James Gould Cozzens
Encyclopedia
James Gould Cozzens was a Pulitzer Prize
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction has been awarded for distinguished fiction by an American author, preferably dealing with American life. It originated as the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel, which was awarded between 1918 and 1947.-1910s:...

-winning American novelist.

He is often grouped today with his contemporaries John O'Hara
John O'Hara
John Henry O'Hara was an American writer. He initially became known for his short stories and later became a best-selling novelist whose works include Appointment in Samarra and BUtterfield 8. He was particularly known for an uncannily accurate ear for dialogue...

 and John P. Marquand
John P. Marquand
John Phillips Marquand was a American writer. Originally best known for his Mr. Moto spy stories, he achieved popular success and critical respect for his satirical novels, winning a Pulitzer Prize for The Late George Apley in 1938...

, but his work is generally considered more challenging. Despite initial critical acclaim, his popularity came gradually. Cozzens was a critic of modernism, and he was quoted in a featured article in Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...

as saying, "I can't read ten pages of Steinbeck
John Steinbeck
John Ernst Steinbeck, Jr. was an American writer. He is widely known for the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden and the novella Of Mice and Men...

 without throwing up."

Biographical background

Born in Chicago, Illinois, he grew up on Staten Island
Staten Island
Staten Island is a borough of New York City, New York, United States, located in the southwest part of the city. Staten Island is separated from New Jersey by the Arthur Kill and the Kill Van Kull, and from the rest of New York by New York Bay...

. His father, Henry William Cozzens Jr., who died when Cozzens was 17, was an affluent businessman and the grandson of a governor of Rhode Island
Rhode Island
The state of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, more commonly referred to as Rhode Island , is a state in the New England region of the United States. It is the smallest U.S. state by area...

, William C. Cozzens
William C. Cozzens
William Cole Cozzens was an American politician and the 28th Governor of Rhode Island.-Early life:Cozzens was born in Newport, Rhode Island on August 26, 1811....

. His Canadian mother, Mary Bertha Wood, came from a family of Connecticut
Connecticut
Connecticut is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, and the state of New York to the west and the south .Connecticut is named for the Connecticut River, the major U.S. river that approximately...

 tories
Tory
Toryism is a traditionalist and conservative political philosophy which grew out of the Cavalier faction in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. It is a prominent ideology in the politics of the United Kingdom, but also features in parts of The Commonwealth, particularly in Canada...

 who left for Nova Scotia
Nova Scotia
Nova Scotia is one of Canada's three Maritime provinces and is the most populous province in Atlantic Canada. The name of the province is Latin for "New Scotland," but "Nova Scotia" is the recognized, English-language name of the province. The provincial capital is Halifax. Nova Scotia is the...

 following the American Revolution
American Revolution
The American Revolution was the political upheaval during the last half of the 18th century in which thirteen colonies in North America joined together to break free from the British Empire, combining to become the United States of America...

. Cozzens grew up in the same privileged lifestyle that formed the background of his most acclaimed works.

An Episcopalian, Cozzens attended the Episcopal Kent School
Kent School
Kent School is a private, co-educational college preparatory school in Kent, Connecticut, USA. The Reverend Frederick Herbert Sill, Order of the Holy Cross, established the school in 1906 and it retains its affiliation with the Episcopal Church of the United States.Students at Kent come from more...

 in Connecticut from 1916 to 1922, and after graduation went to Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

 for two years, where he published his first novel, Confusion, in 1924. A few months later, ill and in debt, he withdrew from school and moved to New Brunswick
New Brunswick
New Brunswick is one of Canada's three Maritime provinces and is the only province in the federation that is constitutionally bilingual . The provincial capital is Fredericton and Saint John is the most populous city. Greater Moncton is the largest Census Metropolitan Area...

, where he wrote a second novel, Michael Scarlett. Neither book sold well nor was widely-read, and to sustain himself, Cozzens went to Cuba to teach children of American residents, where he began to write short stories, and where he gathered material which eventually became Cock Pit (1928) and The Son of Perdition (1929). After a year he accompanied his mother to Europe, where he tutored a young polio victim to earn money.

He met Sylvia Bernice Baumgarten, a literary agent with Brandt & Kirkpatrick, whom he married at city hall in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

 on December 27, 1927 and who successfully edited and marketed his books. She was his apparent antithesis — Jewish and a liberal
Liberalism
Liberalism is the belief in the importance of liberty and equal rights. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally, liberals support ideas such as constitutionalism, liberal democracy, free and fair elections, human rights,...

 Democrat
Democratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...

