Tito Perdue

Personal life

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

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. He then worked as an assistant professor and librarian at universities including Iowa State University and SUNY Binghamton. During this time, he contributed under his birth name to scholarly journals of history and library science. In 1983, he retired to his mother's family's Alabama property to write full time. He wrote The Sweet-Scented Manuscript first; though this would be his fourth novel published.

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

The Perdues have one daughter. They live in Centreville and Wetumpka, Alabama.

As of 2001, Perdue was a member of the League of the South (since renamed), an American white nationalist, neo-Confederate, white supremacist organization.

Work

Many of Perdue's novels chronicle the life of Leland "Lee" Pefley, an alter ego who, Perdue explains, "actually carries out actions that his creator would often wish to perform if he but had the courage." In order, these are The Smut Book (Pefley aged 11), Morning Crafts (aged 13), The Sweet-Scented Manuscript (at college), The New Austerities (aged 42), Journey to a Location and Though We Be Dead, Yet Our Day Shall Come (both aged 70), Materials for All Future Historians (aged 71), Lee (aged 72) and Fields of Asphodel (in the afterlife). An aged Pefley also features prominently in the first half of Reuben. 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.

Perdue's novels are picaresques, built of "disjointed episodes." 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." Perdue often incorporates elements of fantasy (like active volcanoes in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Alabama) or, in later novels, science fiction (like the "escrubilator," an indescribable "omni-competent" machine).

Reception

Critical reception

Perdue's novels have encountered "critical but not much popular success." Jim Knipfel and Gary Heidt have named Perdue among their favourite writers. 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."

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

Thomas Fleming calls the Pefley sequence "some of the best satire on contemporary America"; and Kirkus Reviews notes the "marvelous black comedy" in Lee. 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.

Scholarly reception

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

His academic writing (as Albert Perdue) continues to be cited.

Recognition

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

Publications

Novels

• Lee, Four Walls Eight Windows, 1991 (); 2nd ed., Overlook Press, 2007 (); 3rd ed., Arktos, 2019 ().
• The New Austerities, Peachtree Press, 1994 (); 2nd ed., Standard American, 2023 ().
• Opportunities in Alabama Agriculture, Baskerville Press, 1994 (); 2nd ed., Standard American, 2023 ().
• The Sweet-Scented Manuscript, Baskerville Press, 2004 (); 2nd ed., Arktos, 2019 ().
• Fields of Asphodel, Overlook Press, 2007 (); 2nd ed., Standard American, 2023 ().
• The Node, Nine-Banded Books, 2011 ().
• Morning Crafts, Arktos, 2013 ().
• Reuben, Washington Summit, 2014 (); 2nd ed., Standard American, 2022 ().
• The Builder: William's House I, Arktos, 2015 ().
• The Churl: William's House II, Arktos, 2015 ().
• The Engineer: William's House III, Arktos, 2016 ().
• The Bachelor: William's House IV, Arktos, 2016 ().
• Cynosura, Counter-Currents, 2016 ().
• The Philatelist, Counter-Currents, 2017 ().
• Philip, Arktos, 2017 ().
• The Bent Pyramid, Arktos, 2018 ().
• Though We Be Dead, Yet Our Day Shall Come, Counter-Currents, 2018 ().
• The Gizmo, Counter-Currents, 2019 ().
• The Smut Book, Counter-Currents, 2020 ().
• Love Song of the Australopiths, Standard American, 2020 ().
• Materials for All Future Historians, Standard American, 2020 ().
• Journey to a Location, Arktos, 2021 ().
• Vade Mecum, Standard American, 2021 ().

Short Fiction

• "Good Things in Tiny Places," Counter-Currents (12 March 2015).

Nonfiction

• Review of Alex Kurtagić, Mister, in Counter-Currents (16 September 2013).
• "Decadence," Counter-Currents (19 March 2014).

Contributions to volumes

• Preface to Derek Turner, Sea Changes (Whitefish, MT: Washington Summit, 2012).
• Foreword to Greg Johnson, In Defense of Prejudice (San Fancisco: Counter-Currents, 2017).
• Preface to Jean Raspail, The Camp of the Saints (Petoskey, MI: Social Contract Press, 2018).

