"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, Irish Murdoch, V.S. Naipaul, Francis King, and J.F. Powers - Meyers writes, "I want 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 in the writers' lives: 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."--BOOK JACKET.