The Insider: Malcolm Cowley and the Triumph of American Literature

by Gerald Howard

A delightful and majestic reckoning with the ascent of American fiction in the 20th century through the prism of the little-known man who had an astonishing amount to do with it

Malcolm Cowley is little known today, but the American literary canon would look very different without him. A prototypical “man of letters” of his generation—Harvard, a volunteer in the French ambulance corps in World War I, a rite of passage in Paris after the war—he became one of the few truly influential critics of the 1920’s and 30’s, along with his close New Republic colleague Edmund Wilson, his place in literary history secure for his early support of Hemingway, Fitzgerald and their set, and indeed for framing this group in generational terms in the first place.

Most people are lucky to be part of a single game-changing era in their careers; for Cowley, it happened again and again. After emerging from the political fray of the 30’s badly damaged, he retreated to more of a behind-the-scenes role as a taste-maker whose import has awaited Gerald Howard to be brought into full view. The process of literary canon formation is a murky business, and Cowley was a prime mover in it for the better part of four decades, through The Lost Generation, The Beat Generation, and The Counterculture of the 60s. Without him, the odds would be much longer that the names William Faulkner, Jack Kerouac, and Ken Kesey, to name just three, would have ever echoed.

In The Insider, Gerald Howard gives an intimate accounting of the fever graph of a fascinating and multifaceted career in the literary trade that uses that career to tell a much bigger story of how American literature took the course that it did from the 1920’s to the 1960’s. It’s a story of an art form, and an industry, and a country, experiencing wrenching change, and the people who made a home in the storm and in no small part shaped it. Howard’s own career as a literary weathermaker is justly acclaimed, and he has brought all of his gifts of head and heart to bear in crafting this extraordinary book. It’s a gift to book lovers, and a major contribution to the cultural history of this country.

Genres: Biography, History, Nonfiction

544 pages, Hardcover

Published November 4, 2025

Reviews

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Before picking up this title, the only thing I knew about Malcolm Cowley was his involvement in the Viking Portable Series, and in particular as the editor of The Portable Faulkner - a book that certainly generated much of my devotion to Faulkner. Gerald Howard deserves kudos for spending several years of his life devoted to this biography - a biography no one was necessarily clamoring for - and for his confidence that this life will create a compelling narrative (which it definitely does). I think you need some interest in 20th century American literature to enjoy this, but you don't need to be an expert, just something of an enthusiast.

Cowley's life (1898-1989) spans almost the entire American Century. Like numerous literary figures he was an ambulance driver in the Great War. He hung out with the Lost Generation crowd in Paris as poet, critic and editor of avant-garde publications. In the thirties he had a rather unfortunate stint as a Stalin apologist while a top literary critic and editor at The New Republic. And in the forties he almost single handedly elevated the stature of William Faulkner with the publication of The Portable Faulkner, rescuing an author whose now legendary novels were out of print. In the fifties and sixties he managed to be instrumental in advancing both On the Road and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest towards publication. Throughout this time he was an especially astute critic, and of course he rubbed shoulders with many people who are more famous than he is, which provides considerable juice for this biography.

I'd imagine that this will be the only major biography of Malcolm Cowley that will exist. In writing such a biography an author has to decide between two obligations: completeness and creating a propulsive read. Fortunately, the reader wins out here as Howard's pacing is near perfect. The only time I felt there was more detail than I wanted was in the descriptions of the avant-garde magazines of the '20s.

Those of us who love literature will also experience a bit of nostalgia for an age where literature and criticism mattered to a much broader audience than they do today. Gerald Howard conveys this era vividly and not without a bit of humor. The only problem with reading this book, is that it may add considerable items to your to-be-read list; I'd like to hunt down many of the items that are referenced in the text.

Thanks to netgalley and Penguin Press for providing an egalley for early review. And thanks to Gerald Howard for writing this labor of love.

[Cole S. · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you’re as much of a Malcolm Cowley enthusiast as I am, meaning you’d never heard of him until you received your giveaway copy of Gerald Howard’s literary biography of the man, then this book is for you.