 — but their marriage lasted successfully until both died in 1978. Except for military service during World War II, the Cozzenses lived in semi-seclusion near Lambertville, New Jersey
Lambertville, New Jersey
Lambertville is a city in Hunterdon County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the city population was 3,906.Lambertville was originally incorporated as a town by an Act of the New Jersey Legislature on March 1, 1849, from portions of West Amwell Township...

 and shied away from all but local contact. Other early novels include S.S. San Pedro (1931), The Last Adam (1933), and Castaway (1934).

Cozzens received O. Henry Award
O. Henry Award
The O. Henry Award is the only yearly award given to short stories of exceptional merit. The award is named after the American master of the form, O. Henry....

s for his short stories "A Farewell to Cuba" (1931) and "Total Stranger", published in The Saturday Evening Post
The Saturday Evening Post
The Saturday Evening Post is a bimonthly American magazine. It was published weekly under this title from 1897 until 1969, and quarterly and then bimonthly from 1971.-History:...

on February 15, 1936, then went on to author two more highly-regarded novels, Ask Me Tomorrow
Ask Me Tomorrow
-Track listing:...

(1941), and The Just and the Unjust
The Just and the Unjust
The Just and the Unjust is a novel by James Gould Cozzens published in 1942. Set in "Childerstown," a fictional rural town of 4000 persons, the novel is a courtroom drama of a murder trial that begins June 14, 1939, and takes three days....

(1942).

During World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

, Cozzens served in the U.S. Army Air Forces, at first updating manuals, then in the USAAF Office of Information Services, a liaison and "information clearinghouse" between the military and the civilian press. One of the functions of his office was in controlling news, and it became Cozzens’ job to defuse situations potentially embarrassing to the Chief of the Army Air Forces, Gen. Henry H. Arnold
Henry H. Arnold
Henry Harley "Hap" Arnold was an American general officer holding the grades of General of the Army and later General of the Air Force. Arnold was an aviation pioneer, Chief of the Air Corps , Commanding General of the U.S...

. In the course of his job he became arguably the best informed officer of any rank and service in the nation, a major
Major
Major is a rank of commissioned officer, with corresponding ranks existing in almost every military in the world.When used unhyphenated, in conjunction with no other indicator of rank, the term refers to the rank just senior to that of an Army captain and just below the rank of lieutenant colonel. ...

 by the end of the war. These experiences formed the basis of his 1948 novel Guard of Honor
Guard of Honor
Guard of Honor is a Pulitzer Prize winning novel by James Gould Cozzens published in 1948. The novel is set during World War II, with most of the action occurring on or near a fictional Army Air Forces base in central Florida. The action occurs over a period of approximately 48 hours...

, which won the 1949 Pulitzer Prize
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...

.

His 1957 novel By Love Possessed became a surprise runaway hit, with 34 weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list, reaching Number One on September 22, 1957, three weeks after its release. (It was also the top-selling novel of 1957. See List of 1957 bestsellers.) The novel was also very loosely adapted into a film in 1961 starring Lana Turner
Lana Turner
Lana Turner was an American actress.Discovered and signed to a film contract by MGM at the age of sixteen, Turner first attracted attention in They Won't Forget . She played featured roles, often as the ingenue, in such films as Love Finds Andy Hardy...

.

In 1958, he relocated to another country home near Williamstown, Massachusetts
Williamstown, Massachusetts
Williamstown is a town in Berkshire County, in the northwest corner of Massachusetts. It shares a border with Vermont to the north and New York to the west. It is part of the Pittsfield, Massachusetts Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 7,754 at the 2010 census...

. From 1960 to 1966 Cozzens was on the Harvard Board of Overseers
Harvard Board of Overseers
The Harvard Board of Overseers is one of Harvard University's two governing boards...

' Visiting Committee for the English Department. His last novel, Morning, Noon and Night, was published in 1968 but sold poorly.

James and Bernice Cozzens spent their last years in relative obscurity in Martin County, Florida
Martin County, Florida
Martin County is a county in the U.S. state of Florida. As of 2000, the population was 126,731. The U.S. Census Bureau 2008 estimate for the county is 138,660. Its county seat is Stuart, Florida.- History :...

, where they lived in Rio
Rio, Florida
Rio is a census-designated place in Martin County, Florida, United States. The population was 1,028 at the 2000 census. Rio is pronounced locally as if it were spelled "Rye-oh." It is part of the Port St. Lucie Metropolitan Statistical Area.-History:...

, but used a Stuart
Stuart, Florida
Stuart is the only incorporated city of Martin County, Florida, on Florida's Treasure Coast. The population was 14,633 at the 2000 census. As of 2007, the population recorded by the U.S. Census Bureau is 15,964....

 post office box as their address. She died on January 30, 1978. Suffering from spinal cancer, he died of pneumonia on August 9, 1978, at Martin Memorial Hospital in Stuart.

