Tito Perdue's FIELDS OF ASPHODEL Featured on "BookMark"

Don Noble, host of "BookMark" on Alabama Public Radio and professor at the University of Alabama, offers a thoughtful review of Tito Perdue's Fields of Asphodel: "Tito Perdue, retired on the family property in Brent has been writing for 25 years, with critical but not much popular success. At the end of Perdue's fourth volume of fiction, the protagonist, Leland "Lee" Pefley, dies at age 73. On the first page of Fields of Asphodel, Pefley, who always introduces himself as Pefley, the Alabama branch, wakes up in the afterlife, in the underworld, but not exactly the Christian heaven or hell or purgatory. . .The inhabitants of the Asphodelian Fields wander like pilgrims, essentially aimlessly. In his wanderings, Pefley, like the others, moves from desert to seaside to surrealistic cityscapes. His wanderings would be pointless, like everyone else's, except that Lee has a quest. His greatest virtue as a living person was as a loving and faithftil husband to Judy, his petite wife who had preceded him in death. Pefley's wanderings then become a quest for Judy, and give his afterlife some meaning. He is an old-fashioned romantic, a Quixote, and worships his Judy. Along the way, Perdue has a good deal of fun with the punishment centers Pefley discovers in the Meadows of Asphodel. More predictably, the punishment for the idle rich is to have molten gold poured down their gullets. This is practically a classic. The harmful rich — those who gained wealth by injuring others — and publishers, are in Tartarus, being punished in ways too gruesome to view. Pefley is essentially a libertarian. He is an individualist but hates greed, excess, and yuppies. He has read thousands of books, as he will tell you proudly, but loathes postmodernism in literature and theory in literary criticism. If there was a perfect, a heavenly time for Pefley it would not be the late 20th century, but around 1890 to 1910, where the three Graces of our day — Atrophy, Entropy and Anomie — did not reign. Pefley is also a stickler for the correct even the most Latinate or Hellenic of language, and the style of Fields of Asphodel is a highly literate, idiosyncratic diction. Perdue is not afraid to mention stromatolites (rock formations) or atrabilious clouds and walk on. This is a smart novel, a thoughtful novel and, obviously, an odd one—and, for this critic, a nice palate-cleanser from the usual Southern fare."

Meet Overlook Authors at the Arkansas Literary Festival in Little Rock April 3-6

The Arkansas Literary Festival takes place in Little Rock this weekend, April 3-6. This celebration of books and authors is presented each spring in Little Rock by Arkansas Literacy Councils, Inc. Proceeds benefit adult literacy programs, and the general public is warmly invited to celebrate literacy through admission-free sessions with authors, musicians, spoken word performers, and costumed characters. Attending this year's festival is Gigi Durham, author of the forthcoming The Lolita Effect, and novelist Tito Perdue, author of Fields of Asphodel and Lee.

Tito Perdue To Appear at South Carolina Book Festival in February

Tito Perdue, author of Fields of Asphodel, Lee, and many other fine works of fiction, will appear at this year's South Carolina Book Festival in Columbia, February 22-24. Now in its 12th year, this popular celebration of books and authors is free to the public and held at the Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center in downtown Columbia.

TITO PERDUE at The Page and Palette Bookstore in Fairhope, Alabama on Saturday, December 15

Author Tito Perdue will sign copies of his novel The Fields of Asphodel at Page & Palette Bookstore in Fairhope, Alabama this Saturday, December 15 at 11am. Page & Palette is located at 32 S. Section Street in Fairhope, Alabama.

The Fields of Asphodel is the latest installment in Perdue’s chronicle of Leland Lee Pefley, the cantankerous Alabamian. This time, Lee wakes up from his death in strange surroundings that bear an uncanny resemblance to his native Alabama. After a life of misdemeanors, Lee had hope that death would bring an end to things; instead, he awakens in a very bad place full of cold weather, strange tortures, and some of history’s most hapless people. His one consolation is the opportunity to track down his beloved wife who preceded him in death.

Perdue, a cult favorite author, has been compared to writers from Faulkner to Beckett, and in The Fields of Asphodel, readers are reintroduced to one of our true literary talents—and to Leland Pefley, a truly powerful fictional creation.

For more information, contact Page & Palette at (251) 928-5295.

Sweet Home Alabama: TITO PERDUE On Tour in the Heart of Dixie

Come meet novelist Tito Perdue at these upcoming events: Nov 2. Friday evening 6-8pm –Barnes & Noble – MONTGOMERY; Nov 10. Saturday noon –Waldenbooks- DOTHAN, AL ; Nov 17-18. Southern Writers Reading, FAIRHOPE; Dec 1. Saturday noon– Books-A-Million – ANNISTON.; Dec 7. Friday evening 5-7pm - Waldenbooks HUNTSVILLE.

Tito's new novel Fields of Asphodel continues the story of Lee Pefley, who was first introduced in the 1991 novel Lee. The Los Angeles Times called Lee a "compact, virtuoso performance, singular in its depiction of one of the more pretentious, grandiloquent protagonists gracing the pages of American fiction."

TITO PERDUE To Appear at The Southern Festival of Books on October 14

Tito Perdue, author of The Fields of Asphodel and Lee, will speak at the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville on Sunday, October 14. Tito will address "Myth, Fairy Tale, and Fable in Southern Fiction," at a panel held at The Old Supreme Court Room at 2pm. Anyone remotely near Music City next weekend should not miss this grand celebration of Southern history and literature. Mr. Perdue, raised and still living in the great state of Alabama, will sign copies of his new book immediately after the panel.

Tito Purdue's FIELDS OF ASPHODEL in The Los Angeles Times

Check out Antonie Wilson's great notice of Fields of Asphodel from Sunday's LA TIMES:

Tito Perdue's first published novel, "Lee," follows one Leland Pefley, a septuagenarian misanthrope disgusted with the decadence of modern times, on his return to his native Alabama. With a head full of literature (12,000 volumes, by his count), a self-bestowed "Dr." before his name and a heavy cane, he wanders through his hometown, his only companion the recurring specter of his dead wife, Judy. Over the course of the book, he beats several people with his cane, urinates through a car window and burns down a house. In the end, we find him wandering in the woods on a cold night, stripping off his clothes and, presumably, dying of exposure.

It is a sordid tale. It is also a compact, virtuoso performance, singular in its depiction of one of the more pretentious, grandiloquent protagonists gracing the pages of American fiction. ("Lee" is being reissued in paperback to coincide with the publication of Perdue's new novel.) Leland Pefley has been compared to Ignatius J. Reilly, the hero of John Kennedy Toole's "A Confederacy of Dunces," but it might be more apt to consider him a sort of reverse-polarity Don Quixote, as consumed by his delusions and romantic notions as his Spanish forebear, but with a decidedly different approach to life: Whereas Quixote sees a bygone age everywhere and gets beaten up for it, Lee sees a bygone age nowhere and beats up others for it.

Overlook TV: Tito Perdue presents FIELDS OF ASPHODEL

Meet Overlook Press' beloved gentleman novelist Tito Perdue, author of Fields of Asphodel, as he introduces us to his muses and writing partners from his writerly estate in Alabama. Fields from Asphodel and his novel Lee in paperback are due out this July. Here our dear Mr. Perdue gives us a sample of his summer-perfect, silky-smooth prose: you can meet him live at the Lemuria Books in Jackson, MS on Wednesday July 25th beginning at 5 PM. If you can't make it, order a signed copy.