Academic writing (as Albert Perdue)

• "Hertzberg's Napoleonana," Books at Iowa, no. 10 (April 1969), pp. 3–10.
• "Conflicts in Collection Development," Library Acquisitions: Practice and Theory, vol. 2, no. 2, (1978), pp. 123–6.
• 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.
• Review of Maurice Gaudefroy-Demombynes, Le Pélerinage à la Mekke: Étude d'Histoire Religieuse, in The Reprint Bulletin Book Reviews, vol. xxiv, no. 1 (1979), p. 5.
• 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.
• 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.

Notes

References

References

1. U.S. Consular Report of Birth, [https://www.astro.com/astro-databank/Perdue,%20Tito "Tito Perdue," astro.com] (accessed 22 May 2025).
2. Knipfel, Jim. (2001-06-12). "Tito Perdue: America's Lost Literary Genius". [[New York Press]].
3. Library of Congress Linked Data Service, "Perdue, Tito." https://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n91013525.html (accessed 12 May 2025)
4. ''[https://archive.org/details/whoswhoofamerica0000marq/page/1256/mode/1up?q=%22tito+perdue%22&view=theater 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. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/25624350 "Currents,"] ''[[American Libraries]]'', vol. 12, no. 3 (March 1981), p. 168.
7. ''[https://archive.org/details/1980-1981-isu-directory/page/12/mode/2up Iowa State University Directory 1980–81]'', p. 13.
8. [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0364640878900054 Albert Perdue, "Conflicts in Collection Development," ''Library Acquisitions: Practice and Theory'', vol. 2, no. 2, (1978), pp. 123–6.]
9. [http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/scua/bai/perdue.htm Albert Perdue, "Hertzberg's Napoleonana," ''Books at Iowa'', no. 10 (April 1969), pp. 3–10.]
10. Albert Perdue, [https://www.jstor.org/stable/41930347 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, [https://www.jstor.org/stable/41930377 review] of [[Afaf Lutfi al-Sayyid-Marsot. 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, [https://www.jstor.org/stable/1860663 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. [[Don Noble]], [https://www.apr.org/arts-life/2008-12-22/fields-of-asphodel-a-novel-by-tito-perdue "Fields of Asphodel (A Novel), by Tito Perdue,"] [[Alabama Public Radio. apr.org]] (22 December 2008). Retrieved 9 September 2024.
15. [[Alex Kurtagić]], [https://web.archive.org/web/20111108033005/https://www.alternativeright.com/main/blogs/untimely-observations/a-reactionary-snob/ "A Reactionary Snob,"] ''Alternative Right'' (3 November 2011). Retrieved 9 September 2024.
16. ''[https://archive.org/details/whoswhoinsouthso0000unse_l0m5/page/627/mode/1up?q=%22tito+perdue%22&view=theater Who's Who in the South and Southwest]'' (New Providence, NJ: [[Marquis Who's Who]], 1993), p. 627.
17. ''[https://archive.org/details/catalogofcopyrig18libr/page/n147/mode/2up?view=theater Catalog of Copyright Entries: Renewals]'' (Washington, DC: [[Library of Congress]], 1980), p. 133.
18. Robert Reginald, ''[https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Cumulative_Paperback_Index_1939_1959/rpjkMM7tdDYC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22Good+is+for+angels%22&pg=PA274&printsec=frontcover Cumulative Paperback Index, 1939-1959: A Comprehensive Bibliographic Guide]'' (San Bernardino, Calif.: [[Borgo Press]]), pp. 274, 351.
19. [https://www.nytimes.com/1947/05/04/archives/a-crime-of-passion-the-unleashed-will-by-christopher-clark-280-pp.html ''The New York Times'', May 4, 1947, Section BR, Page 14.]
20. James A. Kaser, ''[https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The_Chicago_of_Fiction/_oWSHXCqXMQC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22Good+is+for+angels%22&pg=PA72&printsec=frontcover The Chicago of Fiction: A Resource Guide]'' (Plymouth: Scarecrow Press, 2011), p. 72, ''f.''
