By Law Possessed

Law books are strictly for lawyers, but books with lawyer heroes seem to fascinate almost everybody. Two such novels are currently running No. 1 and 2 on national bestseller lists: Anatomy of a Murder, by Robert Traver (TIME, Jan. 6). and By Love Possessed, by James Gould Cozzens (TIME, Sept. 2). The books handle "nice sharp quillets of the law" expertly, but differently. Anatomy of a Murder (the author, hiding behind a pen name, is John D. Voelker, justice of the Michigan Supreme Court) suffers from inexpert writing but describes in fascinating detail the elaborate, unpredictable mechanism that controls the outwardly simple scales of justice during a murder trial. A fact that has not harmed sales is that the case involves the rape of a luscious doll (she is so sexy that the defense lawyer orders her to wear a girdle on the witness stand so as not to antagonize prudish jurors).

Coincidentally, By Love Possessed also features a rape case, and plenty of legal technicalities. But beneath the excitements and the pyrotechnics of the law, there lies, for Lawyer-Hero Arthur Winner, "that majestic calm of reason designed to curb all passions." On publication, critics almost unanimously praised the book--and some wildly overpraised. Now a small reaction has set in, led by Dwight Macdonald, who in Commentary denounced Cozzens as a tool of the "Middlebrow Counter-Revolution.'' With much justice, Critic Macdonald ridicules the involved Cozzens style. With far less justice, he maintains--in a dubious bit of critical mind reading--that Hero Winner is not really the character Cozzens had meant to create; he is a prig, where Cozzens wanted to create an ideal man. In fact, Arthur Winner, like most men, is a mixed character--part righteous man, part self-righteous--and as such he will long continue to fascinate readers.

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