Customer Reviews

The New Austerities

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Some critics have compared Perdue's work to John Kennedy Toole's A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES. His protagonist, Lee Pefley, is what Jay Nock called a "superfluous man" -- a man of classical learning doomed to live in a world whose movers and shakers never read anything more substantial than how-to books like "The Tao of Management."

A "prequel" to his debut novel, LEE, this witty novel opens with the protagonist contemplating the futile misery of his existence in Dinkins-era New York, where he is employed at an insurance firm. He has finally had enough. Lee has enough money in his retirement and savings accounts to live -- if only he can get out of New York. In a hilarious scene, he tells his boss to shove it, then he and his wife literally break out of the city -- busting through a tollgate in their aging car. Pefley is Alabama-bound, where he tries to re-discover the Agrarian world of his ancestors.

There is a "postmodern" quality to Perdue's style, but a closer reading reveals that his underlying perspective is PRE-modern. Lee Pefley is a quixotic reactionary, seeking to return to a culture of traditional, localized loyalties.

This is a thoughtful, complex novel.

the title above said it all. Southerners ---always great writers--- are still writing but just not published. The internet is changing that. Suppressed voices are coming forward, more interesting, more analytical, with more density and sophistication, in English with a larger vocabulary than the urban t.v. ticker lines. This man documents, as so many others, the underground voices of americans shut out after the civil war, and again in the 60s, and the voices are fresh, not something one has heard before. A guy who knows his Faulkner, and cares about language.

The time inevitably comes when anyone who finds himself lodged unwillingly in New York City will wish to flee the place and seek sanctuary in more hospitable realms. For the hero of this book those realms lie deep within the boundaries of Alabama, specifically on the some 200 acres that have come down to him by inheritance. Having put aside a small fund of money and a tiny wife who seems prepared for any adventure, these two people point their superannuated Volvo in a southerly direction and set out on one of the most variagated and problematic journeys in print.
Alabama, certain features notwithstanding, turns out to be so far superior to his recent experience in the big city that he opts to stay. How he manages to do so, and why, form the thesis of this highly original book.Lee,The Sweet-Scented Manuscript,Fields of Asphodel

Lee Pefley is now the grown up man first met in Sweet-Scented Manuscript, and later appearing as an old man in Perdue's LEE. He's now married, living and working in New York City, and hating it. He must escape this grinding work routine, the decadence and decay of urban life and return to the rual life he loves - or die. This book describes the journey that accomplishes it. He escapes the city, with his wife, as many stolen books and records as his car will carry, and takes off. Along the way he meets numerous slightly kooky characters, some wishing him to stay, but he conintues on until he arrives at his ancestral home in Alabama. This book is strikingly original, witty and downright funny. The viewpoint of a writer obviously fed up with contimporary society, but finding humor in it all the same.
The Sweet-Scented Manuscript, Lee, Fields of Asphodel