Two eminent American poets, John Ashbery and Kenneth Koch, will read from their work on Sunday at 5 p.m. as part of the Writers At Guild Hall series.

Mr. Ashbery, who will celebrate his 70th birthday this weekend, is the only American poet to win all three annual literary prizes - the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the National Book Award - for one book, "Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror."

His other honors include Mac Arthur and Guggenheim Fellowships, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, and the Feltrinelli Prize. His 17th and most recent collection is "Can You Hear, Bird?"

Mr. Koch, who teaches at Columbia University and is the author of many collections of poetry, short plays, and fiction, received the Bollingen Prize for his books "One Train" and "On the Great Atlantic Rainway: Selected Poems 1950-1988." His most recent book is "The Gold Standard," a collection of plays.

Tickets are available at the Guild Hall box office.

At Book Hampton

Book Hampton in East Hampton has a lively lineup for the weekend, with readings from the diaries of James Schuyler and the latest edition of Hampton Shorts, the East End's literary magazine, and, for those looking for something a little different, from books on alternative medicine and living in a menage a trois.

Dr. Leo Galland will discuss his book, "The Four Pillars of Healing," tomorrow at 7:30 p.m. A New York City internist and pioneer in "integrated medicine," Dr. Galland argues that conventional medicine must learn to recognize patients as individuals, not as the sum of their symptoms.

His four-tier plan combines both conventional and alternative medicine to restore the body's balance.

James Schuyler's Diary

On Saturday at 5:30 p.m., friends and colleagues of the late poet James Schuyler will read from and discuss "The Diary of James Schuyler," recently published by Black Sparrow Press.

Mr. Schuyler was a focal point of the New York and East End arts communities, and his diary is filled with revelations about Truman Capote, Mr. Ashbery, Frank O'Hara, Fairfield Porter, and others. Joining the diary's editor, Nathan Kernan, for this event will be Susan Baran, Marc Cohen, and Anne Porter.

Immediately following that reading, on Saturday at 7 p.m., Barbara Foster, Michael Foster, and Letha Hadady will discuss "Three in Love: Menages a Trois From Ancient to Modern Times."

The three authors themselves live together. Their book traces the menage a trois over the centuries - both in real life and as portrayed in art - and offers a portrait of threefold love.

The book makes a case for the menage a trois as an alternative to the standard two-person partnership and casts light on some famous historical trios, from the Biblical patriarch Abraham, his wife, Sarah, and the handmaiden Hagar, to Henry and June Miller and Anais Nin, and the Beat writer Jack Kerouac and Neal and Carolyn Cassady.

Book Hampton's weekend closes with another group reading on Sunday at 5:30 p.m., of authors featured in the latest issue of Hamptons Shorts.

The writers who will be on hand are Anne Aldrich, Marjorie Appleman, Diana Chang, August Franza, Kenny Mann, Joe Pintauro, Daniel Stern, and Hampton Shorts' Junior Writer Award winner, Ellen Bates.

The playwright Joseph Stein is probably best known for his phenomenally successful Broadway show "Fiddler on the Roof," winner of both the Tony and Drama Critics Circle awards for best musical in 1964.

Oddly enough, despite Mr. Stein's book, lyrics by his good friend Sheldon Harnick, music by Jerry Bock, and the great Jerome Robbins's choreography, nobody wanted to produce the show at first. "What'll we do for an audience after we run out of Hadassah benefits?" potential backers kept asking.

"We wrote it because we loved it," Mr. Stein said. "We just hoped it would eventually be staged."

Finally the producer Harold Prince came forward, Zero Mostel signed on for the lead, and the rest is history. "Fiddler" is still playing in theaters around the world today.

Zero Was The Best

The convivial Mr. Stein showed a recent interviewer around the handsome East Hampton colonial he shares with his wife of 22 years, the actress Elisa Loti, now a psychotherapist. Then he settled down to talk at the dining-room table.

"When Zero was 'on,' he was the best there is," he began, "but he was not terribly disciplined. Every once in a while he'd get out of character and go off into his own little schtick - not too professional. I loved him, but he certainly could drive me crazy."

"Fiddler" was a huge hit in Japan, according to the playwright. "I was amazed. The Japanese loved it, but expressed concern about whether Americans could understand the show. 'What?' I said. 'It's so Japanese!' they explained."

Cultural similarities abounded: the custom of the matchmaker, the generational conflict between the young daughters and the old traditions, and a shared history of dealing with hostile forces.

