Marjorie Perloff Obituary, Death – It has left me with a profound sense of sorrow to learn about the passing of Marjorie Perloff. In my review of her book, which is scheduled to be released in 2021, I have reached the conclusion of the following paragraph: a research project pertaining to micropolitics Perloff completed the novel Infrathin when she was an octogenarian, at a time of political turmoil and epidemic, and she was 90 years old in September of 2021. As of that time, she was living in the United States.
Her most recent book is compared favourably to the bloviations of her near-contemporary, the late Harold Bloom, in his posthumous Take Arms Against a Sea of Troubles (reviewed PNR 258), where the slivers of gold must be retrieved from the depths of a vast slough of senescence. She says that this comparison is a positive one. Her book is distinguished by its brevity, which is marked by clarity and intelligence. On the other hand, this comparison should not be carried out in such a way as to indicate that Perloff’s most recent work is acceptable for someone of her age; rather, it is a book that would be suitable for a critic of any age.
It possesses the qualities that are distinctive of genuine criticism; it makes you want to read or reread the texts that it examines and to apply the micropoetical technique that it defines to those texts as well as other texts, while at the same time not being bound by it. In other words, it makes you desire not to be limited by it. In situations where the insights call for it, Perloff demonstrates the way by deviating from the rigid commitment to methodological standards.
According to her own words, literary criticism “will never be an exact science,” and in the end, as T.S. Eliot famously observed, “there is no method except to be very intelligent of the subject matter.” Without a doubt, Perloff comes from a family with a very high level of intelligence. She shines like a good action in a world that is full of evils, and as a critic, she is a pearl of high price. That is why she is so valuable. The fact that she enjoys paronomasia makes it possible to make a pun on her surname indicates that she is a precious jewel of great value.
