The novels of yesteryear
Sir: In his column of 17 January, Martin Seymour-Smith refers to Professor Plumb's ad- miring comments on Cozzens (10 January), a writer not given to literary or political in- fighting. Since nothing irritates a critic more than authorial invisibility, Mr Cozzens has been allotted his pigeonhole, and word has been handed down on him in capsule form. Mr Seymour-Smith's word is 'total realist.'
By Love Possessed is surely an unequal book (very splendid in parts like Arthur Winner's dream), yet who but the critics overpraised it first, now to underprize it? An artist must be judged by his best work, and Cozzens is very far from being a total realist, as anyone probing the stark Castaway or the grandeur of Guard of Honour will discover. His uninsistent use of symbol and myth simmers under a deceptively simple prose.
What, on close inspection, did the Mac- Donald essay By Cozzens Possessed (men- tioned by Mr Seymour-Smith) do? Anyone can take thirty sections of a book out of con- text (which is what he did do) and make them look bad and mean anything. MacDonald, of course, needed a political target. He called Cozzens 'illiberal': anti-Negro. anti-Jewish and the rest. He even trailed quotes from an inter- view Cozzens gave to Time throughout the essay, not realising the writer was being ironic. Who wouldn't be ironic with Time?
In actual fact the chief Jewish character in By Love Possessed, Mr Woolf, is finally seen very favourably among a collection of wssps; a careful reading of Guard of Honour shows Cozzens in 1948 to have been in favour of non-segregation, and in a 1951 review of Koestler's Reflections on Hanging he spoke out firmly against capital punishment. I am not suggesting Cozzens was a revolutionary, just that he seemed to me to show balance and sanity. Norman Mailer has recently been praising Mr Nixon, and why not? It does not make him any less liberal; presumably seeing good and bad in a man, he states what he sees with great fairness Cozzens deserves no less; to be read intelligently and at his best Mr Seymour-Smith scorns Professor Plumb's lack of review-reading. One is hardly surprised that many people by-pass reviews. It is the books that need reading.
Christopher Whelen London SW7
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