That Jewish religious rituals were less understood in Japan became clear during the previews.

"When the rabbi entered he was carrying a Bible with a big cross on it, which is how the Japanese thought all Western religious leaders walked around. I set them straight. 'No cross,' I said."

The long, happy history of "Fiddler" is not unlike the long, happy story of Mr. Stein himself. He seems to have gone from triumph to triumph in a life of crescendoing fulfillment.

How People Think

"I come from a very unwealthy family in the Bronx, somewhere between working class and lower middle class," he said. "My pop was a pocketbook designer who went through the Depression with five kids to support. We never starved, but I needed to start working in high school."

Writing for his school and college newspapers, he took a bachelor of science degree at City College of New York and a master's in social work at Columbia University. Mr. Stein earned his living as a psychiatric social worker in New York from 1938 until 1945.

He liked it, and what he learned about how people function and think proved helpful later on. But writing kept beckoning, and he wrote scripts for two radio comedy shows on the side.

Moving up eventually to a major national network, he started writing for a show called "Raleigh's Room," collaborating with "a fella named Alan Jay Lerner."

"We were both kids, and it was a wonderful show to get experience with. Hildegarde [the star] was in a nightclub talking to celebrity guests of all kinds: comedians, actors, Tallulah Bankhead, Clifton Webb, famous authors, whatever, and we had to adjust to all their different styles."

Mr. Stein worked next for "The Henry Morgan Show." The comedian had "a very original kind of mind," he said, "and we had to write his kind of material - not gags, but high-level comedy."

Shifting over to television, he did comedy sketches for "Your Show of Shows" and "The Sid Caesar Show."

"It's a talent like any other, and I was comfortable doing it. Working with that gang of comedy writers was a high point - a lot of pressure, a lot of fun."

"Plain And Fancy"

In 1955 Mr. Stein wrote his first Broadway show, "Plain and Fancy," a conflict-of-cultures comedy about an Amish community in Pennsylvania being invaded by a couple of New Yorkers.

"It was quite successful, to everybody's surprise. Neither the director nor the producer nor any of the writers had ever been on Broadway before."

Mysteriously, royalty checks kept rolling in from a theater in Indiana long after the show closed in New York. Finally, an invitation to attend its 10th anniversary of continuous performances arrived. It turned out that "Plain and Fancy" had been embraced by an Amish tourist center - where, now in repertory, it's still going strong.

"During the day visitors wander around looking at the blacksmiths and lacemakers, and in the evening they take in a show in this barn-theater that calls itself the permanent home of 'Plain and Fancy.' I'm very proud of that."

"Mr. Wonderful"

"Mr. Wonderful," written for Sammy Davis Jr., was another Broadway hit until, after a year, its star left. Then came "Juno," not a commercial success but a work of which Mr. Stein is also very proud, based on Sean O'Casey's "Juno and the Paycock."

"O'Casey wouldn't give anyone permission to adapt his work unless he liked them, so I went to England to meet him, and he liked me! I was honored that he approved of my adaptation; he wrote me a letter saying, 'I can't tell which part is you and which part is me.' "

A recent Off Broadway revival of "Juno" was well received in a limited run.

"Zorba"

Mr. Stein's hit parade gathered momentum again with "Take Me Along," based on Eugene O'Neill's "Ah, Wilderness" and starring Jackie Gleason. Then came "Enter Laughing," one of the only three non-musicals he has ever written. "Funny, funny, funny," he chuckled. "I loved it."

Next, after "Fiddler," he wrote "Zorba" with his "enormous" friends John Kander and Fred Ebb, of "Cabaret" and "Chicago" fame. Directed and produced by Harold Prince and starring Anthony Quinn, "Zorba" won a Tony nomination in 1968.

"That was one of my best experiences in theater," said Mr. Stein. "I'm very comfortable with folksy, down-to-earth people like the characters in 'Zorba' and 'Fiddler,' who have strong emotional drives and expressive colloquial voices."

"The material I work on doesn't lend itself to vulgarity, which I never use. I can't write very sophisticated stuff, either, it's not in my area. My people have their feet on the ground."

"Rags" To Rich's

"Irene," "King of Hearts," "Carmelina," and "The Baker's Wife," which won an Olivier award nomination in London, followed.

Then, in 1986, came the playwright's favorite show of all, "Rags." It had very successful out-of-town tryouts but was a complete flop in New York after receiving a scathing review from The New York Times's erstwhile theater critic Frank Rich.

