"To my great good fortune, after graduation, I found myself at Southampton College, in Eastern Long Island. Like every college, Southampton depended on local adjunct professors to supplement the small, costlier full-time staff. But, unlike most colleges, Southampton was able to hire the local artists and writers, who—the Hamptons being the Hamptons—were often the best in the world. For instance, Willem de Kooning taught elementary painting. Ilya Bolotowky, the neo-plasticist painter, with his huge mustache and thick Russian accent, taught my Freshman English class. The Bollingen-prize poet David Ignatow taught creative writing, as did the poet, playwright and translator, H. R. Hays.
"Why did a group of distinguished artists and writers congregate at a new, undistinguished college? “You see,” de Kooning told me after we’d become acquainted. “In the wintertime, they’re here all alone. They work in their studios all day and then want to get together at night, usually at Bobby Van’s, or some other bar. Then they get into a fight—Jim Jones likes to throw punches—or get drunk and the police take them to jail. It’s either that or they meet at the college and have a good time without getting into too much trouble.”
