James Gould Cozzens

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Cozzens, James Gould (1903–78), born in Chicago but reared on Staten Island and educated at Harvard (1922–24), where he wrote his first novel, Confusion (1924), the story of an aristocratic, rebellious French girl. Leaving college to become a tutor in Cuba, he wrote Michael Scarlett (1925), a historical romance, and gathered background for Cock Pit (1928), set on a Cuban sugar plantation, and The Son of Perdition (1929), about a despotic American company official in Cuba. His more mature work begins with the novelette S.S. San Pedro (1931), based on the mysterious sinking of the Vestris, followed by The Last Adam (1933), published in England as A Cure of Flesh, introducing a representative Cozzens figure and setting in the story of a crusty, heterodox doctor in a rigid Connecticut town. Castaway (1934) is an atypical fantasy, presenting, with seeming realism, New York after a disaster that leaves the sole surviving man wandering in a great department store. The most characteristic novels begin with Men and Brethren (1936), a study of a liberal clergyman; Ask Me Tomorrow (1940), about an American in Europe; and The Just and The Unjust (1942), about a murder trial, for they deal with mature professional men in a stratified society who are called upon to resolve a conflict between the ideal and the possible and who acquiesce in the way things are, without complete loss of principle. This point of view and the tone of detached disenchantment appear most markedly in Guard of Honor (1948, Pulitzer Prize), about the clash between human and military values at an air force base in World War II; and By Love Possessed (1957), depicting a lawyer, one of the men of reason, and his involvements in love. Cozzens's last novel, Morning, Noon, and Night (1968), in presenting the recollections of one man in his sixties also gives a sense of upper‐middle‐class New England life in the 20th century. Children and Others (1964) collects stories, half of them about boys'r views of their teachers, parents, and other adults.

James Gould Cozzens , 1903–78, American novelist, b. Chicago. His novels usually concern upper-middle-class professional men who are faced with moral dilemmas that require compromising their ideals. All Cozzens's works are characterized by meticulous craftsmanship and an objective, almost clinical style. His novels include The Last Adam (1933), The Just and the Unjust (1942), Guard of Honor (1948; Pulitzer Prize), By Love Possessed (1957), and Morning, Noon, and Night (1968).

Bibliography: See biography by M. J. Bruccoli (1981).