Fredric Jameson is without dispute the leading Marxist critic and literary theorist of his generation in North America: a claim less vacuous today than it would have been twenty-five years ago, when Jameson's work was first appearing and when Marxism as an intellectual force and as a theoretical discipline scarcely existed on the American scene. Jameson indeed can share much of the credit for having changed that situation by introducing European ideas, structuralist as well as Marxist, to North America and for sustaining a resolutely Marxist perspective in the face of subsequent challenges and alternative approaches. More than just a pioneer, however, he has shown himself, in a succession of books and articles, to be a master at formulating current issues and problems, as well as ingenious in attempting to resolve them. Jameson is a true dialectical thinker, something rare today; and his breadth of reference, within and...