Character of Criticism Book

A good review of Jameson's work up until the present. Buchanan makes excellent connections between Jameson's essays on postmodernism and his essay on the sixties. He also nicely coordinates the concept of cognitive mapping to that of utopia, which is crucial in Jameson's thought: adequately thinking the present leads towards the possibility of a future as a radically different space. Some qualms, however. Buchanan underestimates the influence of French theory on Jameson in favor of the German philosophical influence. Jameson's relations to Barthes, Deleuze, and Lacan are not addressed sufficiently. Perhaps, the major gap, however, is a lack of discussion on Jameson's third-world literature essay. This is a decent survey of Jameson's work, very sympathetic (some would say too much so), well-written, and well-ordered. It's an excellent for those who have read a work or two by Jameson and would like to place it in the context of his oeuvre. For more specific analyses of Jameson's work, see a recent work like On Jameson (a collection of essays to which Buchanan contributed).

(I might also add that Jameson's effects on scholarship far exceed his writings. He considers himself a teacher and one would have a difficult time not running into his students (now professors) in the halls of the academe.)