SOURCE: "Eclipse," in National Review, Vol. XXX, December 8, 1978, pp. 1552-54.

In the following review of Just Representations, Epperson examines Cozzens's career, his fall from critical esteem, and argues that his work has significant literary merit.

Only twenty years ago, any list of our top-ranking novelists would surely have included the name of James Gould Cozzens. His short stories and novels had won prizes and critical attention. Six of his books had been selected by the Book-of-the-Month Club. By Love Possessed (1957) received all the acclaim a writer could hope for: commercial success as a best-seller, condensation in the Reader's Digest, a cover story in Time, $250,000 for the movie rights, and, in 1960, the prestigious Howells Medal for fiction, awarded every five years by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. One respected critic went so far as to suggest Cozzens as a nominee for the Nobel Prize. And such a...