Lesser Lights: More Tales From a Hamptons' Apprenticeship

Lesser Lights will be published in February 2019. It's the second volume in a memoir series that began with A Hole In the Ocean: A Hamptons' Apprenticeship published in 2016. These memoirs recall a time in the early 1970s I spent in New York's the Hamptons, among the poets, writers and painters who lived and worked there. Some of these included Willem de Kooning, David Ignatow, H. R. Hays, Truman Capote, Norman Mailer, and others. I was an informal apprentice to several.

Phillip LopatePhillip Lopate writes of A Hole In the Ocean: “These irresistibly amusing and engaging recollections of the author’s encounters with the great and near-great artists and poets who washed ashore in the Hamptons has a special charm, as our intrepid protagonist plays unofficial chauffeur, therapist, straight-man and witness, always with retrospective self-awareness, insight and bittersweet gratitude.”

I'm just now collecting advanced comments from writers on Lesser Lights: More Tales From a Hamptons' Apprenticeship. Here's one from R. L. Stine, author of Goosebumps and Fear Street:
"I love time travel stories--and this book offers a trip back to a time and place that seems almost like science-fiction today. Wonderful characters, great surprises, and a sly sense of humor that kept me eagerly turning the pages."