How Malcolm Cowley Guided the Course of 20th-Century Culture

“From Peabody High to the Heart of American Literature: How Malcolm Cowley Guided the Course of 20th-Century Culture”

Malcolm Cowley and his boyhood friend Kenneth Burke grew from avid readers at the Carnegie Library in Oakland and top scholars at Peabody High to leading figures in the country's literary life. Burke was known in academic circles, but Cowley was a journalist and book critic for the New Republic in the 1920s and '30s and later an influential editor in American publishing as well as a chronicler of the literary scene in his memoir, “And I Worked at the Writer's Trade.” He was an intimate observer of the “Lost Generation” in 1920s Paris and singlehandedly rescued William Faulkner from obscurity to a Nobel Prize. Cowley's father was a physician with offices at Centre and Highland avenues. Retired Post-Gazette book editor Bob Hoover will chronicle Cowley’s life and times.