Benjamin's Crossing

Benjamin's Crossing received positive reviews. The New York Times wrote "Parini's story is at once painstakingly researched and dramatically recounted. It locates Benjamin's mystifying traits in a vivid and believable psychology. And it has something important to tell us, not just about Benjamin but about the role of the intellectual in modern Western society." The New Yorker called the book "a brisk, moving novel containing a parable without confining itself to a parable's two-dimensionality."