Style and themes

Philosophical in nature, his novels take place over the course of just a few days, exhibit little action, and explore a variety of concepts such as love, duty, racial sensitivities, and the law. Cozzens' novels disregarded modernist literary trends, and are characterized by the use of often unfamiliar, archaic words, traditional literary structures, and conservative themes. As a result many contemporary critics regarded his work as old-fashioned or moralistic, and he was viciously attacked as a reactionary
Reactionary
The term reactionary refers to viewpoints that seek to return to a previous state in a society. The term is meant to describe one end of a political spectrum whose opposite pole is "radical". While it has not been generally considered a term of praise it has been adopted as a self-description by...

 by his harshest critics.

His prose is crafted meticulously and has an objective, clinical tone and subtle, dry humor. His work is at times complex, using multi-level layering and double voicing
Heteroglossia
The term heteroglossia describes the coexistence of distinct varieties within a single "linguistic code". In Greek hetero = different + glōssa = tongue, language...

 as narrative techniques for expressing viewpoint. The central figures in his books are primarily professional, middle-class white men — assistant district attorney
District attorney
In many jurisdictions in the United States, a District Attorney is an elected or appointed government official who represents the government in the prosecution of criminal offenses. The district attorney is the highest officeholder in the jurisdiction's legal department and supervises a staff of...

 Abner Coates in The Just and the Unjust, doctor
Physician
A physician is a health care provider who practices the profession of medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring human health through the study, diagnosis, and treatment of disease, injury and other physical and mental impairments...

  George Bull in The Last Adam, Episcopal priest
Priest
A priest is a person authorized to perform the sacred rites of a religion, especially as a mediatory agent between humans and deities. They also have the authority or power to administer religious rites; in particular, rites of sacrifice to, and propitiation of, a deity or deities...

 Ernest Cudlipp in Men and Brethren, U.S. Army Air Forces Colonel
Colonel
Colonel , abbreviated Col or COL, is a military rank of a senior commissioned officer. It or a corresponding rank exists in most armies and in many air forces; the naval equivalent rank is generally "Captain". It is also used in some police forces and other paramilitary rank structures...

 Norman Ross in Guard of Honor, and lawyer
Lawyer
A lawyer, according to Black's Law Dictionary, is "a person learned in the law; as an attorney, counsel or solicitor; a person who is practicing law." Law is the system of rules of conduct established by the sovereign government of a society to correct wrongs, maintain the stability of political...

 Arthur Winner in By Love Possessed, for example — who confront issues such as duty
Duty
Duty is a term that conveys a sense of moral commitment to someone or something. The moral commitment is the sort that results in action and it is not a matter of passive feeling or mere recognition...

 and ethics
Ethics
Ethics, also known as moral philosophy, is a branch of philosophy that addresses questions about morality—that is, concepts such as good and evil, right and wrong, virtue and vice, justice and crime, etc.Major branches of ethics include:...

 in their careers while at the same time attempting to reconcile these with the emotional demands of their personal lives, usually by compromising their principles. In almost every instance they are also archetypes of persons he observed in his own experience.

His biographer, Matthew Bruccoli, in describing the style of By Love Possessed, also identified characteristics of his mature works (particularly Guard of Honor), characteristics that reached their peak in the best-seller:

...long sentences, frequent use of parenthetical constructions, rhetorical questions, elaborate parallelism, inclusion of unfamiliar words, unacknowledged (classical) quotations, ironically intended word choices, a habit of following a formal statement with a clarifying or deflating colloquialism, polyptoton (repetition of a word in different cases and inflections, as in “result’s result”), inverted word order, double negatives, the custom of defining a word or providing alternatives for it, and periodic sentences in which the meaning becomes clear at the end. The effect of these conjoined elements can be a deliberate density of expression...

A famous quote said by James Cozzens was "I have no theme except that people get a very raw deal from life."

Controversy

Cozzens eschewed both fame and publicity, to the point that he publicly stated he would refuse a Nobel Prize
Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...

 when speculation that he was under consideration became prominent. In 1957, however, he broke with his long-standing penchant for privacy (for which he was dubbed "the Garbo
Greta Garbo
Greta Garbo , born Greta Lovisa Gustafsson, was a Swedish film actress. Garbo was an international star and icon during Hollywood's silent and classic periods. Many of Garbo's films were sensational hits, and all but three were profitable...

 of U.S. letters" in the article that resulted) and granted Time magazine an interview over the objections of his wife as the basis for its cover article of September 2, 1957, marking the release of By Love Possessed, for which Cozzens had been nominated for a second Pulitzer.

