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

Bob Hoover
Retired Post-Gazette Book Editor

Malcolm Cowley and his boyhood friend Kenneth Burke grew from avid readers at the Carnegie Library in Oakland and top scholars at Peabody High School 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 1920 s Paris and singlehandedly rescued William Faulkner from obscurity to a Noble 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.