commentary:

Dwight MacDonald, "By Cozzens Possessed," 1958

Joseph Epstein, "Cozzens Repossessed", 1983 ( )

683. By Love Possessed, by James Gould Cozzens (read 17 Nov 1961) This book was the beneficiary of tremendous hype in its day. I read it with some appreciation, though I shamefacedly confess that my only present memory of the reading is of a sexual frustration the central character endured on an occasion! ( )

זה ספר שקראתי בעיקר לזכרו של אבי. הוא הרבה לשבח אותו ושלושים שנה אחרי מותו מצאתי זמן לקרוא אותו. האמת שאין לי מושג מה מצא חן בעינו כל כך. אולי משום שהגיבור הוא עורך דין. ספר אמריקני מיושן ומיזוגני למדי. ( )

"Love conquers all -- omnia vincit amor, said the gold scroll in a curve beneath the dial of the old French gilt clock. To the dial's right, a nymph, her head on her arm, drowsed, largely undraped, at the mouth of a gold grotto where perhaps she lived. To the dial's left, a youth, by his crook and the pair of lambs with him, a shepherd, had taken cover. Parting fronds of gold vegetation he peeped at the sleeping beauty. On top of the dial, and all unnoticed by the youth, a smiling cupid perched, bow bent, about to loose an arrow at the peeper's heart. While Arthur Winner viewed with faint amusement this romantic grouping, so graceful and absurd, the clock struck three."

So begins By Love Possessed, written in the long sentences, large vocabulary and involved syntax of Cozzen's elaborate and noticeable style. The story is indeed about love and, especially from this distance, also about time. And not least about Arthur Winner, the prosperous rising young lawyer who is well regarded by all.

Written in the 50's the setting is an upscale neighborhood in a small New England town with many of the picture-perfect features of respectability that might come to mind from that time: white clapboard colonial houses on trimmed lawns; a town square dominated by a church on one side, with a slender steeple spearing itself straight up into a blue sky; and a stately courthouse with a painted-white Greek-columned facade facing it across the square -- the very monuments of religion and justice combined in an orderly suburb.

The action takes place over a summery weekend, in the forty-nine hours begun by that clock strking three on that Friday afternoon, as life relaxes for its usual outdoor enjoyments of picnicking, and swimming, and relaxing with one's friends, colleagues and neighbors. But scrapes of people with the law know no weekends, and Arthur Winner is a lawyer, so his weekend is also interlaced with legal complexities and obligations that reach out of the neighborhood, spread across town lines into different social, ethnic and religious strata, and embroil some of his acquaintances and colleagues.

Throughout, Cozzens shows life and events unfolding, not altogether orderly, in response to a complicated and conflicting mesh of a myriad of personal allegiances and affections ranging from professional respect, through amorous dalliances, to familial and married devotion. For that realism, the book drew some criticism, according to the Introduction, because "his objective revelations of the vanity of human wishes upset readers accustomed to reassuring messages about the nobility of human nature."

The passage of time brings us to the present day, fifty years after the novel's publication in 1957, when we can look back, through the pages of this novel, to a considerably calmer and more placid time in our history and notice how times have changed, or not. This was the future that this reviewer and others once aspired to, as we were starting out in life, and it is a picture perfect representation of one part of the American story, as well as an absorbing drama as Arthur Winner is forced to grow in maturity in ways he never could have expected.

Not necessarily an easy read, it is a long book with an enlarged vocabulary that might drive one to a dictionary from time to time, but as the author of the Introduction claims "sixty odd words in a 570 page novel is not an outrageous proportion," before he then gives a list of definitions for the convenience of readers. It is however a brightly lit story of life as it once was, and definitely worth reading before it escapes from our memories completely. ( )

I couldn't get past the first 50 pages. It just droned on and on. ( )