Ford describes his encounters with Conrad, Hemingway, Proust, and Joyce, among other writers, with an infectious energy that animates every page of this compelling memoir. This comprehensive new edition seeks to redress the fact that his autobiographical writing remains largely unrecognized. Through this volume, his literary life is made available for the first time since 1984. Written with the generosity, punch, and flair that characterize Ford's novels, it employs a subtle and flexible rhetoric of narrative that fuses the genres of fiction and memoir. Ultimately, however, it tells a story of rebirth, in which the process of literary creation becomes an affirmation of life itself.