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James Gould Cozzens graduated from Kent School, Kent,
Connecticut, in 1922, and entered Harvard University.
April 11th, 1924, while still attending Harvard, he
published his first novel, Confusion. It was
not well received, and he dropped out of Harvard
shortly thereafter. That same year, he moved to
New Brunswick, Canada, where he wrote his next
novel, Michael Scarlett. Published in 1925,
its reception was no better than his first. He then
relocated to Cuba (1925-26), where he taught and
began to write short stories. He subsequently went
to France with his mother and worked as a tutor in
Europe until his return to the U.S. in the spring
of 1927. As one might expect, his experiences in
Cuba and Europe provided fodder for later stories
and novels.
His December 31st, 1927 marriage to Sylvia Bernice
Baumgarten, a literary agent, was a pivotal moment
for Cozzens. She would successfully guide his literary
career for the rest of her life. Besides his career
as a novelist, Cozzens worked as a librarian at the
New York Athletic Club (1927), held a position at
M. P. Gould, a New York City advertising agency
(March - April 1928), spent 10 months in 1938 as
an associate editor and writer for Fortune
magazine, and served in the U.S. Army Air Forces
(1942-45), attaining the rank of major before his
discharge. Cozzens led a relatively reclusive life,
preferring to spend his time gardening and writing
in solitude at his 125-acre Carr's Farm (later Carrs
Farm, without the apostrophe) on Goat Hill Road,
near Lambertville, New Jersey, purchased in 1933.
In 1958, he purchased "Shadowbrook" on Oblong Road,
near Williamstown, Massachusetts, in the Berkshires.
Following their move to Massachusetts, he spent six
years (1960-66) on the Harvard Overseers' Visiting
Committee for the English Department.
Cozzens' first four novels garnered little public
or critical recognition, and negligible money.
His first real success came with the publication
of S.S. San Pedro in 1931, which was a
Book-of-the-Month Club selection. The Last Adam
(1933), The Just and the Unjust (1942), and By
Love Possessed (1957), were likewise Book-of-the-Month
Club selections. His time in the service during
World War II provided the material for his Pulitzer
Prize-winning Guard of Honor (1948). Other
awards Cozzens received include the O. Henry Award
in 1931 for his short story A Farewell to Cuba.
He received that same award again in 1936 for Total
Stranger, and the American Academy of Arts and
Letters' William Dean Howells Medal, in 1960, for
By Love Possessed.
Between 1924 and 1968, he would write a total of
14 novels and numerous short stories, yet he never
achieved the level of overwhelming popular success
of his literary contemporaries Hemingway, Faulkner
or Steinbeck. Cozzens actually had blunt criticisms
for many celebrated writers, calling Hemingway
"a great big bleeding heart," Sinclair Lewis a
"slovenly writer" and said of John Steinbeck, "I
can't read ten pages of Steinbeck without throwing
up."
While he was often praised for his seriousness and
depth as a novelist, over time, his work moved from
being intellectually challenging, to increasingly
convoluted in nature.
His own comments over the years, perhaps provide the
best picture of the man. He once described himself
as a "natural-born snob" and candidly admitted, "I'm
a hermit and I have no friends" adding, "My social
preference is to be left alone, and people have
always seemed willing, even eager, to gratify my
inclination." As the years went on, and medical
problems increased for both himself and his wife,
he found little reason to continue living, and his
interest in suicide moved to the forefront of his
thoughts. A little more than three years before his
death, he wrote in one of his detailed journals,
"Since there's nothing here I enjoy, want, feel
interest in, or can look forward to but more silly
annoyances and unbecoming behavior on my part what
the hell is that 12 gauge pump gun in my closet for
if not to blow the top of my head and make these
odds at even. Real trouble: those who have wisely
done it I find I rather despise." In the end, it
was pneumonia and complications from cancer of the
spine that ended his life, not suicide.
Selected writing credits:
Works by the author include Confusion (1924),
Michael Scarlett (1925), Cock Pit (1928),
The Son of Perdition (1929), S.S. San Pedro
(1931), The Last Adam (1933), Castaway (1934),
Men and Brethren (1936), Ask Me Tomorrow
(1940), The Just and the Unjust (1942), Guard of
Honor (1948), By Love Possessed (1957), Morning
Noon and Night (1968), and a volume of short
stories entitled Children and Others (1964).
Cozzens contributed a variety of short stories,
poems, and essays to periodicals, such as the
Saturday Evening Post, Collier's, Atlantic, Pictorial
Review, Town & Country, Redbook, Kent Quarterly,
Harvard Advocate, and Woman's Home Companion.
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