SOURCE: A review of Radical Artifice, in Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 51, No. 4, Fall, 1993, pp. 642–43.

In the following positive review, Surette provides a summary analysis of Perloff's thesis and arguments in Radical Artifice.

Marjorie Perloff is a distinguished commentator on the literature of this century, best known for her work on Futurism, one of the pre-First World War international and inter-art avant-garde movements. Radical Artifice takes on the avant-garde since 1960, observed from the angle of the institutions of popular culture—in particular television talk shows, and graphic advertisements. The project of the book is to respond to Charles Bernstein's decree: “There is no natural look or sound to a poem. Every element is intended, chosen. That is what makes a thing a poem” (p. 35). “Why,” Perloff asks, “is the natural now regarded with such suspicion?” (p. 35).

Her answer is that the television talk show has irremediably...