Tito Perdue

Early life and education

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

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

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

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]

The Pefley sequence

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]

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]

Critical reception

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

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

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]

Novels

• Lee, Four Walls Eight Windows, 1991 (ISBN 9780941423397); 2nd ed., Overlook Press, 2007 (ISBN 978-1-58567-872-3); 3rd ed., Arktos, 2019 (ISBN 9781912975280).
• The New Austerities, Peachtree Press, 1994 (ISBN 978-1-56145-086-2); 2nd ed., Standard American, 2023 (ISBN 9781642640359).
• Opportunities in Alabama Agriculture, Baskerville Press, 1994 (ISBN 978-1-880909-24-9); 2nd ed., Standard American, 2023 (ISBN 9781642640311).
• The Sweet-Scented Manuscript, Baskerville Press, 2004 (ISBN 978-1-880909-68-3); 2nd ed., Arktos, 2019 (ISBN 9781912975389).
• Fields of Asphodel, Overlook Press, 2007 (ISBN 978-1-58567-871-6); 2nd ed., Standard American, 2023 (ISBN 9781642640212).
• The Node, Nine-Banded Books, 2011 (ISBN 978-1-61658-351-4).
• Morning Crafts, Arktos, 2013 (ISBN 978-1-907166-57-0).
• Reuben, Washington Summit, 2014 (ISBN 9781593680237); 2nd ed., Standard American, 2022 (ISBN 9781642641950).
• The Builder: William's House I, Arktos, 2015 (ISBN 9781910524343).
• The Churl: William's House II, Arktos, 2015 (ISBN 9781910524336).
• The Engineer: William's House III, Arktos, 2016 (ISBN 9781910524954).
• The Bachelor: William's House IV, Arktos, 2016 (ISBN 9781910524381).
• Cynosura, Counter-Currents, 2016 (ISBN 9781940933863).
• The Philatelist, Counter-Currents, 2017 (ISBN 9781940933986).
• Philip, Arktos, 2017 (ISBN 9781912079889).
• The Bent Pyramid, Arktos, 2018 (ISBN 9781912079858).
• Though We Be Dead, Yet Our Day Shall Come, Counter-Currents, 2018 (ISBN 9781940933894).
• The Gizmo, Counter-Currents, 2019 (ISBN 9781642641202).
• The Smut Book, Counter-Currents, 2020 (ISBN 9781642641424).
• Love Song of the Australopiths, Standard American, 2020 (ISBN 9781642641462).
• Materials for All Future Historians, Standard American, 2020 (ISBN 9781642641639).
• Journey to a Location, Arktos, 2021 (ISBN 9781914208263).
• Vade Mecum, Standard American, 2021 (ISBN 9781642641837).

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).^[43]

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.