By Love Possessed

by James Gould Cozzens

By Love Possessed

Genres: Fiction, Classics, American, Romance, Literature, Novels

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1957

About the author

Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for Guard of Honor in 1949

Reviews

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another random discount bookstore find. I knew nothing about this author or this book before reading, and I was pleasantly surprised. This book is a literary MONSTER (have a dictionary on hand), the text is incredibly dense, cumbersome, and yet beautiful in a way that seems to be rare these days. There are some truly touching scenes. The author's description of a night-time sexual encounter in the midst of a summer thunderstorm is covered with a dreamy realism, like the way things look different in the dark, even though you know exactly what they are, and as you read this passage, you can almost see the play of shadows under the flashes of lightning. Having seen enough Perry Mason and Court TV, I was able to keep pace with most of the legal discussions, of which there are many. What I like about the portrayal of the main character is how it suggests that we can go through the routines of our mundane daily lives and appear unaffected on the outside, while inside we can be judging our past actions, our values and questioning the whole purpose of our existence.

[Gregory · Rating 4 out of 5]

The comparison of this novel to Peyton Place in another review is misleading. Though By Love Possessed was a bestseller, it is a literary novel and a good one. The many plot threads running through the novel include a past episode of adultery, an alleged rape, and financial irregularities at the protagonist’s law firm. The setting is a small town in the Northeast and the main characters are middle or upper middle class. The philosophical discussions in the book go on too long but I found them interesting. More prominent 1950s authors, such as Saul Bellow and Norman Mailer, filtered their portraits of Americans through such influences as Dostoyevsky and French existential philosophy. Cozzens is giving us a clearer account of how average Americans thought and lived at the time. Cozzens deals with diversity in religion, sexual preference, and race with what were considered tolerant, liberal viewpoints in the 1950s. The protagonist, Arthur Winner, makes a well-meaning effort to treat everyone with respect and fairness but his prejudices are still in evidence. The style is awkward because Cozzens is more concerned with message. He wants the reader to get his point exactly. Once I had read about fifty pages, I found the novel to be engrossing. There’s always a lot going on. Many problems, large and small, come up and I was anxious to learn the resolutions. The characterization is good. Overall, it’s one of the better American novels from the time period. I recommend it especially for its clear-eyed picture of American life in the 1950s.

[Judy · Rating 1 out of 5]

The number one bestseller in 1957 is a somewhat awkward combination of philosophical rumination and sex in a small town. You could also call it Peyton Place from a male viewpoint.

Arthur Winner is a second generation lawyer with a second wife and two living children. Raised by his father to be upstanding, well-reasoned and unfailingly helpful, he must confront signs of the crumbling morality and shifting social boundaries of the mid 1950s. A few skeletons in his own upscale closet, which threaten to be exposed, create whatever tension exists in the story.

As in Cozzen's 1948 Pulitzer Prize winner Guard of Honor, the story covers just two days and one hour in the life of Arthur Winner and the town of Brocton, with plenty of backstory to help fill the 560 pages. In long, oddly constructed sentences, the reader is placed into Arthur's mind and heart.

I found the novel barely readable. The sections where something was actually happening were not bad but the conversations between characters were endless, the lengthy description mostly egregious and by the end, the serious questions raised by the tale had been beaten to death. The only way I can figure out the book's bestseller status is the sex, which is graphically portrayed in some of the worst sex writing I have ever read.

[Margot Sheehan · Rating 1 out of 5]

It's been over ten years since I read, or tried to read By Love Possessed, knowing it till then mostly as the lyric in a Noel Coward song. I was fortunate enough to encounter it before reading Dwight MacDonald's hilarious and devastating takedown from early 1958: a fusillade of mockery which is said to have twilighted Cozzens's career as a novelist. Or perhaps I might have enjoyed it more if I'd read MacDonald first?

The novel is just too long and too awful. The prose is convoluted and pretentious without really having the spark of idiosyncratic style that makes one get through, say, Faulkner or James. Cozzens, I suppose, wanted to be Faulkner AND James, but with a setting and a web of subplots that are like second-rate John O'Hara. We have an old lawyer and he thinks and remembers and broods, and talks to other lawyers, and so relives legal cases and scandals and love affairs, the import of which are so buried beneath clotted prose and twisted timelines, it's difficult to work up any sympathy for the protagonist. And then there are those weird side-trips on the subject of Catholicism, digressions that have little to do with the plot, or plots.