If I’m being candid I was skeptical that a 500 page biography of a man whose life was mostly full of reading, writing, and politics was going to pique my interest, but I wanted to do my best to read it objectively. Little did I know that Mr. Cowley would resonate with me in ways that contradict much of what I’m about. I’m 25, fairly conservative, employed in athletics, and consider myself a casual reader. Cowley was 25, very communist, employed in literature almost his entire life, and the kind of guy who could review the same book he picked up from the office earlier that morning, later that evening. As a man he’s mostly what I’m not, and vice versa, and yet I felt a connection to the passion and the longevity of his career in something as volatile as literature. Not only was he a writer, he had a hand in just about every medium there is, and he rubbed shoulders with just about every important American literary figure for decades upon decades. That’s admirable and indicative of success no matter what space you work in. The casualness this guy could have told personal stories about the most legendary American writers of the 1900’s with is hard to really fathom. He’s remembered as much for his work as a critic as his work as a talent scout, and with good reason. Learning of his impact on the discovery of Jack Kerouac’s work, On The Road most notably, and the early finding of Ken Kersey with his cultural icon of a novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, is pretty wild. It’s all one man, that’s the crazy part. The Cowley that wrote Exile’s Return is the same Cowley who wrote thousands of reviews and essays for huge publications, and that Cowley is the same one who brought the people William Faulkner’s brilliance when it has faded into obscurity. It’s really a very good book.

As far as Mr. Howard’s effort of putting this information together, he did a more than serviceable job. I find there’s a balance between flowing prose and selective placement of acquired information that makes or breaks a biography. There’s also the task of making sure that the gathered information is what the reader wants to learn. That’s a separate balance between specifics and anecdotal sections. The Insider strikes both of those balances really well in my opinion. Howard blends his opinions and general thoughts with the baseline you need to understand Cowley as a person and a literary figure well. Often you get passages full of information about something like why Cowley was in France driving ambulances as a volunteer next to a paragraph on the impact it had on his generation of left-leaning writers. Worth nothing with that, they aren’t just opinions, they’re expert opinions. There’s a big difference, at least I find there is, between a novel by somebody who writes from the standpoint of a fan or enthusiast and someone who writes as a legitimate expert. You feel that difference with The Insider.

One special shoutout to the final bit of the book. It’s the best portrayal I’ve read of the way aging hits you. The section of the book itself is short, brutally short. It makes total sense. 400 plus pages of life encompassing information about a man, and all of a sudden it slows to a halt. I felt genuine emotion reading about his decree that he had “written his final words” well before his death. Sometimes, it’s just over. Really well done.

Anyway, The Insider is absolutely worth the time and the education it provides if you have interest in the timeline of modern American literature and how it came to be. I had a blast with this book. Glad I won the giveaway for it.

[Andrea Engle · Rating 5 out of 5]

This magnificent biography of Malcolm Crowley, the critic, essayist, and editor of “The New Republic,” also focuses on the creation and development of American Literature as an academic discipline … fascinating in its details, one of its main take-away is Copley’s rescue and defense of several writers, principally William Faulkner, but also F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Jack Kerouac … enlightening …

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

My thanks to NetGalley and The Penguin Press for an advance copy of this book that serves as both a biography for a man whose role in American letters has never really been understood, as well as a profile of writers, editors, magazine founders, and artists of all kinds, and a a look at how American literature became more than a joke to most, mostly because of one man.

I have been reading books almost all of my life. I have been really understanding what makes a book about half that time. I never really cared about literature classes in school. I never liked to be assigned books, told to read something and break down what made it good. I knew books. I knew what I liked, and more importantly what I felt like reading. Mostly genre, actually almost all genre for the longest time. As I became older I began to expand my reading, adding nonfiction to my interests, but still not embracing the classics. I was in college when I scored a bunch of Viking Portable Books for less than a dollar at a bag sale. I still have them not packed away like so many of my other books. And it was here that I started getting why people spent so much time on literature. Steinbeck was my gateway, Hemingway kept the high going, Faulkner was a rough one, but I got and continue to get the power that words can have. For this I have to thank Malcom Cowley. Poet, historian, artist, fellow traveller, Cowley brought American literature past the yelling and screaming of those who knew better, and while omitting quite a bit, made literature what it is today. All captured in this fascinating book. The Insider: Malcolm Cowley and the Triumph of American Literature by Gerald Howard is a biography of a man who seemed to live a variety of lives, always in the middle of new things, be it art, literature politics, controversy and more, as well as a look at the world or words from the early 20's to the present.

Malcolm Cowley was born in 1898, a birth so hard and demanding on his mother, that she vowed never to have another child. Cowley was a good student who loved books, as books were the companions he never really had growing up. This book smarts helped him in school, giving him both the grades, and the extracurricular activities that allowed him to go to Harvard through scholarships. The First World War interrupted Cowley's college career, as Cowley volunteered for the American Field Service, driving ambulances and the occasional munitions truck for the French army. This gave him in interest in France, one that continued after he finally graduated and like so many others went to Europe for the better exchange rate, and burgeoning literary circle. Cowley married by now became a reviewer, a founder of newspapers and magazines, a supporter of Dada and friend to many other ex-pat Americans Hemingway, Pound, Cummings and many others. Cowley was both poet, critic editor and supporter to many. Which helped him later on. A brush with Communism left him in a sort of exile, a fellow traveller with shady friends. A job at Viking changed the way Americans viewed writing, as Cowley began to work on the Portable book series, introducing many author and giving them a gravitas that many had missed. And changed literature forever.

