Hoffman's success amazed friends from his early years as an actor, who told him "You were the last one I expected to make it". Biographer Jeff Lenburg wrote that "newspapers across the country were deluged with thousands of letters from fans", with one example published in "The New York Times": "I identified with Ben...I thought of him as a spiritual brother. He was confused about his future and about his place in the world, as I am. It's a film one digs, rather than understands intellectually".