21. Don Noble, [https://www.apr.org/arts-life/2012-08-15/the-node "The Node,"] apr.org (15 August 2012). Retrieved 9 September 2024.
22. [[Derek Turner (journalist). Derek Turner]], [https://web.archive.org/web/20090530164952/https://www.quarterly-review.org/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/perdue.pdf "A Visionary Reactionary,"] ''[[Quarterly Review. The Quarterly Review]]'' (spring 2008), p. 4. Retrieved 9 September 2024.
23. Adam J. Young, [https://archive.org/details/heritage_and_destiny_87/page/n15/mode/2up?view=theater "Book Review: ''Though We Be Dead Our Day Will Come'' [''sic''] - by Tito Perdue,"] ''Heritage and Destiny'', no. 87 (November - December 2018), p. 17.
24. Mike C. Tuggle, [https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/starry-eyed-varlet/ "Starry-Eyed Varlet,"] abbevilleinstitute.org (9 May 2014). Retrieved 9 September 2024.
25. ''[[The New York Times]]'', 24 November 1991.
26. [https://www.publishersweekly.com/9781880909249 ''Publishers Weekly'' (3 October 1994).]
27. [[Greg Johnson (white nationalist). Greg Johnson]], [https://counter-currents.com/2013/08/turning-the-world-around-tito-perdues-the-node/ "Turning the World Around: Tito Perdue's ''The Node,''"] ''Counter-Currents'' (16 August 2013). Retrieved 9 September 2014.
28. [https://www.barbarademarcobarrett.com/2008/08/qa-with-literary-agent-gary-heidt/ Barbara DeMarco-Barrett, "Q&A with Literary Agent Gary Heidt," barbarademarcobarrett.com (7 August 2008).] Retrieved 9 September 2014.
29. Jim Knipfel, [https://web.archive.org/web/20040627155933/https://www.nypress.com/16/32/news&columns/eslackjaw.cfm "Go South, Young Man,"] ''[[New York Press]]'', vol. 16, no. 32 (2003). Retrieved 9 September 2024.
30. [https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-941423-39-7 ''Publishers Weekly'', 29 July 1991.] Retrieved 9 September 2024.
31. Dick Roraback, [https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1995-01-15-bk-20047-story.html "Fiction,"] ''[[Los Angeles Times]]'', 15 January 1995. Retrieved 9 September 2024.
32. Thomas Fleming, "A Lost Art," ''Chronicles'' (December 1996), p. 35.
33. (June 15, 1991). "''Lee'' by Tito Perdue". [[Kirkus Reviews]].
34. [[Antoine Wilson]], [https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2007-jul-15-bk-wilson15-story.html "The Misanthrope,"] ''[[Los Angeles Times]]'' (15 July 2007). Retrieved 9 September 2024.
35. [[Bill Kauffman. Kauffman, Bill]]. [[iarchive:isbn 9781933392806/page/188/mode/1up. ''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.]]
36. Bernhard Forchtner and Christoffer Kølvraa, [https://www.routledge.com/Imagining-Alternative-Worlds-Far-Right-Fiction-and-the-Power-of-Cultural-Imaginaries/Kolvraa-Forchtner/p/book/9781032250618 ''Imagining Alternative Worlds: Far-Right Fiction and the Power of Cultural Imaginaries''] (Abingdon: [[Taylor & Francis. Routledge]], 2025), chapter 2.
37. David E. Jones, [https://muse.jhu.edu/article/508617 "Collection Growth in Postwar America: A Critique of Policy and Practice,"] ''[[Library Trends]]'', vol. 61, no. 3 (Winter 2013), pp. 587–612.
38. Angharad Roberts, [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/B978008100251300010X "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.
39. Greg Johnson, [https://counter-currents.com/2015/11/the-counter-currents-h-p-lovecraft-prize-for-literature/ "The ''Counter-Currents'' H. P. Lovecraft Prize for Literature,"] ''Counter-Currents'' (12 November 2015). Retrieved 9 September 2024.
40. Jillian Steinhauer, [https://hyperallergic.com/254089/white-nationalist-artist-charles-krafft-designs-award-for-right-wing-publisher/ "White Nationalist Artist Charles Krafft Designs Award for Right-Wing Publisher,"] ''[[Hyperallergic]]'' (16 November 2015). Retrieved 9 September 2015.
41. [https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783839461778-005/html 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.]