Into that social milieu we have come to know as "cap and town" in Churchton, Illinois - read Evanston and Northwestern University - enters the new man on campus: the young instructor Bertram Cope. Tall, blond, blue-eyed, charming, book-learned and with a patina of conversational sophistication; he is, nevertheless, not quite the real thing. Over impressed by wealth and well-appointed houses, Cope is too careful and self-conscious. What Bertram does not quite realize is that he is observed and judged as much as he is observing and judging. And as much as he is idolized, he is also a prop and an amusement.
In a 1970 New Yorker essay, "The Art of Making It Flat," Edmund Wilson described Fuller's novels as more intelligent than the works of William Dean Howells or Stephen Crane. He goes on to call Fuller the best writer of the early 20th Century in America and Bertram Cope's Year his very best work.
First published in 1919, Bertram Cope's Year remains a novel of universal appeal and a penetrating portrait of ambiguity. Rich in texture, keen in observation and satire, Bertram Cope's Year is a masterpiece of American writing.
