Hilarity, Heartbreak, and Writing with Constraints
Julie Schumacher is the author of the Dear Committee trilogy (the latest installment of which is The English Experience, out in paperback this week), several young-adult novels, and the playful activity book Doodling for Academics. She will be “The Guest Bookseller,” signing copies of her books and recommending her favorites from our stacks, on Thursday, July 25, 2024, for 2pm-4pm.
Fresh out in paperback this week (July 23), The English Experience is Julie’s third book in the Dear Committee series, and was lauded “heartbreaking and hilarious” by Richard Russo.
Transom Bookshop: I’ve noticed that most realistic, literary fiction set today seems obligated to reference politics and the pandemic, even if those things are not central to the plot. Though published in 2023, your book is set in 2014. Was this an intentional choice? Is there some freedom or absolution in setting a novel in The Before Times?
Julie Schumacher: It was not quite an intentional choice. My first draft of the book was set mid-pandemic, but then I realized that I wanted the dog, Rogaine, who appeared in The Shakespeare Requirement, to have a role, and Rogaine would have been dead by 2022. So I rolled the clock back. But it's an interesting question. Every writer I knew who was working during or immediately after the pandemic was trying to figure out whether and how to situate Covid in their novels.
TB: Most of The English Experience takes place in (spoiler!) England. To write a place, how well do you personally have to know it? Do the locations in the novel hold any special meaning for you?
JS: Well, the idea for the novel came from my experience teaching a travel-writing class, which involved taking groups of undergraduates to Spain. I don't like to hew too closely to truth, so I decided to have Jason Fitger take his students to England instead. I spent quite a bit of time in Oxford because my spouse had a temporary teaching gig there, and that allowed me to drag him to some of the places -- Bath, Stonehenge, etc -- that appear in the book. I don't think I could have set the book in the UK if I hadn't spent time there.
TB: This book is polyphonic, both in that the main narrative features a dozen-plus characters and voices, but you also weave in the students’ essays, each with their own quirky style and grammar (such as it is). How do you manage so many distinct voices in a fairly taut novel? How do you choose what voices to spotlight and when?
JS: I like beginning a writing project with a structure or form. Structure feels, to me, like such a useful constraint.... In Dear Committee Members I gave myself the task of writing a novel in the form of reference letters. It was a sort of puzzle, a way of beginning not with the blank white page but with a defined task. So in The English Experience I gave myself the task of creating a novel built in part from undergraduate essays -- and that led to the creation of the students that would need to write them. I loved creating those student voices; it was great fun. There were some that I immediately fell in love with, and those voices ended up with more air time than others.
TB: Having taught undergrad courses for a few years, I immediately recognized a lot of the internal staff dynamics and student archetypes. But the average reader might not pick up on this. Did you have an audience in mind when writing the series? Is there a risk in a story coming off as too “inside baseball”?
JS: There's always a risk of inside baseball. If you write a spy novel, people who love spy novels will read it; if you write a romance, romance readers will snap it up. But I think the object is to write a spy novel or romance that will transcend its category. I buy Tana French's mysteries even though I'm not a mystery reader, because French writes so well and her characters are terrific. I think my academic satires are probably read most often by people with some teaching experience -- but almost everyone has spent time in a classroom, whether K-12 or university, and can (I hope) appreciate the occasional wackiness of that environment.
TB: Richard Russo called your novel, “Wise and hilarious and heartbreaking.” That’s an impressive highwire act to pull off! In writing this novel, which of those (the wisdom, the hilarity, the heartbreak) came most easily to you, and which did you find required the most effort?
JS: I was thrilled with that quote from Richard Russo. And I think hilarity, heartbreak and wisdom are a nice trio: heartbreak often brings wisdom, and humor, I think, can carry a sadness behind it -- or maybe that's just how I view the world....
TB: The English Experience is the third (but not final?) book featuring Jason Fitger in the Dear Committee series. Did you set out to write a trilogy? With a character like Jay, who seems to leap off the page, how do you know when to point your proverbial camera at him and tell his story?
JS: No, it never occurred to me that I would write a trilogy. I don't think I ever would have begun if I had thought of that as my goal. Typically when I've finished a novel, I'm exhausted and tired of the characters and eager to move on to something new. But I fell in love with Jason Fitger, despite his disagreeable nature. He takes up a good portion of my brain now; I've had a hard time letting him go.
TB: The novel ends (no spoiler) with a tiny glimpse into the future, and it’s a pretty redemptive and optimistic one. Will we see Jay again, or was that your way of saying goodbye to him?
JS: I've said goodbye to him for a while, at least. But never say never. And I'm glad you found the ending redemptive and optimistic. Heartbreak and wisdom and hilarity....
Julie’s ‘Guest Bookseller’ Picks
Stop by Transom this week (Jul 22, 2024) to see Julie’s novels alongisde her hand-picked ‘comps’.