Supposedly Cozzens labored on this for many years, during which he broke off to turn out a few shorter, better novels. He should have just thrown the mess away and begun the novel again as a brisker, tighter tale.

[Werner]

I no longer read Reader's Digest Condensed Books, and don't recommend them --I'd say if you're going to read a book, do yourself (and the author) the favor of reading the whole thing, the way he/she wrote it. But as a kid and a teen, I gobbled up quite a few of them; I'd read most anything, and they were handily available at home. Of course, I wouldn't rate or review a book on the basis of that kind of reading (except to say, in this case, that the title is misleading --it sounds like a trashy romance, but the "love" referred to is for family, friends, and community); but I recently decided that if the purpose of these shelves is to give a fairly complete picture of my reading over my lifetime, I ought to at least list the ones that I can remember.

[Kelly Barry · Rating 1 out of 5]

The writing style, in my opinion, is like a confused combination of Henry James and Vladmir Nabokov's Lolita. And not in a complimentary way. While the plot on its own can be interesting, there's less then a hundred pages worth of it, and it's mostly lost in bashes against Catholics, Jews, Women, and what have you. You know, anyone who isn't a male WASP. Those parts didn't offend me, they were just hard to sit through because they come out of nowhere, are very uncomfortable, and worse, pretty much pointless. They never had anything to do with the plot.

Case in point: this book is lame.

I don't regret reading it, as it's been sitting on my shelf for ten years. I just was not won over by it.

[Greg Givan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wonderful book for someone my age (65). I wonder, though, if Cozzens will be read much longer; the further we get from his 1950's setting, the harder it will be for readers to relate. I will add that the "controversy" over this book seems silly and should deter no one.

[Shelley · Rating 3 out of 5]

I ended up giving this book three stars because ultimately, its exploration of the deep, unspoken motivations for human behavior was illuminating. But it barely escaped two stars because it was so exceedingly verbose! Cozzens clearly loved his ideas so much that he felt the need to restate them numerous times before moving on. It really hindered readability. In examining the life of an upstanding man of reason for the span of three days, so-called immutable truths are challenged and stimulated interesting thoughts. Also, it was written and describes life in America’s 1950’s; SO glad I am not a woman living in that time!

[booklady]

Just discovered a little history about this book and its movie. Can't believe I never even heard of it ... as an example of bad literature or trash if nothing else. The book was a runaway best seller in 1957. I list it as 'someday', but I probably won't read it. It just intrigued me that we were both born the same year.

[Rachel Aranda · Rating 2 out of 5]

I did not like this book very much when I read this book. There was supposed to be a point of how karma comes back to everyone but I never found it even after reading this novel twice. Honestly the only redeeming quality was the psychological look into human nature but it's a very jaded, bigoted, and racist toned view. The tone is probably due to the time this novel was written and the author's personal beliefs. I can't really recommend this book to anyone or say I am glad I read this book.

[Martha Kuhn · Rating 1 out of 5]

I read this book because of Efrem Zimbalist Jr. He wrote about it in his memoir, saying he couldn't put it down, just devoured it. (not a direct quote) He played the lead in the movie version, which I saw, and which barely resembles this book. And that's a good thing. Here's the trailer for the movie:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiobi...

The main characters in the book are lawyers, and it reads as if written by lawyers. I even stopped in the middle to check whether the author was a lawyer before he started writing novels. Nope. I can't believe this was a blockbuster best seller in its day. All I can say is, it hasn't aged well. Chock full of all the racism, sexism, and homophobia the 50s were known for. And believe it or not, the rich white guys were complaining about having to treat others with consideration and courtesy long before the concept was given the sneer name of political correctness. Listen to one of the lawyers whine about not being able to hate people for their religion or race without the "whole national horde of nuts and queers" judging him for it:

"Still, in passing, I'll confess I wonder, as one of them, why the only people who may be spoken ill of, are those of white, Protestant, and more or less Nordic extraction. I, it seems, am game and fair game for everybody -- a kind of caput lupinum. Nobody writes the papers threateningly when I'm decried or disparaged. I don't say this is unreasonable. I myself have no wish to abridge any man's right not to like me if he so chooses. Only, in my bewildered way, I keep thinking there ought to be a turnabout. There isn't! Not only may each bumptious Catholic freely rate and abuse me if I reflect in the least on his faith; but each self-pitying Jew, each sulking Negro, need only holler that he's caught me not loving him as much as he loves himself, and a rabble of professional friends of man, social-worker liberals, and practitioners of universal brotherhood -- the whole national horde of nuts and queers -- will come at a run to hang me by the neck until i learn to love."

