As a graduate student, Michael Mewshaw overheard his girlfriend propositioned by James Dickey, served as chauffeur and drinking companion to William Styron, and under George Garrett's direction impersonated a Playboy fiction editor on television. So began a remarkable literary life in which Mewshaw not only published more than a dozen books but also met and befriended author celebrities at home and abroad. In his unblinking but fair-minded memoir, Mewshaw grants us the pleasure of passing time with some of the 20th century's finest and most interesting writers. He describes poignant episodes and painful lessons, including his complex relationship with Robert Penn Warren and Eleanor Clark. But his memoir is also filled with humorous events: mistaking Carlos Fuentes for James Jones's handyman, being tricked into babysitting Anthony Burgess's precocious son, and receiving publishing advice from Safari-garbed pulp novelist Harold Robbins. Mewshaw recounts visits with Paul Bowles in Tangier, brief collisions with the likes of Mary McCarthy and William Gaddis, and enduring friendships with Graham Greene, Pat Conroy and Gore Vidal.