SOURCE: "Ponderosity," in The Times Literary Supplement, No. 3492, January 30, 1969, p. 116.

In the following negative review of Morning Noon and Night, the critic contends that Cozzens's attempt to expose "the reality beneath pretension" is undermined by a ponderous prose style.

The narrator of Mr. Cozzens's new novel [Morning Noon and Night] is Henry (Hank) Dodd Worthington, the sexagenarian founder and head of H.W. Associates, a firm of industrial management consultants preeminent in that field. The novel is presented in the form of a meditation on his life, or lives, and those of his ancestors, an inquiry that may be meaningful to others in so far as it is also an inquiry into the meaning of life at different ages and on different stages. H.W., the public figure, is as highly regarded as he is successful. But Hank has done many shameful things, the ill consequences of which...