Wikipedia

Tito Perdue

Tito Perdue (born 16 August 1938) is an American novelist. His works include his 1991 debut Lee.

Tito Perdue
Born
Albert Monroe Perdue

(1938-08-16) 16 August 1938 (age 87)
Sewell, Chile[1]
Pen nameTito Perdue
OccupationNovelist
NationalityAmerican
Alma materAntioch College, University of Texas
GenreNovel, satire
SubjectDegeneration, beauty
Notable worksLee (1991)
Spouse
Judy Clark
​
(m. 1957)​
Children1
Website
titoperdue.com

Personal life

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Early life and education

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Perdue was born Albert Perdue to American parents in Chile, where his father worked as an electrical engineer for the Braden Copper Company.[1][a] The family returned to the United States in 1941, upon the country's entering the War. Perdue was brought up in Anniston, Alabama.[2][3] He graduated from Indian Springs School in 1956.[3] He attended Antioch College for a year before he was expelled for cohabiting with a fellow student, Judy Clark.[3] They married in 1957.[3][4]

Perdue received a BA in English literature from the University of Texas, and an MA in modern European history and an MLS from Indiana University.[5]

Career

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He then worked as an assistant professor and librarian at universities including Iowa State University and SUNY Binghamton.[6][7][8] During this time, he contributed under his birth name to scholarly journals of history and library science.[9][8][10][11][12]

In 1983, he retired to his mother's family's Alabama property to write full time.[13][14] He wrote The Sweet-Scented Manuscript first; though this would be his fourth novel published.[15]

Family

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Judy Perdue worked as a librarian and professor of biology at Floyd College and elsewhere.[4][16] She is fellow of the Royal Entomological Society (London) and member of other learned associations.[4][16] Her father, Christopher Clark, wrote novels of working class life, including The Unleashed Will (1947) and Good Is for Angels (1950).[17][18][19][20]

The Perdues have one daughter.[4][16] They live in Centreville and Wetumpka, Alabama.[21]

Views

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As of 2001, Perdue was a member of the League of the South (since renamed), an American organization which the ADL and SPLC have characterized as "Neo-Confederate" and "white supremacist."[2][22][23]

Work

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Perdue's novels are picaresques, built of "disjointed episodes."[21][24] He explains: "I don't believe that prose should be translucent. I don't believe that plot is all that matters. I believe that language matters greatly. ... My books have very little plot. I don't even like plot."[2] Perdue often incorporates elements of fantasy (like active volcanoes in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Alabama)[25] or, in later novels, science fiction (like the "escrubilator," an indescribable "omni-competent" machine).[26]

The Pefley sequence

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Many of Perdue's novels chronicle the life of Leland "Lee" Pefley,[27] an alter ego who, Perdue explains, "actually carries out actions that his creator would often wish to perform if he but had the courage."[28] In narrative order, these are:[15][29]

TitleLee's age in novelPublication date
The Smut Book112020
Morning Crafts132012
The Sweet-Scented Manuscriptat university2004
The New Austerities421994
Journey to a Location702021
Though We Be Dead, Yet Our Day Shall Come702018
Materials for All Future Historians712019
Lee721991
Fields of Asphodelin the afterlife2007

An aged Pefley also features prominently in the first half of Reuben.[30] The lives of Lee's forebears are chronicled in Opportunities in Alabama Agriculture and the four-volume William's House, for which Perdue drew on records of his own family history.[2]

Reception

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Critical reception

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Perdue's novels have encountered "critical but not much popular success."[14] Jim Knipfel and Gary Heidt have named Perdue among their favourite writers.[2][31] For Knipfel, Perdue is "without question, one of the most important contemporary Southern writers we have" and "among the most important American writers of the early 21st century."[27]

Critics have commented on Perdue's "idiosyncratic" prose.[14] Anne Whitehouse of The New York Times finds Lee "vitriolic and hallucinatory, yet surprisingly lucid, producing a portrait both exceedingly strange and troubling."[24] In the New York Press, Knipfel praises Perdue's "fluid, consciously musical prose,"[27] "full of rage but under complete control," noting that it becomes "progressively textured and more savage" with time.[2] However, Publishers Weekly finds that Lee "sinks under the weight of its own pretensions";[32] and Dick Roraback of the Los Angeles Times complains of Perdue's eccentric (mis)usages in The New Austerities.[33]

