[...] In his review of Adaptation, David Ulin argues for seeing Kaufman not as merely a screenplay writer but as a "great American writer ... [with] his mastery of structure, his voice and vision, his recognition of the power of the word to remake the world -- he stands with the finest writers of his generation, among them David Foster Wallace, Mona Simpson, [and] Michael Chabon." Similarly, Derek Hill, in his book about American New Wave cinema, describes Kaufman as "our pre-eminent explorer of anxiety-laden inner space, a cross between Franz Kafka and Woody Allen, with a pinch of Larry David, a dollop or two of Philip K. Dick, and a huge slathering of Samuel Beckett sprinkled with Jorge Luis Borges to top it off."