"I'll never forget that review," Mr. Stein said. "It was a play about immigrants that got wonderful reviews everywhere else." The show has since been retitled "Children of the Wind," he said, and under its new name, "it keeps playing, continuing life, despite that painful experience."

Prefers Theater

While writing the screenplays for "Enter Laughing" and "Fiddler," which won a Screen Actors Award in 1972, were "comfortable experiences," said Mr. Stein, he much prefers working for the theater.

Not only the greater script control but also the close-knit-family collaborative experience draw him to what he calls "a dangerous way to make a living."

"Every aspect of theater can be heartbreaking," he said, "and everyone is forever heroically fighting the odds. You should only get involved if you know you'll kill yourself if you don't."

Yarn-Spinning

"In the beginning there's always the story," said the playwright. He usually sits down with the other writers to get on the same wavelength and establish a sense of direction; then he outlines the book and sets the process in motion.

"The ability to spin a yarn combines technique, intuition, and a good ear, but unless you love the stuff you're writing, you're in big trouble. Whether your work is eventually a success or not is very secondary to the fact that while you're doing it, you'd better believe in it."

Right now Mr. Stein is on vacation from two shows he's working on in the city, one a new collaboration with Messrs. Kander and Ebb, the other "kind of an odd animal, a holiday show that hopefully will be put on every year at Chanukah/Christmas time."

"Miracles" At The Met

Combining the gigantic talents of Mr. Harnick, the composer Marvin Hamlisch, the songwriters Steven Schwartz and David Shire, and a brilliant young director, Michael Leeds, the latter production will be set in various galleries of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and feature Bible stories told from a child's point of view.

"We hope it will happen fairly soon," Mr. Stein said. "These writers are the best in the business, and we're having a lot of fun."

"It's called 'Miracles,' " he concluded with a grin, "and I'm the guy with the plot."

A fierce summer squall that rolled over the South Fork Friday night did more than end a two-week dry spell that had wilted gardens and left wooded areas and lawns parched.

Lightning that accompanied the thunderstorm caused serious damage when it started a fire in a Sag Harbor condominium. Lightning also caused several other minor fires when it struck at least four houses and a utility pole from East Hampton to Amagansett.

Wind gusts of up to 40 miles per hour knocked out power in hundreds of houses in East Hampton, and the storm caused some anxious moments for about 80 canoeists who found themselves in the middle of Sagg Pond.

Phone Blown Apart

The storm resulted from a Canadian cold front dislodging hot air that had lingered for nine days, pushing temperatures above 90 degrees on six of them, said Richard Hendrickson, a United States Weather Observer from Bridgehampton. "Once we get in the heat of summer, these squalls pop up and can do considerable damage," he said.

Robert and Elizabeth Early, who live in the Sag Harbor Villas on West Water Street, can attest to that. They were home playing bridge at about 10 p.m. when a lightning bolt struck an outdoor telephone jack on their deck and followed the phone line inside.

"It blew the phone apart and zapped a metal chain that was connected to the blinds," said Sag Harbor Fire Chief Dirk Early. From there, the current spread to heating ducts in a crawl space, igniting floor joists. "Luckily the people were in the building and saw the flames shooting through the vents," Chief Early said.

A Good Stop

Firefighters, equipped with oxygen masks and working in teams of two, entered the smoke-filled crawl space through a small opening on the side of the building. "We were able to knock the fire down quickly. It was a good stop," he said. "Once it gets in between those floor joists you don't know where it's going."

John Rankin, a Southampton Town fire marshal, said the damage was serious enough for him to order the Earlys out of their house until repairs could be made. He estimated that 15 to 20 trusses supporting the first floor were burned badly enough to cause "structural instability."

Mr. Rankin said lightning also struck the condominium's chimney, causing minor damage. Three other condominiums in the same building were not damaged, he added.

"That Somebody Was Me"

Leonilda Tartaglia, 91, a resident of the mobile home park on Oakview Highway in East Hampton, was reading in bed when she was startled by "a terrific crack."

" 'My God,' I thought, 'that's a terrible one. I'm sure someone close by got it,' " she said. "I was right. That somebody was me."

With her lights out and her trailer filling with smoke, Mrs. Tartaglia dialed her next door neighbor, Todd Carberry. "He came right over in that pouring rain and got me out," she said.

The East Hampton Fire Department made quick work of the fire, which burned a couch and a section of paneling. Chief Steve Griffiths said "there was a good chance" lightning caused the fire, but he added he would wait for the fire marshal's report before reaching that conclusion.

