Tito Perdue (born 16 August 1938) is an American novelist. His works include his 1991 debut Lee.
Personal life 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. The family returned to the United States in 1941, upon the country's entering the War. Perdue was brought up in Anniston, Alabama.Library of Congress Linked Data Service, "Perdue, Tito." https://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n91013525.html (accessed 12 May 2025) 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.Who's Who of American Women (New Providence, NJ: Marquis Who's Who, 2006), p. 1256.
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.Biography, The New Austerities (Atlanta, GA: Peachtree, 1994).
Career He then worked as an assistant professor and librarian at universities including Iowa State University and SUNY Binghamton."Currents," American Libraries, vol. 12, no. 3 (March 1981), p. 168.Iowa State University Directory 1980–81, p. 13.Albert Perdue, "Conflicts in Collection Development," Library Acquisitions: Practice and Theory, vol. 2, no. 2, (1978), pp. 123–6. During this time, he contributed under his birth name to scholarly journals of history and library science.Albert Perdue, "Hertzberg's Napoleonana," Books at Iowa, no. 10 (April 1969), pp. 3–10.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.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.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.
In 1983, he retired to his mother's family's Alabama property to write full time.Biography, The Sweet-Scented Manuscript (Fort Worth, TX: Baskerville, 2004).Don Noble, "Fields of Asphodel (A Novel), by Tito Perdue," apr.org (22 December 2008). Retrieved 9 September 2024. He wrote The Sweet-Scented Manuscript first; though this would be his fourth novel published.Alex Kurtagić, "A Reactionary Snob," Alternative Right (3 November 2011). Retrieved 9 September 2024.
Family Judy Perdue worked as a librarian and professor of biology at Floyd College and elsewhere.Who's Who in the South and Southwest (New Providence, NJ: Marquis Who's Who, 1993), p. 627. 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).Catalog of Copyright Entries: Renewals (Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 1980), p. 133.Robert Reginald, Cumulative Paperback Index, 1939-1959: A Comprehensive Bibliographic Guide (San Bernardino, Calif.: Borgo Press), pp. 274, 351.The New York Times, May 4, 1947, Section BR, Page 14.James A. Kaser, The Chicago of Fiction: A Resource Guide (Plymouth: Scarecrow Press, 2011), p. 72, f.
The Perdues have one daughter. They live in Centreville and Wetumpka, Alabama.Don Noble, "The Node," apr.org (15 August 2012). Retrieved 9 September 2024.
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."League of the South, adl.org.League of the South at splcenter.org.
Work Perdue's novels are picaresques, built of "disjointed episodes."The New York Times, 24 November 1991. 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)Publishers Weekly (3 October 1994). or, in later novels, science fiction (like the "escrubilator," an indescribable "omni-competent" machine).Greg Johnson, "Turning the World Around: Tito Perdue's The Node," Counter-Currents (16 August 2013). Retrieved 9 September 2014.
The Pefley sequence 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."Derek Turner, "A Visionary Reactionary," The Quarterly Review (spring 2008), p. 4. Retrieved 9 September 2024. In narrative order, these are: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.
Title Lee's age in novel Publication date The Smut Book 11 2020 Morning Crafts 13 2012 The Sweet-Scented Manuscript at university 2004 The New Austerities 42 1994 Journey to a Location 70 2021 Though We Be Dead, Yet Our Day Shall Come 70 2018 Materials for All Future Historians 71 2019 Lee 72 1991 Fields of Asphodel in the afterlife 2007
An aged Pefley also features prominently in the first half of Reuben.Mike C. Tuggle, "Starry-Eyed Varlet," abbevilleinstitute.org (9 May 2014). Retrieved 9 September 2024. 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.
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.Barbara DeMarco-Barrett, "Q&A with Literary Agent Gary Heidt," barbarademarcobarrett.com (7 August 2008). Retrieved 9 September 2014. 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."Jim Knipfel, "Go South, Young Man," New York Press, vol. 16, no. 32 (2003). Retrieved 9 September 2024.
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";Publishers Weekly, 29 July 1991. Retrieved 9 September 2024. and Dick Roraback of the Los Angeles Times complains of Perdue's eccentric (mis)usages in The New Austerities.Dick Roraback, "Fiction," Los Angeles Times, 15 January 1995. Retrieved 9 September 2024.
Thomas Fleming calls the Pefley sequence "some of the best satire on contemporary America";Thomas Fleming, "A Lost Art," Chronicles (December 1996), p. 35. 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.Antoine Wilson, "The Misanthrope," Los Angeles Times (15 July 2007). Retrieved 9 September 2024.
Scholarly reception Lee is discussed in Bill Kauffman's analysis of secessionist literary fiction in Bye Bye, Miss American Empire (2010).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. In Imagining Alternative Worlds (2025), Bernhard Forchtner and Christoffer Kølvraa discuss Perdue's fiction as exemplary of the "nostalgic imaginary."Bernhard Forchtner and Christoffer Kølvraa, Imagining Alternative Worlds: Far-Right Fiction and the Power of Cultural Imaginaries (Abingdon: Routledge, 2025), chapter 2. Enrico Schlickeisen (2023) and Sof Sabbioni (2025) have discussed Perdue in the context of "far-right" politics.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).Sof Sabbioni, "'Chased from the Mainstream': Tito Perdue and Far-Right Fiction Read via Bourdieu's Field Theory," Journal of Right-Wing Studies 3(2) (2025-12-23).
His academic writing (as Albert Perdue) continues to be cited.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.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.
Recognition On March 7, 2015, Perdue received the first H. P. Lovecraft Prize for Literature.Greg Johnson, "The Counter-Currents H. P. Lovecraft Prize for Literature," Counter-Currents (12 November 2015). Retrieved 9 September 2024. The trophy was a porcelain bust of Lovecraft by Charles Krafft.Jillian Steinhauer, "White Nationalist Artist Charles Krafft Designs Award for Right-Wing Publisher," Hyperallergic (16 November 2015). Retrieved 9 September 2015.
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.