James Gould Cozzens

James Gould Cozzens was a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist who, in an earlier age when novelists were taken far more serious than they are in the 21st Century, made the bestseller lists despite having a difficult, off-putting literary style. Born into an affluent family in Chicago on August 19, 1903, Cozzens was the great-grandson of William C. Cozzens, who briefly served as governor of Rhode Island in 1863. A conservative chronicler of the WASP society whose hegemony over American culture (which he approved of) began to wane after the Second World War, Cozzens -- once mentioned as a leading candidate for the Nobel Prize for Literature in the 1950s -- is all but forgotten now. After the war, he became the target of left-wing literary critics who targeted him for what would now be termed his lack of "political correctness". In 1949, he won the Pulitzer Prize for his military novel "Guard of Honor", which some critics thought was the best book to come out of World War II. His novel By Love Possessed (1961) was a huge bestseller, and was adapted into a popular movie. Aside from his service in the U.S. Army Air Force during World War II, Cozzens was a reclusive figure who shunned publicity. By the time he died of pneumonia on August 9, 1978, just 10 days short of his 75th birthday, his book sales had substantially declined.