Fields of Asphodel [Hardcover]

Tito Perdue (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 19, 2007

Cult favorite author Tito Perdue--whom the New York Press called "America's Lost Literary Genius"--here reemerges with this new novel about the peculiar afterlife of Leland Pefley. After a life of misdemeanors, Lee had hoped that death would bring an end to things; instead, he awakens into a very bad place full of cold weather, strange tortures, and some of history's most hapless people. His one consolation? An opportunity to chase down his beloved wife who had preceded him in death a few years before he had contrived his own.

Equipped with his walking cane, a book of matches, a pair of pretty good shoes, and a tourist brochure, he makes slow progress through a landscape that bears an uncanny resemblance to the America that he thought he had left behind.

Perdue has been compared to writers from Faulkner to Beckett, and in Fields of Asphodel we are reintroduced to one of our true literary talents--and to Leland Pefley, a truly powerful fictional creation.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This highly stylized take on the afterlife is the latest installment in Perdue's chronicle of Leland Lee Pefley, the cantankerous Alabaman (following The Sweet-Scented Manuscript). This time out, Lee wakes up from his death in an unpredictable landscape that bears a faint resemblance to his native Alabama, except the sun seems paperlike, seasons don't work the way they should, and it's very cold. Though he's dead, Lee is still 73, still afflicted by hemorrhoids and still a pedant and a misanthrope. Lee has landed with a band of egotists, so they don't like him much either. He longs for and goes in search of his wife, Judy, who predeceased him and who, in Lee's untrustworthy eyes, is a paragon of femininity: modest, supportive, aware of her place. Lee is something like an erudite version of Beckett's Watt or Malone, but lacks the post-WWII context and the lyricism that gives those characters their historical dimension. Perdue has more in common with the poet Ed Dorn, who went after America using some of its highest and lowest forms (booksellers, the rich and male feminists come in for razzing), but while there are some very funny scenes and arresting lines, the book comes across more like Stanley Elkin's jokey The Living End than its great modernist predecessors. (July)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Overlook Hardcover (July 19, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1585678716
• ISBN-13: 978-1585678716
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,743,836 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Tito Perdue was born in 1938 in Chile, South America where his father, an Alabama native, was employed as an electrical engineer with the Braden Copper Company. Returning to the United States in 1941, his family settled in Anniston, Alabama, remaining there until his father's employer relocated to St. Louis in 1955. In 1956 Tito graduated from Indian Springs School, a private academy located south of Birmingham, and was admitted to Antioch College in Ohio, an institution from which he was expelled in 1957 for having cohabited off-campus with the former Judy Clark, also an Antioch student. They were married later that year, both at age 18, and are together still. This year at college is the subject of The Sweet-Scented Manuscript, published in 2004 by Baskerville Publishers.

Tito attended the University of Texas in 1957-59 and 1960-61, receiving the B.A. at the end of that period. His daughter Melanie was born in January 1959, in Austin, Texas. During 1959-60, he worked as an assistant bookkeeper in the financial district of New York City. He returned to New York after graduation from the University of Texas and was employed for one year as an insurance underwriter, an experience lovingly described in his novel The New Austerities published in 1994 to very good reviews.

Tito was employed by the University of Iowa Libraries in 1968-70, and then began work as The Social Sciences Bibliographer at Iowa State University, a position held for ten years ending in 1980. He then became Assistant Director of the State University of New York at Binghamton Library and left in 1982 to become Associate Director of Emory University Library. He was discharged from that position in early 1983 as a result of policy disagreements and opted to devote himself full-time thereafter to novel writing.

In 1991 Tito's first published novel Lee was issued by Four Walls Eight Windows, a small press in New York City. The book received favorable reviews in The New York Times and elsewhere, being declared "spellbinding" by The New England Review of Books and "a stunning debut" by The Los Angeles Reader. Among negative reviews, Publishers' Weekly exposed the book as the work of a reactionary snob and revealed that "it sinks under the weight of its own pretensions."