[Tim · Rating 1 out of 5]

I've had this book on my shelf for years and I was determined to read it finally. What an unmitigated disaster! I was willing to give it two stars; but after finishing, it deserves only one star, at best. It's kind of difficult to figure out what the book is about. It seems to take up a variety of issues: the case of infanticide by a woman of low intelligence; the case of an alleged rapist; some sort of financial affairs of the local church; the sexual affairs of our hero Arthur Winner described in the most delicately abstruse terms; and possibly something to do with his law partner's approaching senility.
The pace of the novel is glacial. At so many points, someone wants to talk to Winner -- always referred to as Arthur Winner; and maybe 20 pages later he finally gets to talk with him/her. The interior monologues get to be so off-putting, I wanted dearly to put off the novel. But I plodded on. I must confess that later on in the novel I skimmed many pages.

The characterizations were so lifeless. Winner is married to a woman he'd known from childhood and they speak to each other like they were client and lawyer. And back to the sexual encounters: they are described in such bloodless terms that you would think you're reading a legal brief rather than a torrid affair. I think the author wanted to make sure he never stooped to putting forward anything resembling eroticism.
A few more observations: The novel opens with Winner dealing with his mother who has lost her list of things she wanted to talk about. As far as I could tell we never hear from her for the rest of the novel.
Winner has a daughter, Ann. The only significant appearance she makes is when she talks about going out to local bar, giving her father a chance to moralize about why she shouldn't go.
Numerous characters pop up and it's always a puzzle as to who they are – law partner? Prosecuting attorney? Judge? Friend? Relative? Cozzens would never want to lower himself to the position of simple narrator. Oh no, he's much too “literary” for that!

[Dawna Richardson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a difficult book to read—which is a strange thing to say about a book I’ve given 4 stars to! The difficulty is mostly in the style—long, strangely form sentence. And long seemingly unrelated paragraphs—almost like flashbacks or giving background to situations. But even with that, I found the story to be quite interesting. It deals with a lot of different topics from race to infanticide to faith and belief, to homosexuality and suicide—and a lot more in between—all from the perspective of the 1950s. And, all relating to the essential question of who a person is and how he gets there! Yes, ‘he’ because this is the 1950s after all! A time when sexism is rampant (although at least one female character has a very strong ‘feminine’ wisdom!) and the difference between an ‘imbecile’ and a ‘moron’ is quantifiable. And yet, when all is said and done,
“Victory is not in reaching certainties or solving mysteries; victory is in making do with uncertainties, in supporting mysteries”. Somehow, I think this book was itself a victory, although an unsuspecting one!

[Susan Molloy · Rating 4 out of 5]

🖊️ Good story about messed up lives over a couple of generations.

📕Published — 1957. In the public domain.
🎥 1961 movie version with Efram Zimbalist, Jr.; Jason Robards, George Hamilton, Thomas Mitchell, Yvonne Craig, Lana Turner; et cetera.

જ⁀🫐 Read on Internet Archive.
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[Samantha Glasser]

This book was on the New York Times best-seller list.

[Dave · Rating 3 out of 5]

On balance, not *quite* worth it. (Had a few moments, though.)

[Wileyoneone · Rating 2 out of 5]

Grandma's Book-In my library

[John · Rating 1 out of 5]

did not like a single character in this book. It seemed more a screen play than a novel, long and tedious. To think it was a best seller when first published 60 years ago tells me something about the quality of the books back then or of the readers.

[B · Rating 3 out of 5]

commentary:

Dwight MacDonald, "By Cozzens Possessed," 1958

Joseph Epstein, "Cozzens Repossessed", 1983

[Judy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Published in 1957, a book-of-the-month selection in my mother-in-law's library. It was long and tedious but well written.

[Kathy · Rating 2 out of 5]

VERY slow going. Never got the point of the book.

[Samira]

این کتاب خیلی شبیه احساساتی بود که این اواخر تجربه کرده بودم به همین خاطر واقعا لحظه لحظه شو حس می کردم ...