Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Cozzens, James Gould (Vol. 92) - John Updike (review date 2 November 1968)

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John Updike (review date 2 November 1968)

SOURCE: "Indifference," in Picked-Up Pieces, Alfred A. Knopf, 1976, pp. 416-22.

[Updike is a prolific, Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, critic, short story writer, essayist, poet, and dramatist. In the review below, originally published November 2, 1968, in The New Yorker, he faults Morning Noon and Night for its stuffy, tedious, pessimistic, and pedantic style.]

Beginning, forty years ago, with a style of sober purity, James Gould Cozzens has purposefully evolved a prose unique in its mannered ugliness, a monstrous mix of Sir Thomas Browne, legalese, and Best-Remembered Quotations. The opening chapter of his new novel, Morning Noon and Night, cloudy as a polluted pond, swarms with verbal organisms of his strange engendering. As Cozzen-sologists before me have discovered, there is no substitute for the tabulated list. We have the Unresisted Cliché:

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. George J. Becker (review date June 1949)
   2. Martin Price (review date Autumn 1957)
   3. Benjamin De Mott (essay date Winter 1957)
   4. Richard G. Stern (review date Winter 1958)
   5. Frederick Bracher (essay date 1959)
   6. The Times Literary Supplement (review date 6 May 1965)
   7. John Brooks (review date 25 August 1968)
   8. John Updike (review date 2 November 1968)
   9. The Times Literary Supplement (review date 30 January 1969)
   10. James A. Epperson (review date 8 December 1978)
   11. Robert Scholes (essay date 1979)
   12. Colin S. Cass (essay date Fall 1981)
   13. Irving Malin (essay date Winter 1981)
   14. Terry Teachout (review date 28 February 1986)
   15. Richard A. Posner (essay date 1988)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright

1. John Updike