Mrs. Tartaglia spent the night in a neighbor's trailer, where she slept fitfully. "These things go up like tinder," she said. "I'm lucky to be alive."

"We were keeping an eye on the weather," said Mike Bottini of the Group for the South Fork, who had organized an evening canoe trip on Sagg Pond, starting at 6 p.m. One storm front, which caused considerable damage UpIsland and caused the closing of East Hampton beaches that afternoon, blew in and out. "We shoved off with clear skies," Mr. Bottini said.

The canoeing party, which numbered approximately 80 people, including about a dozen children, set off from the bridge at Sagaponack Road. They paddled to Sagg Main Beach, where they enjoyed a barbecue. After nightfall, several groups of canoeists and kayakers started the return trip while others lingered.

Sought Refuge

"Most of the people made it back to their cars," said Mr. Bottini. "But another group didn't quite make it back." When the storm hit, some of the stragglers sought refuge at Bridge Lane. Others brought their canoes ashore.

First Assistant Chief Dave Dakers of the Bridgehampton Fire Department called out the department's rescue boat and stationed fire police with floodlights and radios at the Sagaponack Road bridge to try to account for everyone.

"We didn't know how many people were caught," he said. "We just thought it was good to have our people around in case." Though there were some nervous moments, everyone apparently made it ashore without incident.

The Amagansett Fire Department also responded to a lightning strike at the house of John and Anna Accumanno on Dolphin Drive shortly after 10 p.m.

"It just blew a hole in the roof," said Chief Bill Vorpahl. "It caused a little burn damage to the roof and interior."

While the department was at the scene, "a guy came from one block over and said his house had been hit, too," Chief Vorpahl said. He added that damage to the house on Leeton Road, whose owners could not be identified by press time, was also not serious.

"I can't remember so much lightning," Chief Vorpahl said. "We were at the first call, with a couple guys on the roof, when I said, 'We should get off of here real quick,' because there were still lightning bolts around."

Like A Grucci Finale

Lightning also struck driveway lights at the house of Ruth Benzenberg on Swamp Road in East Hampton shortly before 10 p.m. "Two of the lights were blown right out of the ground," she said. A couple of minor brush fires also ignited along her drive way.

"The noise - that was the scariest thing," said Ms. Benzenberg. By the time three members of the East Hampton Fire Department arrived to investigate, the heavy rain had put the fires out, she said.

Phil McSweeney, a resident of Old Stone Highway in Springs, said lightning struck a utility pole across the street from his house.

"It was sort of like a Grucci finale up close and personal," he said. "There was a large explosion and a lot of sparks. The wires fell into a wooded area across the street."

Crop Saver

The Springs Fire Department doused the brush fire, but power, while spared at the McSweeney residence, was knocked out across the neighborhood.

Stefanie Gossin, a spokeswoman for the Long Island Lighting Company, said winds and lightning accounted for many of the power outages on the East End. About 700 houses in East Hampton lost power during Friday's storm, about 600 of them in Springs, she said. In Southampton Town, 3,100 houses lost power, most of them in Hampton Bays.

Mr. Hendrickson said .81 inches of rain fell at his Lumber Lane house on Friday. A second rainfall, early Tuesday morning, dropped another .94 inches, he said.

The rain was a "crop saver" and would lessen the risk of brush and forest fires, according to Mr. Hendrickson. "There was no rain since the second of July," he said. "I never saw the leaves of the corn curl so tight and point so high. It looked like asparagus."

The Music Festival of the Hamptons returned for its third season on Friday, offering a rich tapestry of musical styles and world-class performances over the 10 days of its residency on the East End.

Eleanor Sage Leonard, the festival's president, opened the series on Friday night by remarking on the challenges and rewards of offering music in the open air.

Certainly the festival has taken great pains to establish a bucolic ambiance by choosing locations at a distance from surrounding businesses and residences.

L.I.R.R. Chimes In

A stunning white festival tent rising from the grounds of the Hampton Classic on Friday night was the setting for the opening concert by the Boys Choir of Harlem under the direction of Dr. Walter J. Turnbull.

In one of those rare moments in life that could never have been anticipated, the Long Island Rail Road's 8:10 train tooted off in the distance as the first work, "Lamentations of Jeremiah," began and rumbled past blowing at full volume as the last notes of "O vos omnes que transitis per viam" died on the singers' lips.

Gentle Pathos

Undaunted, these marvelous young men continued with this a cappella work by the 20th-century composer Alberto Ginastra, lending it a gentle pathos and never once wandering off-key as well they might have in the wake of the locomotive's blasting A-flat.

