[This brief review of Tito Perdue’s Opportunities in Alabama Agriculture is reproduced for the benefit of enthusiasts and bibliomanes. By Robert Jordan for Library Journal, 1 November 1994. I copied the text from the Barnes and Noble website and trusted the date from encyclopedia.com.]
Insomniac and nearly as delusional as his demented father, Benjamin Reuben hesitantly explores the immediate reaches of rural post-Civil War Alabama beyond the family’s mule-cultivated farm. Considered the best of a bad lot, Ben and his eccentricities are viewed with great amusement by the locals through his careers as dry goods clerk, teacher, farmer, and mail carrier. Retaining several literary devices from his earlier novel Lee (LJ 9/15/91)—e.g., the main character’s fixation on obscure books—Perdue paints his own picture of the South. Unfortunately, the story has little appeal. Though told from the perspective of a Southern idiot, it should not be compared to Faulkner’s classic, The Sound and the Fury (1929). For Southern regional collections only. — Robert Jordan, Univ. of Iowa, Iowa City.
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