FIELDS OF ASPHODEL
by Tito Perdue

Tito Perdue's published works, including his critically acclaimed LEE, follow the life of the most remarkable curmudgeon in late-20th century American letters, Lee Pefley, whose mastery of the classics has rendered him completely unfit for life in contemporary society.  Lee is capable of becoming so enraged by the ignorance of those around him that he commits murder, as when he bludgeons to death a librarian who is unable to name a single Greek author.

FIELDS OF ASPHODEL follows LEE chronologically, beginning just after Lee's death at the end of LEE.  Lee finds himself in a Beckettian afterworld, dull, drab and unpromising; yet he is immediately motivated to find his beloved wife, Judy, who died some time before the beginning of LEE.  Lee is judgemental, hot-tempered, arrogant, and sometimes craven, and yet he remains an incredibly sympathetic and even loveable character as he pushes through adversity to find Judy.

The supernatural setting of this post-mortem sequel allows Perdue to create scenes of Dantean weirdness.  As always, Perdue's critique of civilization is that we are actually post-civilization, and that what we have become is a little less than human.  Like Beckett, he is fortunately blessed with a subtle but outrageous sense of absurd humor that makes this revelation, if not bearable, at least endurable.  And in a truly delicious scene in which Lee meets God, Perdue also shows us, if not a way out, at least the possibility of a crack in the walls we build around ourselves.

 --C. B. Coble