he spent his entire life. The story is told from the various perspectives of several narrators, among them Tolstoy's wife, daughter, and doctor. The novelBay of Arrows (1992) is an unconventional commemoration of the five-hundredth anniversary of Columbus's discovery of the Americas. The story juxtaposes a portrait of the famed explorer with that of Christopher Genovese, a contemporary English professor-poet who, after being accused of sexual harassment by a student, moves with his family to the Dominican Republic. In Benjamin's Crossing Parini revisits the genre of biographical fiction, this time taking as his subject Walter Benjamin, the renowned German Jewish intellectual whose writings significantly influenced contemporary literary theory. The novel focuses on Benjamin's final days as he attempts to flee occupied France to escape the Nazis; after being refused entry into Spain, and suffering from heart disease, Benjamin apparently commits suicide. Parini also writes in a more traditional biographical form as evident in John Steinbeck: A Biography (1995) in which he delivers a sympathetic reconsideration of a writer whose literary reputation has not fared as well as other more acclaimed contemporaries such as Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner. In Robert Frost: A Life (1999), Parini offers a portrait of his favorite poet which reveals Frost's own attempts to overcome personal tragedy through artistic creativity. Parini also edited and contributed to Gore Vidal: Writer Against the Grain (1992), a volume of scholarly essays and reviews on an author famous for his own biographical fiction, though, as Parini contends, remains underappreciated. Having already worked on numerous anthologies, Parini took on his most challenging editorial task with The Columbia History of American Poetry, a volume of scholarly essays that highlights a diverse array of important American poets and poetic movements from the colonial era to the present day.

Critical Reception

Critical response to Parini's writings is almost as varied as his literary output. His volumes of poetry, particularly Anthracite County and Town Life, attract positive assessment and helped establish his literary reputation. Reviewers praise Anthracite County for the honesty and risk-taking of Parini's poems and his deft handling of language. Parini also received favorable reviews for his first two novels, notably The Patch Boys, which critics commend for its insightful portrayal of adolescent discovery and complex depiction of labor problems. The Last Station was a welcome surprise to the literary establishment, considering that its protagonist, Tolstoy, had heretofore been the subject of an immense number of biographies and other critical works. Critics praise the biographical novel for offering a faithful rendering of Tolstoy's last months and for presenting a intricate portrait of Tolstoy's art and difficult personal life. Parini's subsequent novels, Bay of Arrows and Benjamin's Crossing, however, are not consistently well regarded. While Bay of Arrows is praised as an entertaining and stimulating novel, it is also criticized for exhibiting a lack of substance. Benjamin's Crossing is acknowledged for presenting an accurate account of Benjamin's last days and for succinctly describing many of his ideas, but is also faulted in its portrayal of Benjamin as an intellectual. Parini's nonfiction biographies of Steinbeck and Frost also received differing reviews. John Steinbeck is praised for both its readability and its reconsideration of an author often neglected by university academics, though Parini is panned by some for a lack of objective distance, failing to bolster Steinbeck scholarship, and an overly sympathetic treatment of his subject. In contrast Robert Frost—which received the Chicago Tribune Heartland Award for the Best Work of Nonfiction in 1999—finds almost universal critical acclaim and is regarded as an informative perspective on the popular American poet's approach to his craft, though somewhat wanting in analysis of Frost's inner, especially intellectual, life. As editor of Gore Vidal, Parini received near unanimous praise for his part in establishing academic interest in Vidal's writings. In numerous major periodicals, critics highly extol The Norton Book of American Autobiography, which Parini edited and published in 1999. Critics are not as generous, however, in their appraisal of Parini's work as editor of The Columbia History of American Poetry. As expected, reviewers fault the work for its omission of various poets. Critics generally agree that, despite its many excellent essays and the difficult and contentious question of what exactly constitutes “American” poetry, The Columbia History of American Poetry falls short as a definitive “history” of American poetry due to its inability to unify its disparate subjects and perspectives, but still offers the reader a provocative consideration of what William Carlos Williams called “the American language.”