythm and a cadence, and I just couldn't
hear it any other way.
-Yeah, that's how I felt.
I got to record my novel,
“George and Lizzie,” and
and I
couldn't imagine anybody else doing it
because it was always me telling the story...
-Yeah, you hear it. You hear it in your head.
-Exactly. Julie, our time is up.
I'm just so.
I'm so happy we got to do this.
And I just cannot tell you.
I just think these
these three novels capped by “The English Experience”
are just perfect reading for the world today.
-Oh, thank you so much.
I love talking to you.
-Thank you. Bye bye.
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