Short-story writer and critic Patrick J. Murphy wrote that Cozzens' responses during the interview were verbalizations of his writing style, often tongue-in-cheek
Tongue-in-cheek
Tongue-in-cheek is a phrase used as a figure of speech to imply that a statement or other production is humorously intended and it should not be taken at face value. The facial expression typically indicates that one is joking or making a mental effort. In the past, it may also have indicated...

, using parody
Parody
A parody , in current usage, is an imitative work created to mock, comment on, or trivialise an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation...

 and sarcasm, quoting other works without attributation, punctuated by laughter. As sometimes happened with his prose, this style did not translate well into print, and the results were further distorted because the information was gathered by one reporter but the article written by someone different.

An immediate barrage of published reader letters attacked Cozzens as being a snob, an elitist, anti-Catholic, racist and sexist, criticisms that were soon picked up by acerbic critics including Irving Howe
Irving Howe
Irving Howe was an American literary and social critic and a prominent figure of the Democratic Socialists of America.-Life and career:...

, Frederick Crews, and Dwight Macdonald
Dwight Macdonald
Dwight Macdonald was an American writer, editor, film critic, social critic, philosopher, and political radical.-Early life and career:...

. He also became a symbol of "The Establishment
The Establishment
The Establishment is a term used to refer to a visible dominant group or elite that holds power or authority in a nation. The term suggests a closed social group which selects its own members...

" and the antithesis of the growing counterculture of the 1960s
Counterculture of the 1960s
The counterculture of the 1960s refers to a cultural movement that mainly developed in the United States and spread throughout much of the western world between 1960 and 1973. The movement gained momentum during the U.S. government's extensive military intervention in Vietnam...

 because his works negatively portrayed or lampoon
Parody
A parody , in current usage, is an imitative work created to mock, comment on, or trivialise an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation...

ed those against authority and "the system".

Detractors painted Cozzens as a hardcore political and religious conservative, though he was never politically minded nor strongly religious. His attempts to counter this incorrect image met with little success, and he soon forfeited whatever fan base he gained from By Love Possessed. His reputation was further lambasted in 1968 by critics (in particular John Updike
John Updike
John Hoyer Updike was an American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic....

) of his final book, Morning, Noon, and Night, written for a youthful audience that had no interest in structured, complex style or themes that favored the notion of societal stability.

As a result, sales of all his books suffered, and Cozzens has virtually disappeared from the American literary scene.

Selected works

  • 1924 Confusion
  • 1925 Michael Scarlett
  • 1928 Cock Pit
  • 1929 The Son of Perdition
  • 1931 S.S. San Pedro
  • 1933 The Last Adam
  • 1934 Castaway
  • 1936 Men and Brethren
  • 1940 Ask Me Tomorrow
  • 1942 The Just and the Unjust
    The Just and the Unjust
    The Just and the Unjust is a novel by James Gould Cozzens published in 1942. Set in "Childerstown," a fictional rural town of 4000 persons, the novel is a courtroom drama of a murder trial that begins June 14, 1939, and takes three days....

  • 1948 Guard of Honor
    Guard of Honor
    Guard of Honor is a Pulitzer Prize winning novel by James Gould Cozzens published in 1948. The novel is set during World War II, with most of the action occurring on or near a fictional Army Air Forces base in central Florida. The action occurs over a period of approximately 48 hours...

  • 1957 By Love Possessed
  • 1964 Children and Others, a volume of short stories
  • 1968 Morning, Noon, and Night (Harcourt Trade Publishers
    Harcourt Trade Publishers
    Harcourt was a United States publishing firm with a long history of publishing fiction and nonfiction for children and adults. The company was based in San Diego, California, with an Editorial / Sales / Marketing / Rights offices in New York City and Orlando, Florida.In 2007, the U.S...

    ).

Works about James Gould Cozzens

  • The Novels of James Gould Cozzens Frederick Bracher, Harcourt Brace, 1959
  • James Gould Cozzens, A Time of War: Air Force Diaries and Pentagon Memos 1943–45 Edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli, Harvard University, 1984
  • James Gould Cozzens: A Descriptive Bibliography Matthew J. Bruccoli University of Pittsburgh Press, 1981
  • James Gould Cozzens: A Checklist Compiled by James B. Merriwether, Matthew J. Bruccoli and C.E. Frazer Clark, 1972
  • Cozzens (Writers and Critics) Desmond Ernest Stewart Maxwell, Oliver & Boyd, 1964

Sources


External links

  • The Voice of the WASP, by John Derbyshire
    John Derbyshire
    John Derbyshire is a British-American writer. His columns in National Review and cover a broad range of political-cultural topics, including immigration, China, history, mathematics, and race. Derbyshire's 1996 novel, Seeing Calvin Coolidge in a Dream, was a New York Times "Notable Book of the...

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