Customer Reviews

By Love Possessed

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I'm not surprised that By Love Possessed has received such polarized views from readers. It's not an easy book to digest: it has a baroque, almost arcane style and features views of race, religion, and homosexuality that are quite uncomfortable in today's age. Yet it is a novel that I cherish.

Cozzens' novel covers 49 hours in the life of Arthur Winner Jr., a small-town Pennsylvania lawyer who has prided himself for living his life according to a strict regimen of reason and yet finds all those around him seemingly throwing their lives away to emotion. Rape, suicide, jealousy, and greed mark the behaviour of his friends and relatives, much to his consternation. Not until the end, when a deep secret is revealed, does Arthur Winner realise that an emotional reaction is sometimes the only recourse to an unreasonable situation; indeed, it may be a neccessary reaction.

Because of its style and conservative stance, I've always been surprised that By Love Possessed was such a huge bestseller when originally published; perhaps its title and small-town setting confused readers that it was another Peyton Place (which, ironically, it replaced at #1). But it IS an incredible book, very influential (just read anything by Scott Turow), and a must read for those who want to understand the mindset of the middle-class American male in the mid-20th century. Personally, I find Cozzens' prose fascinating--the more a book makes me reach for the dictionary the better. And as a gay man, I take less offense at Cozzens' occasional prejudices than I do with those politically correct readers who only blindly see bigotry and not a man truly trying to understand the world around him.

I was 17 when I read this book the first time, and it blew me away. I went about quoting it and recommending it to friends for years. Ironically, I read it as a highly intelligent affirmation of love.

When I was in my 20s, I read it again and was aghast. Suddenly I saw it for the conservative, insular 1950s sort of book that it is. And worse, I saw that the central theme is that we ought to be suspicious of love because it can possess us and cause us to behave irrationally.

Now I'm three re-readings past that, and maybe I'm ready to put Cozzens in perspective. It isn't a giant of a book that deserves the close attention I've given it, nor is it merely a period piece that can be dismissed as dated bigotry. If you can't appreciate a book that is tainted with the dated morality of an earlier time, you don't deserve the pleasures of reading a novel like this one that is so insistently intelligent and interesting.

Ultimately, the star of By Love Possessed is the interior monologue of the central character (although the voice of Julius Penrose is actually closer to the heart of the novel than is the voice of Arthur Winner). What a fascinating voice that is. Robustly intelligent, skeptical, humorous, bold, sympathetic but knowing . . . it is a voice that takes ultimate delight in understanding human beings and pondering (often with an ironic smile) why they do what they do.

A liberal who basically believes in love, I have that voice stuck in my head, and I long ago realized I would have to accept it as part of me. This brilliantly plotted novel gives that voice countless opportunities to make deliciously perceptive comments on the human comedy. Then--as befits such a smart reflection on human nature--the voice itself is dumped on its butt and shown to be bumbling and self-deluding.

A great book? Nah. A great read, I'd say, and in a few years I'll enjoy sharing those astonishing 49 hours with Arthur Winner again. I improve my ability to see people with each reading.

First of all, Cozzens remains an impressive manager of his material. Multiple plots and personalities weave tightly through the work, and just when you think that the novel is nothing but a big pile of disconnected pieces, Cozzens turns just a couple of corners and the whole things snaps into place in a stunning moment of revelation. It's masterful craft, and both emotionally and intellectually moving.

On top of that, Cozzens manages to write for grownups in a world where compromise, settling, and just muddling through are sometimes as heroic as it gets-- sacrifices must be made, and it's NOT always a bad thing. If you find Steinbeck a tad too mushy, Hemmingway too mannered and ballsy, and Fitzgerald too melodramatic, this underappreciated author may be for you, and this novel is a great place to start.

This book combines a number of uncommon qualities that will reward the patient reader: it is beautifully plotted, with no loose ends or errors in continuity; it is based on meticulous (but not flaunted) research into the subjects depicted; and it realistically portrays aspects of modern life that rarely draw the attention of serious novelists. Here, as in his other major works, Cozzens focuses on people's jobs -- how we make it through the day, dealing with the unattractive challenges life throws at us. Admittedly, his outlook on many topics is old-fashioned (something he acknowledged), but he generally appears to be someone honestly trying to look at the world as objectively as he can. (If one reads his major works in chronological order, it becomes clear how this striving for objectivity enabled him to grow beyond many of the prejudices of his class.) A priceless view of one aspect of modern American life.

