One of the most critically acclaimed biographers working today, Jeffrey Meyers offers in Privileged Moments a window into the work of both creative writers and their biographers. Describing these portraits-of Allen Ginsberg, James Dickey, Ed Dorn, Arthur Miller, Iris Murdoch, V. S. Naipaul, Francis King, and J. F. Powers-Meyers writes, "I wanted to learn everything about their lives, what they looked like, how they lived, what they said. I was most curious about the creative process, the relation between authors' lives and their art, the public image and the real self." Meyers himself becomes the ninth writer encountered in Privileged Moments, displaying the master biographer's sharp eye for telling details. In lively and compelling style, he offers us insights into the writers' lives:
… read more...their reactions to criticism; how they advanced their careers and achieved fame; how feuds and quarrels started and ended; their struggles with money, illness, marriages, and love affairs. "Privileged Moments is a delicious book, filled with acute and unpretentious observations of some of our most interesting writers. Jeffrey Meyers, himself one of the book's most scrutinized characters, is a vigilant guide through what is often a mine field of exacerbated egos and absorbing personalities."-Thomas McGuane, author of The Sporting Club "Full of vivid reminiscence, this book is the next best thing to a series of conversations with Jeffrey Meyers about friendships he forged while going about his work. Here we have entertaining documentation of V. S. Naipaul's deviousness, together with affectionate portraits of Iris Murdoch, Arthur Miller, Francis King, and several other writers."-Ronald Hayman, author of Tennessee Williams and Hitler & Geli "Jeffrey Meyers is an adept of big and small genres: literary biographies, critical essays, letters from abroad, jokes, and, in Privileged Moments, sketches of friends, nearly friends, and one-time friends. Piquant stuff; immensely revealing."-Denis Donoghue, Henry James Chair of English and American Letters, New York University "Meyers takes us behind the scenes to record, as Boswell did, interesting private moments when the Great Ones are, as it were, off duty. It is the play of Meyers' intellect that makes the moments revealing rather than random encounters. Several times Meyers praises his subjects for displaying in conversation as in print the novelist's eye for telling details. Again and again Meyers displays what I would call the master biographer's sharp eye."-Paul Alkon, Bing Professor of English, University of Southern California "Nobody interested in the craft of literary biography could fail to be intrigued and entertained by this startlingly candid book of essays."-Ian Hamilton, author of Robert Lowell, a BiographyRead More read less...
