SOURCE: A review of Selected Notebooks: 1960–1967, in National Review, Vol. XXXVIII, February 28, 1986, pp. 60-1.

Teachout is an American musician, editor, and essayist, whose books include Beyond the Boom: New Voices on American Life, Politics, and Culture (1990) and Under Midwestern Eyes: Memories of a Lapsed Missourian (1991). In the review below, he favorably assesses Notebooks as a valuable introduction to Cozzens's reflections on literature.

Matthew Bruccoli's 1983 biography James Gould Cozzens: A Life Apart contained a lengthy appendix of excerpts from a set of notebooks Cozzens began keeping three years after the publication of By Love Possessed. These blunt and unguarded journal entries revealed the real Cozzens—stoic, sardonic, full of unfashionable social and literary prejudices—with exceptional vividness, and it isn't surprising that Bruccoli received numerous requests to edit a more extensive selection from Cozzens's notebooks for publication. Selected Notebooks: 1960–1967, a hundred-page volume containing "most of the entries dealing with...