Lois Cook is the author of the novels Clouds and Shrouds and The Gallant Gallstone. Her writing is incomprehensible nonsense, but Toohey gets his lackeys to write excellent reviews of her work and she is therefore regarded as a major new talent. Toohey makes her the chair of the Council of American Writers, a group of young writers that he creates. Cook is grateful to Toohey for her success but is also aware that he is using her to further his aim of glorifying mediocrity—she knows that her work has no real merit, and she has no respect for Toohey. In this regard, she is unlike Peter Keating, who is unaware—or willfully ignorant—of the fact that Toohey is promoting his work only because he knows that Keating has no talent.