In 1994 his somewhat experimental Opportunities in Alabama Agriculture was published, a story based upon the history of his forebears on his mother's side. Extremely favorable and extended reviews were provided by Thomas Fleming, editor of Chronicles; a Magazine of American Culture, and by columnist Jim Knipfel of The New York Press. In 2007 a paperback edition of Lee was issued by Overlook Press. Tito's most recent novel, Fields of Asphodel also appeared in 2007 from the same publisher.
Tito determined to become a writer as a result of having read the novels of Thomas Wolfe when he was an adolescent. Since that time he has been writing, or preparing to write (or resuscitating), for a period of about fifty years.

Depending upon the weather and the day of the week, Tito admires Orwell, Faulkner, Dostoevsky, Hardy and the nearly-forgotten Ladislas Reymont. Among current American authors, he prefers Larry Brown, William Gay, and Wendell Berry. Tito's taste in music runs to Wagner and Mahler.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars dark, brutal, and hilarious, September 14, 2007

By 

Donna G. (NYC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fields of Asphodel (Hardcover)

With "Fields of Asphodel" Tito Perdue has done it again, following up his terrific "Lee" with another extremely dark, extremely funny book. In "Fields," Lee Pefley, who dies in the eponymous "Lee," comes to find himself in the afterworld - a place not unlike the earth he's just left, only colder. This makes perfect sense, of course, as Lee probably belongs in a fairly unpleasant place, given his behavior while living, and his afterworld pretty much sees and raises his unfavorable view of earth. Although Lee does get some enjoyment as a spectator of the punishments inflicted on some of those he himself feels deserving of punishment. As in "Lee," Perdue manages to make dark subject matter very funny. But there is an almost impossible-seeming sweet streak in his character Lee, and that is his love for and yearning for his deceased wife Judy, who Lee searches for with little hope of finding - after all, she was a much better person than he was; she will surely be on a higher plane, and she also had a good head start. The emotional uplift that concludes this tale is nothing short of magic, achievable only by an incredibly talented writer. If you have never read Tito Perdue, read "Lee" first. "Fields of Asphodel" is a fine dessert!!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Spectacular entertainment!, November 12, 2007

By 

William R. Martin - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Fields of Asphodel (Hardcover)

In FIELDS OF ASPHODEL, Tito Perdue picks up Lee Pefley where he left him at the end of LEE, dead. He then goes on to describe his curmudgeonly character searching through the afterlife for the wife who predeceased him. Along the way he is subjected to the things he hated while alive: cold weather, crowds, and some extremely unpleasant tortures. As harsh, jarring and outrageous as some of the torments Perdue inflicts on these dwellers of Lee's Purgatory, the book is quite witty and pointed - funny actually. A fine extension of the Lee series. Anyone who enjoyed Lee will love this one. Opportunities in Alabama Agriculture: A Novel Lee: A Novel The New Austerities The Sweet-Scented Manuscript

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Stranger than strange!, November 11, 2007

By 

M. Martin - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Fields of Asphodel (Hardcover)

Fields of Asphodel is the most recent installment in Perdue's cycle of novels detailing the adventures of one Leland (Lee) Pefley, a problematic southerner whose nostalgia for the 1950s and 60s and abhorrence of modernity have established this writer as one of the most astringent critics of present-day American life. This book, following in the trajectory of Lee (1991), The New Austerities (1994), and The Sweet-Scented Manuscript (2004) examines the protagonist's ordeals and, finally, his absolution in the hellish place to which he is assigned following his death at the end of Lee.Opportunities in Alabama Agriculture: A Novel The New Austerities The Sweet-Scented Manuscript


The quality of Perdue's prose has been noted by others, and it remains only to say that in Fields he has lived up to the standard set in his earlier work. The plot itself is inventive and frightening, and represents a unique mixture of realism with fantasy. Not just another generic novel in search of medium grade readers, Perdue's new book is stranger than strange and comes to us from a very strange place.