Customer Reviews

The Jameson Reader (Blackwell Readers)

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Hardt and Weeks have compiled an excellent overview of Jameson's impressive volume of work. The excerpts from Jameson will prove thought-provoking to any student or activist who wants to maintain the critical praxis of Marxism, but wants to move away from its historic economic focus. Consequently, by expanding Marx's concept of the mode of production, and through insightful analyses of history, art, film, music, and architecture Jameson provides an insight into the value of Marxism for what Wendy Brown (and others) have called these postmodern times.

Fredric Jameson (b. 1934) is one of the most influential and original thinkers of our time. He first began to publish important work in the 1960s. After earning a Ph.D. in French literature at Yale in 1959, Jameson revised his dissertation and published it as "Sartre: The Origins of a Style," a book which is still one of the finest examinations of its subject.

Throughout the Sixties, Jameson read deeply in Marxist literature, from Mehring and Plekhanov to Adorno, Lukacs, and Sartre, and his extensive research and immersion in Marxism resulted in 1971's seminal "Marxism and Form," a landmark in Marxist criticism and an unsurpassed dialectical survey of the 20th century's most important communist writings. With this book, Jameson established himself as the foremost Marxist critic of his time, rivalled only by Terry Eagleton, whose approaches to criticism and the dialectic are highly disparate from Jameson's.

Jameson's interests and expertise are catholic, and his prose style, so often referred to as "difficult" or "impenetrable," has always struck me with its elegance, precision, and singularity. No one else writes sentences like him, and no other critic's prose offers as much sheer aesthetic pleasure. In his criticism, Jameson's allusions and insights are always profound and original. His powers of associative and lateral thinking are unique. Whatever his subject, from critiquing a Balzac novel to limning "The Godfather," Jameson's approach is resolutely Marxist and his dialectic fluid and densely erudite.

"The Jameson Reader" offers readers an excellent introduction to the world of Jameson's thought, with essays ranging from the state of Marxist criticism in modern academe to "narrative as a socially symbolic act." His groundbreaking examinations of postmodernism are included as well. The introduction and commentary by the editors are superb throughout.

Anyone seeking familiarity with the work of Fredric Jameson should start with "The Jameson Reader." No one looks at our modern world with a more penetrating gaze, and if any modern critic's work will last, it is his.