FICTION

THE NEW AUSTERITIES by Tito Purdue (Peachtree: $20; 218 pp.) Anomie is the anti-hero of “Austerities.” The putative protagonist, Lee Pefley, is displaced: in time (preferring Classical Greece to “a time in history when not one soul could (be) found that was good enough to serve as Berlioz’s plumber’s whore”); in place (craving escape from scuzzy New York to his native Alabama); in language (he says Lo! a lot, and Hold! and O leave me never). An unregenerate elitist, if he had his “Bams druthers the world would be an ‘aesthetocracy.’ ” With lush, pliant wife Judy (both are 52) he leaves his position in a Manhattan insurance firm, buys a used car heavy enough to run people down, and sets out for his Southern idyll. Reality is harsher. The traditional row of old men on a hardware-store bench tells him: “Look, man, this here’s the New South. You don’t have to talk about football!” Relatives greet him with shotguns: “Watch it! He’s got a book with him!” And as he and Judy hunker down in an old, roofless house, we consider his alter ego, Georgian novelist Tito Perdue, who himself confesses a weakness for Herodotus and Homer, and deplores today’s mediocrity. How, then, do we account for Lee’s “trodding down the road,” “pouring through books” and contemplating “faces comprised of stars”? An engaging character; pity he didn’t swipe a Webster’s.