A review by wathohuc
Guard of Honor by James Gould Cozzens

3.0

Took me a little more than two weeks to get through this Pulitzer winner. Partly, that was because it was over 600 pages long, partly it was because it was less plot driven and more heavily character driven and heavily descriptive of the most minute details. In the end, you are left with the sense that you really got nothing for the effort. The writing was decent, but there really wasn’t much in the way of transformative moments or events. Stuff just kinda happened and the officers just kinda muddled through. You are always expecting some watershed moment or some defining event that just never really materializes. Instead you just get little bits of stuff that add up to the usual problems and mistakes and interactions of a weekend on a military training base.

You want Carricker to get disciplined. You want the black soldiers to stick with their protest against the segregation they face, you want Edsell to have his defiant do-gooder resentments come back and bite him on his rear, you want Mowbray to be held accountable for his incompetent leadership, you want Gen. Beal to be a more engaged leader, etc. But you get nothing in terms of what you want and expect. Nothing changes. And all you are left with is a bunch of nice words on a page and much more knowledge about the technical details of military rank, base life, and aircraft design.

Pulitzer worthy? No, I’d say not. Decent writing, sure. But it lacks substance. To me, it’s no wonder it’s out of print.