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Dec 09, 2025
Editor and critic Gerald Howard and novelist Jay Parini join us for a conversation about the great Malcolm Cowley, one of the most influential and oft-forgotten literary figures of the 20th century — and his new book, The Insider: Malcolm Cowley and the Triumph of American Literature.
Ernest Hemingway. F. Scott Fitzgerald. William Faulkner. Jack Kerouac. Ken Kesey. Behind these pillars of 20th century fiction stands Malcolm Cowley — a prototypical “man of letters” who had a seismic influence on what we read. Working behind the scenes for 40 years, from the birth of the Lost Generation through the counterculture of the 1960s, Cowley is not a household name — he is an unacknowledged legislator of the American literary canon. The Insider is a story of an art form, an industry, and a country experiencing wrenching change, and the people who made a home in the storm.
As editor of Paul Auster, Don DeLillo, David Foster Wallace, Hanya Yanagihara, and Bill Bryson, Gerald Howard has himself worked with some of the major writers of his generation — hear him and Parini discuss how Cowley laid the foundation for that work, a gift to booklovers and a major contribution to the cultural history of this country.
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