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Title: By Love Possessed by James Gould Cozzens, Matthew Joseph Bruccoli ISBN: 0-7867-0503-5 Publisher: Carroll & Graf Pub. Date: March, 1998 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.95

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Average Customer Rating: 3.7 (10 reviews)

Rating: 4
Summary: Cozzen's Winner Is Not
Comment:

By Love Possessed chronicles an eventful weekend in the life of Arthur Winner, leading attorney and citizen in the small town of Brocton. No grasping uncouth Snopes, this Winner serve as living proof that virtue is not necessarily its own reward. When lesser lawyers offer a quid pro quo, he deigns to accept only with silence.

The novel's narrative frame begins and ends with Amor Vincit Onmia, frozen forever and eternally ambiguous. The intriguing characters surrounding Winner in this modern Man of Lawe's Tale range from pillar of legal acumen with something to hide to an unfaithful wife converting to Catholicism to a precise drunk who becomes a victim of petty theft. In the end, one wonders if the most important character in By Love Possessed is not the raccoon that freezes in Winner's headlights and is run over with only a thump to mark its passing.

The high point of By love Possessed is a masterly courtroom scene that strikes at the heart of what it is to be a parent. The novel is full of murder and suicide (intentional and unintentional). Events between the sexes range from a first date to a distasteful allegation of rape. In the end, when an untimely death reveals legal matters best left in darkness, Cozzens concludes that self-interest conquers all, at least in the world of small-town privilege.

By Love Possessed moves through so many beginnings and endings that the novel seems somehow complete by its end, although all loose ends are left hanging. Read this book; it certainly does cure nostalgia for the 1950s.

Rating: 5
Summary: Powerful, brilliant expose of mid-20th century truths
Comment: I'm not surprised that By Love Possessed has received such polarized views from readers. It's not an easy book to digest: it has a baroque, almost arcane style and features views of race, religion, and homosexuality that are quite uncomfortable in today's age. Yet it is a novel that I cherish.

Cozzens' novel covers 49 hours in the life of Arthur Winner Jr., a small-town Pennsylvania lawyer who has prided himself for living his life according to a strict regimen of reason and yet finds all those around him seemingly throwing their lives away to emotion. Rape, suicide, jealousy, and greed mark the behaviour of his friends and relatives, much to his consternation. Not until the end, when a deep secret is revealed, does Arthur Winner realise that an emotional reaction is sometimes the only recourse to an unreasonable situation; indeed, it may be a neccessary reaction.

Because of its style and conservative stance, I've always been surprised that By Love Possessed was such a huge bestseller when originally published; perhaps its title and small-town setting confused readers that it was another Peyton Place (which, ironically, it replaced at #1). But it IS an incredible book, very influential (just read anything by Scott Turow), and a must read for those who want to understand the mindset of the middle-class American male in the mid-20th century. Personally, I find Cozzens' prose fascinating--the more a book makes me reach for the dictionary the better. And as a gay man, I take less offense at Cozzens' occasional prejudices than I do with those politically correct readers who only blindly see bigotry and not a man truly trying to understand the world around him.

Rating: 2
Summary: Overblown, pretentious and overrated
Comment: There are three subplots in this novel that intertwines around the life of attorney Arthur Winner. Sometimes interesting, this book is a chore to read as Cozzen's style is, well, wordy and ornate.

There is a scene where the central character and his sexually-repressed wife are in the sack ("Her." "Him", "Her", "Him." )...the instructions on how to program my VCR were more stimulating. Give me a break.

Maybe by today's overly PC standards this book could be considered mildly racist and bigoted, but I fail to see where. Catholics do take it on the chin, however.

This was almost a good novel. John Cheever does this type of thing much better.