A book that was far more than I thought it was going to be. I expected a biography, I did not know that Cowley was like Zelig in many ways, everywhere and anywhere. Meeting Joyce, setting up magazines, saving manuscripts. Cowley seemed to be everywhere the arts were bing committed, and left his fingerprints on everything. The book is very well written, not just about Cowley but his wife, friends, even his opponents. Howard looks at the world of letters, sharing stories, and remembrances of Paris, the red scare, publishing and more. Howard admits there are periods that he skips over, but I don't really get a sense of that. This is a life in full. For all the names, and dates, and places Howard does not lose the narrative, and I found myself enthralled while flipping pages, hearing little stories, little bits of gossip sometimes, and even stories of punching bar owners in Paris.

A book for people who really love literature. There are many stories and many interesting anecdotes that I kept sharing at work. English majors will enjoy this for now they can see origins of the books they still have to read today. Also a fine read for people who like biographies on complicated people living complicated lives. A really well done and well-written biography.

[Michael Reilly · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fascinating biography of a writer who lived in the middle of American literary culture from the 1920s to the 1970s.

Cowley grew up in Pittsburgh. He went to Harvard to study literature. He was the editor of The Harvard Advocate. His schooling was interrupted by two years of service in WW1.

He went to Paris in 1920 and became part of the famous scene. He hung around with Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, F Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, E. E. Cummings and the rest of that crowd. He wrote poetry, famously punched a French cafe owner and made friends. Howard says, "these were inarguably two of the most important years of Malcolm Cowley's life."

He came back to America and hustled making a living as a book reviewer and essayist. He eventually became the literary editor of The New Republic magazine, which was one of the most influential magazines in the country. He discovered and developed new writers including John Cheever and Hart Crane.

The challenging part of the story involves Crowley's involvement with the Communist Party in the 1930s. He was never a member of the party, but he was, as Howard puts it, "the very model of the fellow traveler." He called the Moscow Show Trials "just and necessary actions". He joined and publicly supported every Communist front group. He defended Stalin and praised the life of the worker in Russia.

The odd thing is that at the same time he continued to write interesting and thoughtful literary criticism and history. His book on Paris in the twenties, "Exile's Return" came out in 1934. It combined a Communist take on that scene with first rate reporting on what it was like. It is now recognized as one of the most important books on Paris in the 20s.

By the late 30s Croley began to drift away from the Communists. He eventually acknowledged that he had been wrong about the Moscow Trials, that Russia had suffered terrible famines under the Soviets and the Soviet Communism was totalitarian. The irony is that he began to be red baited just as he was moving away from the Party. He was hounded out of a federal job by right wing congressman. During much of the 50s he was constantly being attacked as a stooge of Communism.

After WW2 he became a very influential book editor. He edited and championed "The Portable Faulkner" collection. At the time it was published, none of Faulkner's novels were in print. He sparked the recognition of Faulkner as a great American writer.

Amazingly, in the late fifties and early sixties he championed the publication of two of the great American novels. He worked closely with Jack Kerouac to get "On the Road" edited and published. He served the same role with Ken Kesey in getting "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" published.

He died in 1989. The last twenty years or so of his life he was a grand old man who had teaching and lecturing jobs and continued to write essays and book reviews.

Crowley was a Zelig like guy who had dealings with every important literary person or movement for fifty years. He was also in the middle of the worst political fiasco for the left wing in America.

Howard tells this complicated story clearly. He warns in the introduction that "I touch only glancingly on Malcolm Cowley's private life." It is hard to get a sense of what he was like as a person, although I sense that he could be pompous and reserved.

Cowley was a brilliant and influential guy who was in the middle of everything. The story of his surrender to the Communist Party, driven by the horrors of the depression, is a very valuable cautionary tale in a time of crisis and doom.

[Steve Robitaille · Rating 5 out of 5]

A rich layer cake of a book!

Pick your slice of American history and culture from the 1920s until Cowley’s passing decades later and what you thought you knew about politics and literature opens outward, shedding new light on the past given Cowley’s prescient understanding of life’s eternal moral and artistic verities.