Arts and Letters

In the early nineteen-sixties few writers of my generation seemed to know James Gould Cozzens, and this may well have been the case with those of his own. The books were yet another story. Years after some of his had received broad public notice, and one a Pulitzer prize, the book press continued to refer to him as a neglected author. Yet when By Love Possessed—a novel not markedly different in tone from the crabbed studiedness with which Cozzens had examined American life—became both a great popular success and the winner of the Howells Medal, serious critics more or less rejected it for literature. When I met him this was just occurring.

I knew nothing of his legend, which perhaps the obit before me best expresses: "In 1933 the author moved to a farm near Lambertville, N.J., where he pursued his writing and lived as a recluse, avoiding public appearances and interviews." (According to the AP on recluses, sufficient evidence.) At the time we met, Cozzens and his wife, the esteemed literary agent Bernice Baumgarter, whose client I had been until her retirement, had moved from the Princeton environs to a handsome house near Williamstown, Massachusetts, but fairly isolated. We summered nearby in an equally remote house where we worked and by choice saw few people. Perhaps this is why we were invited, and went—a mutual friend and client of his wife telling me, "None of us has ever dared."

It seemed to us a friendly house, admittedly very "family" (and then including the recently widowed Fannie Collins, Cozzens's delightful sister-in-law), yet merely the natural choice of two people who wished to live permanently the quiet life which we ourselves chose intermittently. If Cozzens was recognizably of a certain temperament, my husband and I in part shared that, though not so incorruptibly. Most writers tend not to talk to one another of their own books, or not in casual intercourse. Some seldom talk of bookish matters at all. I can be happy with that. But with Cozzens, and it could be sensed at once, it was implicit that such things were never to be talked about. In later years we would continue so see them occasionally. We never exchanged a literary word.

What did we talk about? What goes by the name of "ordinary life." Some writers segregate whatever they believe this to be from the otherwise life of pomp and circumstance. Some cultivate "ordinary" people, often in a special way, and some flee to them, fearing too much of the observer's division in themselves, or in their work. And some merely have preferences, as with Faulkner, who puzzled certain of the faculty of the University of Virginia by deserting them for the company that went with horses and dogs. Cozzens belonged to a period when writers were very conscious of all this, and one in which the social levels, though changing, were more separate—or separated by more than money. By class he belonged among those who might well abhor "the media," and find avoidance of it the gentlemanly thing to do. Julian Muller, his longtime editorial associate, tells me that Cozzens did on occasion explode to him his strong conviction that writers' private lives belonged only to themselves. He felt the same about his work. When By Love Possessed received a movie offer then very large, even his wife, who managed all his professional affairs, couldn't persuade him to accept. Muller did, by appealing to his humor—which always gleamed elusively—telling him that in the book he had committed an act of art, whereas now he was being asked to commit "an act of commerce"—which Cozzens, on consideration, allowed that he thought he could.

When we went to the house—which was always the case, and we never pushed why—we always spent a lot of time in the kitchen, although the house was formally beautiful with antiques collected by the women and we would later eat from and among these, in the dining room. Cozzens lived then much surrounded by women—though Fannie had removed to a house in nearby Pownal, Vermont, which she shared with Cousin Annie, they all remained very close—and he appeared to relish it. I think he savored that dailiness of domestic routine which women, ordinary or not, often have more access to. The town, well-bred to posh, with a main street of whitely restored shops, centered around Williams College, (then only for men) in and around whose library I had the impression Cozzens found his male company, as well as certain outside perspectives needed for his work, and of a kind to suit him. For though even the praise of his books could be stupidly reductive: "the best novel about the air force; the most authentic one about the legal profession"—surely there was truth in it. He did seem to approach life, or gain his subjects, through some such partitioning. Altogether it must have been much as when near Princeton. Mount Greylock was visible, a more northern shadow. But there was still a rose garden. Standing there once, he said to me, explaining the purchase of a house bigger then they needed: "There weren't many where I could have roses this well on. Not in my lifetime." But yes, he liked the town well enough.

Nearby though was North Adams, and its dead mile of Victorian redbrick workman's housing, gone to dreadful wretchedness. I couldn't imagine him in it, yet I could imagine him thinking about it—in a book. Back in the kitchen at Shadowbrook, I could mull that difference, and sometimes did. Three writers of such various stamp, and a guide and battler for many of the same, who had contributed her delicate honesty to much of literary America—and here we were, lightly arguing the pros and cons of kirsch or orange liqueur, for chocolate mousse. I must have smiled, but when I was called on it, spoke for the other side of the matter. "I was thinking—there's a special delight in swapping recipes with people you know have more on their minds. I can't do it with anyone else. I vote for rum." Cozzens smiled back.

And once, met in the basement of Fannie's house, where she sold restrainedly fine country antiques, usually warning off the purchaser by pointing up the flaws—a process Jim could watch sardonically—he did tell me a story. Or perhaps Bernice began it. But he contributed the punchline. Last week he had been minding the shop, which he now and then did, when a young couple came in, asking for a clock of a certain shape. Now, the dust jacket of By Love Possessed had had just such a mantel-clock on it, of the curved-top kind in vogue fifty years before—both on front-cover and verso. No, he said, Fannie didn't stock that era. They persisted. "Well, the shape we mean," they said—and he quoted, "Listen, you ever hear of a book called—?" We burst out laughing before he had to complete it. But finally, we had talked about a book.

What I felt often in Cozzens' company was that he knew about reverie, of its place in the writer's work, and the many, many versions of pursuing it. He had none of the country anchorite's condescension toward those who, like me, found their reverie in cities—and perhaps their "ordinary" life. He was always in such fierce pursuit of his own.

Florida, to which the snows of the big house finally banished them, may not have been good for that. I suspected that he felt forgotten rather than removed, and misinterpretation might be that much harder to bear when your work was almost done. His kindness remained, as in his last note, months after his wife had died. I had been abroad, hearing of it from Fannie when I returned—and had written her. Jim had replied. It has his voice.

Dear Hortense:

As you have got from Fannie's note I don't like it much without Bernice and she wouldn't have liked it much without you—fair enough? Well, hell, it will have to do.

Affectionate regards to you and Curt.

Jim.