SOURCE: "Cozzens and Others," in The Hudson Review, Vol. 10, No. 4, Winter, 1957, pp. 620-26.

De Mott is an educator and novelist whose books include The Body's Cage (1959) and A Married Man (1968). In the excerpt, below, he faults Cozzens's novels for their overemphasis on professionalism and duty, their conventional plots, and a disregard for character development.

… Cozzens is capable on occasion of making his reader feel perceptive, aware of the difference between fantasy and fact and interested in their relationships, experienced enough to know that there is not so much elegance and order in life that anyone will be harmed by another glance at either, nor so little drabness and chaos as to permit the easy adoption of what is called A Balanced View. One knows quite well (despite the gassy paeans of the first reviews) that [By Love Possessed] is no masterpiece—Cozzens is not a major writer, however...