Lee

I read LEE years ago and loved it. The character Lee Pefley is engaging, sometimes ridiculously anti-social and also hilarious. After completing Perdue's latest novel, Fields of Asphodel, I felt compelled to return to Lee, and found it even better on second reading. I noticed this time subtleties in Perdue's use of language that I had missed the first time. Perdue's Lee Pefley is an unforgettable character. In the years between readings he stayed with me, as did many of Perdue's descriptions.Fields of Asphodel

In Leeland Pefley, Tito Perdue creates the classic Misanthrope with a Cause. America, Lee perceives, is in a state of decline and degeneration, her population not just unwashed, but uneducated and imbecilic. Lee - a man too well educated (largely SELF-educated by way of his cherished, numerous, stolen books) to endure the idiocy that surrounds him - is recently widowed and wants to leave the planet himself. How Perdue makes this hilarious is a wonder. Though not a fan of violence usually, I laughed out loud as Lee strikes out with his club-like wood walking stick at those he deems too stupid to live.

If Lee weren't a fictional character, he would have clocked that bird-brained reviewer from Publisher's Weekly who panned this book. LEE is a modern masterpiece, only I'm not sure America deserves it. Buy this book and read it-- it's really hardcore. Buy it for your friends. Watch the movie IDIOCRACY by Mike Judge and then read LEE.

Maybe--just MAYBE--if you could harness the linguinsic magic of Marquez and Faulkner and Proulx, you might conjure a likeness to Tito Perdue. LEE's attack on the senses is like standing in a storm following a heatwave.