SOURCE: “Phonetic Shadows,” in New Statesman, November 16, 1973, pp. 739-40.

In the following review of The Prison-House of Language, Donoghue commends Jameson's contribution to Marxist criticism, though expresses some reservations about his view of historical truth and determinism.

I wish I could claim to have discovered Frederic Jameson, but his name meant nothing to me until a couple of years ago when I read one of his essays, on Walter Benjamin, in the little magazine Salmagundi. Since then I have been keeping my ear fairly close to his ground, convinced that messages of exceptional value would be audible. Belatedly, I have read his first book, Sartre: The Origins of a Style (Yale 1961) where he presents his credentials as a literary critic and incidentally reveals the latitude of his interests. The essay on Benjamin makes a chapter of Mr Jameson’s second book, Marxism and Form (1972), where it is accompanied...