Overview

A finalist for the 2026 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction • Named a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker A delightful and majestic reckoning with the ascent of American fiction in the twentieth century through the prism of the under-known man who had an astonishing amount to do with it Malcolm Cowley is not a household name today, but the American literary canon would look very different without him. A prototypical “man of letters” of his generation—Harvard University, 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 1920s and ’30s, along with his close New Republic colleague Edmund Wilson. Cowley’s early support of Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and their set—and indeed for framing this group in generational terms in the first place—secured his place in literary history. 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 thirties badly damaged, he retreated behind the scenes as a tastemaker whose import has awaited Gerald Howard to be brought into full view. The process of 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 sixties. 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 1920s to the 1960s. 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 his talents of head and heart to bear in crafting this extraordinary book. It’s a gift to booklovers and a major contribution to the cultural history of this country.

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9780525522058

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Reviews

""I was deeply taken by the beauty of the insights in Howard's welcome book on Malcolm Cowley, by his vast range of reference, his command of the scene in every decade, and his understanding of the dynamics of the literary marketplace. His precise and memorable prose adds another layer of pleasure for readers. This is literary history of a kind so rare these days, and deeply missed."" —Jay Parini, author of Borges and Me

""I was deeply taken by the beauty of the insights in Howard's welcome book on Malcolm Cowley, by his vast range of reference, his command of the scene in every decade, and his understanding of the dynamics of the literary marketplace. His precise and memorable prose adds another layer of pleasure for readers. This is literary history of a kind so rare these days, and deeply missed."" —Jay Parini, author of Borges and Me ""The Insider is the glorious capstone to Gerald Howard’s half century as a publishing powerhouse and literary tastemaker. With the legendary critic Malcolm Cowley as his guide, Howard leads us on a romp through the great movements of 20th century American literature, from the Lost Generation to the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. The Insider will go down as a classic work of American literary history, that belongs on the shelf of anyone who truly loves books."" — Debby Applegate, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Madam: The Biography of Polly Adler, Icon of the Jazz Age

""I was deeply taken by the beauty of the insights in Howard's welcome book on Malcolm Cowley, by his vast range of reference, his command of the scene in every decade, and his understanding of the dynamics of the literary marketplace. His precise and memorable prose adds another layer of pleasure for readers. This is literary history of a kind so rare these days, and deeply missed."" —Jay Parini, author of Borges and Me ""The Insider is the glorious capstone to Gerald Howard’s half century as a publishing powerhouse and literary tastemaker. With the legendary critic Malcolm Cowley as his guide, Howard leads us on a romp through the great movements of 20th century American literature, from the Lost Generation to the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. The Insider will go down as a classic work of American literary history, that belongs on the shelf of anyone who truly loves books."" — Debby Applegate, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Madam: The Biography of Polly Adler, Icon of the Jazz Age ""In tracing the long and influential career of writer and editor Malcolm Cowley, Gerald Howard has created a compelling fresco of American literary life spanning a century, whose cast features Hart Crane, William Faulkner, Jack Kerouac, and scores of others with whose lives and careers Cowley became enmeshed. The Insider brilliantly explores the inner workings of the worlds of writing and publishing as they were caught up in decades of war, social crisis, and partisan antagonisms. Howard’s sharply individualized portraits of all the players, major and minor, makes this a living drama, breathtaking in its grasp of sweeping change occurring over a single lifetime"" — Geoffrey O'Brien

Author Information

Gerald Howard retired in 2021 as executive editor and vice president of Doubleday Books. He received the 2009 Maxwell E. Perkins Award for Distinguished Achievement in the Field of Fiction and has worked over the years with authors such as Paul Auster, Don DeLillo, David Foster Wallace, Debby Applegate, Hanya Yanagihara, Pat Barker, Sean Wilentz, and Bill Bryson. Howard’s essays and reviews have appeared in Bookforum, The New York Times Book Review, The American Scholar, London Review of Books, n+1, Slate, and other publications.

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