"[9] Writer Joseph Epstein has offered similar praise, both in an essay for Commentary magazine,[10] as well as in a chapter for his book Plausible Prejudices.
Neither book sold well or was widely read, and to sustain himself, Cozzens traveled to Cuba to teach children of American residents, which is where he began to write short stories and gather material for the novels Cock Pit (1928) and The Son of Perdition (1929).
Except for military service during World War II, the Cozzenses lived in semi-seclusion near Lambertville, New Jersey, and shied away from all but local contact.
One of the functions of his office was in controlling news, and it became Cozzens's job to defuse situations potentially embarrassing to Gen. Henry H. Arnold, the chief of the Army Air Forces.
[4] By that time, however, a hostile review of the novel which Dwight Macdonald wrote for Commentary Magazine had already effectively ruined Cozzens's literary career, and few of his later works either received similar critical acclaim or achieved comparable best-seller status.
Throughout his life, Cozzens maintained extensive correspondence, with several literary figures, including American writers Carlos Baker, Saul Bellow, Erskine Caldwell, Granville Hicks, Oliver La Farge, John O'Hara, as well as the publisher William Jovanovich, and academic author-editor and biographer Matthew J.
[16] Philosophical in nature, his novels take place during 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.
The main characters of his books are primarily professional, middle-class white men — assistant district attorney Abner Coates in The Just and the Unjust, doctor George Bull in The Last Adam, Episcopal priest Ernest Cudlipp in Men and Brethren, Col. Norman Ross in Guard of Honor, and lawyer Arthur Winner in By Love Possessed, for example — who confront issues such as duty and ethics in their careers while attempting to reconcile these principles with the emotional demands of their personal lives, usually by compromising their principles.
[5] Short story writer and critic Patrick J. Murphy wrote that Cozzens' responses during the interview were verbalizations of his writing style: often using parody and sarcasm, quoting other works without attribution, and punctuated by laughter.
His reputation was further lambasted during 1968 by critics (in particular John Updike) of his final book, Morning, Noon, and Night, which had a nearly unreadable style (even by the author's usual standards) and a protagonist that was not interesting or compelling.
[18] As a result, sales of all his books suffered, and Cozzens has become virtually unknown to the general public; he remains, however, fairly well known among those familiar with the literary criticism of George Steiner[19] John Derbyshire[20] and Matthew Bruccoli,[2] all of whom have praised his work.
The effect of these conjoined elements can be a deliberate density of expression ...[21]Cozzens was a critic of modernism, and of realism more leftist than his own, and he was quoted in a featured article in Time as saying (perhaps somewhat in jest), "I can't read ten pages of Steinbeck without throwing up.
One of the functions of his office was in controlling news, and it became Cozzens's job to defuse situations potentially embarrassing to Gen. Henry H. Arnold, the chief of the Army Air Forces.
[14] James and Bernice Cozzens spent their last years in relative obscurity in Martin County, Florida, where they lived in Rio, but used a Stuart post office box as their address.