James Gould Cozzens is an outstanding author who writes fairly-long, serious books which address important issues regarding the myriad stresses of human life. By Love Possessed is an interesting story which deals with matters of responsibility and conscience. If you are not put off by this sort of thing you will probably find this book both rewarding and enjoyable.

Couzzens is the best author I have come across in years. Characters drawn from life. In fine detail and with surprising sudden humanity.

By Love Possessed chronicles an eventful weekend in the life of Arthur Winner, leading attorney and citizen in the small town of Brocton. No grasping uncouth Snopes, this Winner serve as living proof that virtue is not necessarily its own reward. When lesser lawyers offer a quid pro quo, he deigns to accept only with silence.

The novel's narrative frame begins and ends with Amor Vincit Onmia, frozen forever and eternally ambiguous. The intriguing characters surrounding Winner in this modern Man of Lawe's Tale range from pillar of legal acumen with something to hide to an unfaithful wife converting to Catholicism to a precise drunk who becomes a victim of petty theft. In the end, one wonders if the most important character in By Love Possessed is not the raccoon that freezes in Winner's headlights and is run over with only a thump to mark its passing.

The high point of By love Possessed is a masterly courtroom scene that strikes at the heart of what it is to be a parent. The novel is full of murder and suicide (intentional and unintentional). Events between the sexes range from a first date to a distasteful allegation of rape. In the end, when an untimely death reveals legal matters best left in darkness, Cozzens concludes that self-interest conquers all, at least in the world of small-town privilege.

By Love Possessed moves through so many beginnings and endings that the novel seems somehow complete by its end, although all loose ends are left hanging. Read this book; it certainly does cure nostalgia for the 1950s.

By Love Possessed isn't the easiest novel to read: the style is involved and detailed. But no novel I know of is as gracefully written, and no story contains such gripping insights and profound characters.

Just as there are some works of plastic and painterly art so atrocious you just have to stand there and marvel at them, so this bestselling warhorse from the 1950s is a gob-smacking stunner. So marvelous it gets 2 stars rather than 1 (Amazon.com doesn't allow you less than one).

From the Time cover story on Cozzens we learn that this book was years in the making, and had been percolating in dribs and drabs since about 1930. This long gestation period may account for the book's lack of pulse and animal spirit--the sort of narrative drive that grabs you by the collar and demands that you turn the page, no matter how bad the characters or subject matter. But what sort of fetus do you end up with after a quarter-century? Trite subject matter, half-baked themes, and half-conceived characters.

And yet the thing was a bestseller. Must've been the title.

Delving into the the substrata of the novel and Cozzens's own biography, I gather that the novel took seed as a diatribe against religion. Narrowing his focus, he naturally took off on Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular. Cozzens's driving vision, the thing he wanted to mock and bludgeon, was a picture of churchy old biddies who talked about things like the Trinity and the Holy Ghost...instead of Manly Things, the kind of stuff Harvard freshmen circa 1923 might talk about--you know...Science...and Literary Criticism...and Modern Thinking, you know...and Will There Be Another War?

The author's notion of a churchy biddy is herein caricatured as the uni-dimensional Polly Pratt, a wealthy Catholic lady who appears to have no function whatsoever other than to walk out on stage, stand next to a decaying stone fountain, and spout God-bothering drivel for a few pages, while the author (codenamed Arthur--geddit?) listens and smirks.

The remainder of the novel is just so much cornstarch and bromide: sub-John O'Hara recitations of small-town Pennsylvania scandal among the country-club set.

There are three subplots in this novel that intertwines around the life of attorney Arthur Winner. Sometimes interesting, this book is a chore to read as Cozzen's style is, well, wordy and ornate.

There is a scene where the central character and his sexually-repressed wife are in the sack ("Her." "Him", "Her", "Him." )...the instructions on how to program my VCR were more stimulating. Give me a break.

Maybe by today's overly PC standards this book could be considered mildly racist and bigoted, but I fail to see where. Catholics do take it on the chin, however.

This was almost a good novel. John Cheever does this type of thing much better.