The Music of Time is a riviting life story that reads like a fine novel, giving voice to the author's sensibilities, secrets, and fears, without traces of inhibition. All the major and minor characters are here, an astonishing variety of men and women who have influenced the writer's life and work over a period of six decades. We discover precisely how he learned the craft of novel writing, his lifelong passion for music that became a catalyst for his creativity, and how an unexpected insight at Harvard would dramatically change his life. This book is the haunting self-portrait of a truly gifted American artist, still working, whose reputation is secure among the finest writers of his generation.