Tito Perdue

Last updated

Tito Perdue
Born1938 (age 85–86)
Sewell, Chile
OccupationNovelist
NationalityAmerican
Genre Novel, satire
Subject Degeneration, beauty
Website
titoperdue.com

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

Contents

Personal life

Perdue was born Albert Perdue to American parents in Chile, where his father worked as an electrical engineer. [a] The family returned to the United States in 1941, upon the country's entering the War. Perdue was brought up in Anniston, Alabama. [1] [2] He graduated from Indian Springs School in 1956. [2] He attended Antioch College for a year before he was expelled for cohabiting with a fellow student, Judy Clark. [2] They married in 1957. [2] [3] 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. [4] He worked as a university library administrator until 1982, when he retired to his mother's family's Alabama property to write full-time. [5] [6] He first wrote The Sweet-Scented Manuscript; though this would be his fourth novel to be published. [7]

Judy Perdue worked as a librarian and professor of biology at Floyd College and elsewhere. [3] [8] She is Fellow of the Royal Entomological Society (London) and member of other learned associations. [3] [8] Her father, Christopher Clark, wrote novels of working class life, including The Unleashed Will (1947) and Good Is for Angels (1950). [9] [10] [11] [12]

The Perdues have one daughter. [3] [8] They live in Centreville and Wetumpka, Alabama. [13]

Work

Many of Perdue's novels chronicle the life of Leland "Lee" Pefley, [14] an alter ego who, Perdue explains, "actually carries out actions that his creator would often wish to perform if he but had the courage." [15] 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). [7] [16] An aged Pefley also features prominently in the first half of Reuben. [17] 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. [1]

Perdue's novels are picaresques, built of "disjointed episodes." [13] [18] 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." [1] Perdue often incorporates elements of fantasy (like active volcanoes in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Alabama) [19] or, in later novels, science fiction (like the "escrubilator," an indescribable "omni-competent" machine). [20]

Reception

Critical reception

Perdue's novels have encountered "critical but not much popular success." [6] Jim Knipfel and Gary Heidt have named Perdue among their favourite writers. [1] [21] 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." [14]

Critics have commented on Perdue's "idiosyncratic" prose. [6] Anne Whitehouse of the New York Times finds Lee "vitriolic and hallucinatory, yet surprisingly lucid, producing a portrait both exceedingly strange and troubling." [18] In the New York Press , Knipfel praises Perdue's "fluid, consciously musical prose," [14] "full of rage but under complete control," noting that it becomes "progressively textured and more savage" with time. [1] However, Publisher’s Weekly finds that Lee "sinks under the weight of its own pretensions"; [22] and Dick Roraback of the Los Angeles Times complains of Perdue's eccentric (mis)usages in The New Austerities. [23]

Thomas Fleming calls the Pefley sequence "some of the best satire on contemporary America"; [24] and Kirkus Reviews notes the "marvelous black comedy" in Lee. [25] 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. [26]

Scholarly reception

Lee is discussed in Bill Kauffman's analysis of secessionist literary fiction in Bye Bye, Miss American Empire (2010). [27]

Recognition

On March 7, 2015, Perdue received the first H. P. Lovecraft Prize for Literature. [28] The trophy was a porcelain bust of Lovecraft by Charles Krafft. [29]

Political opinions

Perdue is a member of the League of the South. [1]

Publications

Novels

Short Fiction

Nonfiction

Notes

  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 can 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."

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References

  1. 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.
  2. 1 2 3 4 "About the Author," Reuben (Brent, AL: Standard American, 2022).
  3. 1 2 3 4 Who's Who of American Women (New Providence, NJ: Marquis Who's Who, 2006), p. 1256.
  4. ↑ Biography, The New Austerities (Atlanta, GA: Peachtree, 1994).
  5. ↑ Biography, The Sweet-Scented Manuscript (Fort Worth, TX: Baskerville, 2004).
  6. 1 2 3 Don Noble, "Fields of Asphodel (A Novel), by Tito Perdue," apr.org (22 December 2008). Retrieved 9 September 2024.
  7. 1 2 Alex Kurtagić, "A Reactionary Snob," Alternative Right (3 November 2011). Retrieved 9 September 2024.
  8. 1 2 3 Who's Who in the South and Southwest (New Providence, NJ: Marquis Who's Who, 1993), p. 627.
  9. ↑ Catalog of Copyright Entries: Renewals (Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 1980), p. 133.
  10. ↑ Robert Reginald, Cumulative Paperback Index, 1939-1959: A Comprehensive Bibliographic Guide (San Bernadino, Calif.: Borgo Press), pp. 274, 351.
  11. ↑ New York Times, May 4, 1947, Section BR, Page 14.
  12. ↑ James A. Kaser, The Chicago of Fiction: A Resource Guide (Plymouth: Scarecrow Press, 2011), p. 72, f.
  13. 1 2 Don Noble, "The Node," apr.org (15 August 2012). Retrieved 9 September 2024.
  14. 1 2 3 Jim Knipfel, "Go South, Young Man," New York Press , vol. 16, no. 32 (2003). Retrieved 9 September 2024.
  15. ↑ Derek Turner, "A Visionary Reactionary," The Quarterly Review (spring 2008), p. 4. Retrieved 9 September 2024.
  16. ↑ 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.
  17. ↑ Mike C. Tuggle, "Starry-Eyed Varlet," abbevilleinstitute.org (9 May 2014). Retrieved 9 September 2024.
  18. 1 2 New York Times , 24 November 1991.
  19. ↑ Publishers Weekly (3 October 1994).
  20. ↑ Greg Johnson, "Turning the World Around: Tito Perdue’s The Node," Counter-Currents (16 August 2013). Retrieved 9 September 2014.
  21. ↑ Barbara DeMarco-Barrett, "Q&A with Literary Agent Gary Heidt," barbarademarcobarrett.com (7 August 2008). Retrieved 9 September 2014.
  22. ↑ Publishers Weekly, 29 July 1991. Retrieved 9 September 2024.
  23. ↑ Dick Roraback, "Fiction," Los Angeles Times, 15 January 1995. Retrieved 9 September 2024.
  24. ↑ Thomas Fleming, "A Lost Art," Chronicles (December 1996), p. 35.
  25. ↑ "Lee by Tito Perdue". Kirkus Reviews . June 15, 1991. Retrieved October 18, 2016.
  26. ↑ Antoine Wilson, "The Misanthrope," Los Angeles Times (15 July 2007). Retrieved 9 September 2024.
  27. ↑ 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.
  28. ↑ Greg Johnson, "The Counter-Currents H. P. Lovecraft Prize for Literature," Counter-Currents (12 November 2015). Retrieved 9 September 2024.
  29. ↑ Jillian Steinhauer, "White Nationalist Artist Charles Krafft Designs Award for Right-Wing Publisher," Hyperallergic (16 November 2015). Retrieved 9 September 2015.
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