Thomas Fleming calls the Pefley sequence "some of the best satire on contemporary America";[34] and Kirkus Reviews notes the "marvelous black comedy" in Lee.[35] Antoine Wilson of the Los Angeles Times finds "tone-deaf caricature" in some satirical passages of Fields of Asphodel, but praises its "utterly charming and brilliantly comic" denouement.[36]

Scholarly reception

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Lee is discussed in Bill Kauffman's analysis of secessionist literary fiction in Bye Bye, Miss American Empire (2010).[37] In Imagining Alternative Worlds (2025), Bernhard Forchtner and Christoffer Kølvraa discuss Perdue's fiction as exemplary of the "nostalgic imaginary."[38]

His academic writing (as Albert Perdue) continues to be cited.[39][40]

Recognition

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On March 7, 2015, Perdue received the first H. P. Lovecraft Prize for Literature.[41] The trophy was a porcelain bust of Lovecraft by Charles Krafft.[42]

Publications

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Novels

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Short Fiction

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Nonfiction

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Contributions to volumes

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Academic writing (as Albert Perdue)

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Notes

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  1. ↑ In an interview on Counter-Currents Radio, ep. 205 (20 November 2017), 00:56-01:22, Perdue explains: "I was named, after my father, 'Albert.' But in Chile, the word tito means 'little.' It also can mean 'junior.' So I was called 'Albertito,' you know, 'Albert, Jr.,' 'little Albert.' And after a while they dropped the 'Albert' and people began calling me 'Tito.' And it sounds so much more literary, you know, than merely 'Albert': so I decided to use that for my pen-name."

