SOURCE: "Style and Structure," in The Novels of James Gould Cozzens, Harcourt, 1959, pp. 49-76.

In the following excerpt, Bracher explores Cozzens's use of description, alliteration, poetry quotes, and characters.

Until 1957, reviewers and the few critics who wrote of him at all were almost unanimous in praise of the lucid precision of Cozzens' style, and Bernard De Voto after the publication of Guard of Honor concluded that the author's reputation would rest largely on his technical achievements as a writer. This prediction seemed reasonably safe until the appearance of By Love Possessed, in which the occasional idiosyncrasies of Cozzens' basically classical style were at times exaggerated into the convolutions of the baroque, if not the eccentricities of the rococo. Malcolm Cowley, in a discerning review of the novel [in The New York Times Book Review, 25 August 1957], took gentle note of the change: "His style used to be as clear...