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James Gould Cozzens (August 19, 1903 – August 9, 1978) was an American novelist. He is often grouped today with his contemporaries John O'Hara and John P. Marquand, but his work is generally considered more challenging. Despite initial critical acclaim, he achieved popularity only gradually. Cozzens was a critic of modernism, and of realism more leftist than his own, and he was quoted in a featured article in ''Time'' as saying (perhaps somewhat in jest), "I can't read ten pages of Steinbeck without throwing up." ==Biographical background== Born in Chicago, Illinois, he grew up on Staten Island. His father, Henry William Cozzens Jr., who died when Cozzens was 17, was an affluent businessman and the grandson of a governor of Rhode Island, William C. Cozzens. His Canadian mother, Mary Bertha Wood, came from a family of Connecticut tories who left for Nova Scotia following the American Revolution. Cozzens grew up in the same privileged lifestyle that formed the background of his most acclaimed works. An Episcopalian, Cozzens attended the Episcopal Kent School in Connecticut from 1916–22, and after graduation went to Harvard University for two years, where he published his first novel, ''Confusion,'' in 1924. A few months later, ill and in debt, he withdrew from school and moved to New Brunswick, where he wrote a second novel, ''Michael Scarlett.'' Neither book sold well or was widely read, and to sustain himself, Cozzens went to Cuba to teach children of American residents, and there began to write short stories and gather material, which eventually became ''Cock Pit'' (1928) and ''The Son of Perdition'' (1929). After a year he accompanied his mother to Europe, where he tutored a young polio victim in order to earn money. He met Sylvia Bernice Baumgarten, a literary agent with Brandt & Kirkpatrick, whom he married at city hall in New York City on December 27, 1927, and who successfully edited and marketed his books. She was his apparent antithesis — Jewish and a liberal Democrat — but their marriage lasted successfully until both died in 1978. They had no children. Except for military service during World War II, the Cozzenses lived in semi-seclusion near Lambertville, New Jersey, and shied away from all but local contact.〔Staff. ("The Hermit of Lambertville" ), ''Time (magazine)'', September 2, 1957, accessed April 29, 2007. "For almost a quarter-century, except for a three-year stint writing manuals and speeches in the Army Air Corps during World War II, Cozzens has not stirred much beyond the neighborhood of his fieldstone house and farm near Lambertville, N.J. (pop. 5,000)."〕 Other early novels include ''S.S. San Pedro'' (1931), ''The Last Adam'' (1933), and ''Castaway'' (1934). Cozzens received O. Henry Awards for his short stories "A Farewell to Cuba" (1931) and "Total Stranger," published in ''The Saturday Evening Post'' on February 15, 1936, then went on to author two more highly regarded novels, ''Ask Me Tomorrow'' (1941), and ''The Just and the Unjust'' (1942). During World War II, Cozzens served in the U.S. Army Air Forces, at first updating manuals, then in the USAAF Office of Information Services, a liaison and "information clearinghouse" between the military and the civilian press. One of the functions of his office was in controlling news, and it became Cozzens’s job to defuse situations potentially embarrassing to the Chief of the Army Air Forces, Gen. Henry H. Arnold. In the course of his job he became arguably the best informed officer of any rank and service in the nation, and he had achieved the rank of major by the time he was discharged at the end of the war. These experiences formed the basis of his 1948 novel ''Guard of Honor,'' which won the 1949 Pulitzer Prize. His 1957 novel ''By Love Possessed'' became a surprise success, with 34 weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list, rating #1 on September 22, 1957, three weeks after its release. It was also the top-selling novel of 1957. (See List of 1957 bestsellers.) The novel was also very loosely adapted into a movie in 1961. By that time, however, a hostile review of the novel which Dwight Macdonald wrote for ''Commentary'' Magazine had already effectively ruined Cozzens’s literary career, and few of his later works either received similar critical acclaim or achieved comparable best-seller status. During 1958, he relocated to another country home near Williamstown, Massachusetts. Cozzens was on the Harvard Board of Overseers's Visiting Committee for the English Department from 1960-66. His last novel, ''Morning, Noon and Night,'' was published in 1968, but it sold poorly for the reason cited above. James and Bernice Cozzens spent their last years in relative obscurity in Martin County, Florida, where they lived in Rio, but used a Stuart post office box as their address. After Bernice's death during January 1978, Cozzens’s own health deteriorated rapidly. He died on August 9, 1978, of complications from spinal cancer and pneumonia, ten days short of his 74th birthday. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「James Gould Cozzens」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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