To the Editor:

Let me congratulate the editors of COMMENTARY for having the courage to “sing outside the chorus” (as the America reviewer of By Love Possessed expressed it). I refer, of course, to Dwight Macdonald’s magnificent analysis of that impossible book, in your January issue.

Fortunata Caliri
Department of English
State Teachers College
Lowell, Massachusetts

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To the Editor:

Compliments to Mr. Macdonald for his lucid exposé of Cozzens’ labyrinthian style. . . . Is it far-fetched to equate the reviewers’ high-pitched praise to Madison Avenue’s copy?

Gilberte Altbauer
New York City

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To the Editor:

[Mr. Macdonald's article] is a grand job. . . hy on earth is the book entitled By Love Possessed? Where does any concept of love, as many romantics still cherish it, ever enter its pages? . . .

Sophie L. Goldsmith
New York City

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To the Editor:

Yesterday evening my husband and I had a merry time reading “By Cozzens Possessed” in the January issue of COMMENTARY, which friends had loaned us after hearing us wonder whether the By Love Possessed we read could possibly be the same book the reviewers reviewed. We found Dwight Macdonald’s comment very refreshing and had such a good laugh . . . that one of our children came in and asked, “Are you drinking wine?” . . .

Nancy Sommers
Princeton, New Jersey

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To the Editor:

. . . I feel enormously grateful to Mr. Macdonald for relieving my great loneliness. I thought I was the only one . . . who thought the book [By Love Possessed] dull, pretentious, unreal, and totally without humor, by an author who hated people and himself. . . .

Georgiana Remer
New York City

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To the Editor:

Just a note re Dwight Macdonald’s article on Cozzens. This has needed saying for a long time; and Mr. Macdonald’s comments on book reviewing in this country are right to the point. I hope you will have more articles by Mr. Macdonald in the future—I consider him our top journalist in the U.S.

Robert A. Learned
Hollywood, California

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To the Editor:

I am one of the matrons described in the New Yorker cartoon who had to beat and flail my way through Cozzens’ book after Labor Day. . . . [Mr. Macdonald] has given me back some of my self-respect! . . .

Dorothy Brownstone
Clear Lake, Iowa

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To the Editor:

Dwight Macdonald’s excellent article on By Love Possessed has somewhat restored what little confidence I had in my own critical perceptions—the ability to recognize and enjoy a good novel. . . .

Winifred L. Saltzman
Passaic, New Jersey

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To the Editor:

Thank you for your review of the Cozzens novel. . . . For a while I had the feeling that I no longer had any critical sense in literature, or that at age forty novels would no longer be fun. . . .

Haskell Rosenberg
Rochester, New York

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