RaveHarper\'sThe Insider is a pleasure to read, in part because many of the characters in it remain intellectually and historically exciting, encrusted as they are with remnants of legend and glamour that Cowley himself never quite attained ... If Howard makes a slight overreach here, it’s nonetheless a lovely one, and in all, it must be said that a good bit of The Insider is startling and beautiful, particularly the portions that cover the late Twenties ... Throughout Howard’s excellent book, the word “literature” keeps raising its elegant, harrowed face, and you feel it as a punch in the gut almost every time; the word becomes a night vision of your mother’s ghost in the hall. In the end, seeing twentieth-century American literature from above, getting the big view, as The Insider allows you to see it, is an experience like visiting New York Harbor off Red Hook, or the islands in Jamaica Bay, or the approachable stretches of the Hudson River along its banks in northern Manhattan—and you think, Oh, how very beautiful, how stunning and lovely that water must once have been. No one swims in it now.