References

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  1. 1 2 U.S. Consular Report of Birth, "Tito Perdue," astro.com (accessed 22 May 2025).
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Knipfel, Jim (June 12, 2001). "Tito Perdue: America's Lost Literary Genius". New York Press. Retrieved June 23, 2018.
  3. 1 2 3 4 Library of Congress Linked Data Service, "Perdue, Tito." https://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n91013525.html (accessed 12 May 2025)
  4. 1 2 3 4 Who's Who of American Women (New Providence, NJ: Marquis Who's Who, 2006), p. 1256.
  5. ↑ Biography, The New Austerities (Atlanta, GA: Peachtree, 1994).
  6. ↑ "Currents," American Libraries, vol. 12, no. 3 (March 1981), p. 168.
  7. ↑ Iowa State University Directory 1980–81, p. 13.
  8. 1 2 Albert Perdue, "Conflicts in Collection Development," Library Acquisitions: Practice and Theory, vol. 2, no. 2, (1978), pp. 123–6.
  9. ↑ Albert Perdue, "Hertzberg's Napoleonana," Books at Iowa, no. 10 (April 1969), pp. 3–10.
  10. ↑ Albert Perdue, review of Eliyahu Ashtor, The Medieval Near East: Social and Economic History, in Journal of Asian History, vol. 13, no. 2 (1979), pp. 191–2.
  11. ↑ Albert Perdue, review of Afaf Lutfi Al-Sayyid-Marsot, Society and the Sexes in Medieval Islam, in Journal of Asian History, vol. 14, no. 2 (1980), pp. 149–50.
  12. ↑ Albert Perdue, review of Eliyahu Ashtor, A Social and Economic History of the Near East in the Middle Ages, in The American Historical Review, vol. 85, no. 2 (April 1980), p. 439.
  13. ↑ Biography, The Sweet-Scented Manuscript (Fort Worth, TX: Baskerville, 2004).
  14. 1 2 3 Don Noble, "Fields of Asphodel (A Novel), by Tito Perdue," apr.org (22 December 2008). Retrieved 9 September 2024.
  15. 1 2 Alex Kurtagić, "A Reactionary Snob," Alternative Right (3 November 2011). Retrieved 9 September 2024.
  16. 1 2 3 Who's Who in the South and Southwest (New Providence, NJ: Marquis Who's Who, 1993), p. 627.
  17. ↑ Catalog of Copyright Entries: Renewals (Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 1980), p. 133.
  18. ↑ Robert Reginald, Cumulative Paperback Index, 1939-1959: A Comprehensive Bibliographic Guide (San Bernardino, Calif.: Borgo Press), pp. 274, 351.
  19. ↑ The New York Times, May 4, 1947, Section BR, Page 14.
  20. ↑ James A. Kaser, The Chicago of Fiction: A Resource Guide (Plymouth: Scarecrow Press, 2011), p. 72, f.
  21. 1 2 Don Noble, "The Node," apr.org (15 August 2012). Retrieved 9 September 2024.
  22. ↑ League of the South, adl.org.
  23. ↑ League of the South at splcenter.org.
  24. 1 2 The New York Times, 24 November 1991.
  25. ↑ Publishers Weekly (3 October 1994).
  26. ↑ Greg Johnson, "Turning the World Around: Tito Perdue's The Node," Counter-Currents (16 August 2013). Retrieved 9 September 2014.
  27. 1 2 3 Jim Knipfel, "Go South, Young Man," New York Press, vol. 16, no. 32 (2003). Retrieved 9 September 2024.
  28. ↑ Derek Turner, "A Visionary Reactionary," The Quarterly Review (spring 2008), p. 4. Retrieved 9 September 2024.
  29. ↑ Adam J. Young, "Book Review: Though We Be Dead Our Day Will Come [sic] - by Tito Perdue," Heritage and Destiny, no. 87 (November - December 2018), p. 17.
  30. ↑ Mike C. Tuggle, "Starry-Eyed Varlet," abbevilleinstitute.org (9 May 2014). Retrieved 9 September 2024.
  31. ↑ Barbara DeMarco-Barrett, "Q&A with Literary Agent Gary Heidt," barbarademarcobarrett.com (7 August 2008). Retrieved 9 September 2014.
  32. ↑ Publishers Weekly, 29 July 1991. Retrieved 9 September 2024.
  33. ↑ Dick Roraback, "Fiction," Los Angeles Times, 15 January 1995. Retrieved 9 September 2024.
  34. ↑ Thomas Fleming, "A Lost Art," Chronicles (December 1996), p. 35.
  35. ↑ "Lee by Tito Perdue". Kirkus Reviews. June 15, 1991. Retrieved October 18, 2016.
  36. ↑ Antoine Wilson, "The Misanthrope," Los Angeles Times (15 July 2007). Retrieved 9 September 2024.
  37. ↑ Kauffman, Bill. Bye Bye, Miss American Empire: Neighborhood Patriots, Backcountry Rebels, and Their Underdog Crusades to Redraw America's Political Map (White River Junction, Vt.: Chelsea Green), p. 188.
  38. ↑ Bernhard Forchtner and Christoffer Kølvraa, Imagining Alternative Worlds: Far-Right Fiction and the Power of Cultural Imaginaries (Abingdon: Routledge, 2025), chapter 2.
  39. ↑ David E. Jones, "Collection Growth in Postwar America: A Critique of Policy and Practice," Library Trends, vol. 61, no. 3 (Winter 2013), pp. 587–612.
  40. ↑ Angharad Roberts, "Conceptualising the Library Collection for the Digital World," in Digital Information Strategies: From Applications and Content to Libraries and People, ed. David Baker and Wendy Evans (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2016), pp. 143–156.
  41. ↑ Greg Johnson, "The Counter-Currents H. P. Lovecraft Prize for Literature," Counter-Currents (12 November 2015). Retrieved 9 September 2024.
  42. ↑ Jillian Steinhauer, "White Nationalist Artist Charles Krafft Designs Award for Right-Wing Publisher," Hyperallergic (16 November 2015). Retrieved 9 September 2015.
  43. ↑ Enrico Schlickeisen, "The Origins of Replacement Narratives and the Resemanticization of Feminism in Two Novels of the Far Right," in Subversive Semantics in Political and Cultural Discourse: The Production of Popular Knowledge, ed. Gesa Mackenthun and Jörn Dosch (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2023), pp. 100–1.
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