Remarkably, the choir uses no sheet music, and I count it a creditable achievement for these boys, aged 8 to 18, to have memorized the difficult Latin and German demanded by the evening's selections, and to render the texts with fine diction and clarity. One can only imagine the hours of practice and rehearsal Dr. Turnbull and the choir put into the preparation of each performance.

Dr. Turnbull founded the Harlem Boys Choir in 1968 as a small church group, and over the years the choir has grown to an internationally acclaimed performing group. The Boys Choir offers young inner-city kids the opportunity to participate in something truly special while providing them with consistency in their urban lives and teaching them values.

Noble Aims

"I know they look angelic, don't they," quipped Dr. Turnbull, "but they ain't." However, he went on to speak with intense pride of his young singers, of their dedication and hard work, and the accomplishments of present members and choir alumni.

"The Boys Choir is about life," said Dr. Turnbull. "It teaches them courage and integrity." Watching these young people standing with dignity in their maroon blazers and holding their heads up high as they sang their hearts out, one can sense that noble aims are being achieved.

Dr. Turnbull pointed out that "a boys choir is always a challenge because you never know what tricks Mother Nature will pull on a young man." But the young sopranos were in full voice on Friday night, the tenors and baritones were strong and the basses rich.

Fine Balance

There is a fine balance in the Boys Choir's control, and dynamic equilibrium was at its best in "Four Spirituals" by Moses Hogan, drawing several appreciative sighs from audience members.

The boys seemed to be having a good time with these songs, performing their individual parts with great confidence, and at other times together as if in one huge voice.

Thunder rumbled ominously outside the tent, another train chugged and blew past the assembly, airplanes growled overhead, and the Harlem Boys Choir sang on. The audience cheered, and with good reason. It was a rousing experience. And a charmed one: A bone-rattling thunderstorm held its fury until audience members were safely in their cars leaving the field.

Went Astray

The next night found me wandering aimlessly along Daniel's Hole Road in East Hampton, having been informed that the second concert of the series was to be held at the East Hampton Airport.

After cruising desultorily through the crowd at what turned out to be a chic food-tasting party, I finally got smart and moved on to the festival tent at the horse show grounds, where I found "Bach: Real and Surreal" in progress.

I therefore cannot comment on the Stockowski arrangement of "Air on the G-String," nor the second featured work, the "Brandenburg Concerto No. 3." Sad was I to miss these splendid works, and, due to the lateness of my arrival, I was tucked into the very back of the audience and could not see the performers, Lukas Foss and the Resident Chamber Ensemble.

Spirited Work

However, when Stephen Halloran, pianist, Bryan Gumm, bassist, and Joseph DeMarco, drummer, hit the first notes of Claude Bolling's "Bach to Swing," I was glad I had snaked through the back roads to get to Bridgehampton for at least the second half of the concert. This spirited work proceeded from beginning to end with seamless energy.

Mr. Foss sat at the piano and joined David Oppenheim on clarinet, Zuill Bailey on cello, and Mr. Halloran on the organ for Mr. Foss's own composition, the troubling "Non-Improvisation: A Bach Nightmare." It was well named.

There seemed to be some rather nice piano playing going on, possibly a real Bach piece, but it was drowned out by cacophonous wailing of the organ and knocking of the percussion, to say nothing of the disconcerting cheeping of the clarinet and some waddling of a gong from time to time.

Torturing Bach

The audience, sipping wine in anticipation of the dinner which was to follow the performance, glanced around with strange looks (possibly fear) on their faces, but clapped enthusiastically at the end. I suppose no one at these affairs wants to appear to be unappreciative of music, however confounding, especially at gala dinner prices.

In any case, Mr. Foss is personally engaging, and he congenially promised us "the real thing" after a short break, which I eagerly anticipated. Bach was reworked by the Swingle Singers and synthesized on the Moog, but I'm not convinced it can ever be made surreal. But I know now that it can be tortured.

My jangled nerves were soothed by "Concerto in D Minor," rendered with warmth and passion by the Resident Chamber Ensemble, including Messrs. Bailey and Gumm along with Brian Krinke and Jackie Carrasco on violins and Ralph Farris on viola with Mr. Foss at the piano.

Dexterity On Display

Mr. Foss's dexterity as a pianist, buried in his own composition, was appreciated here, and I look forward to hearing more of his playing and that of the ensemble in upcoming concerts in the series.

The festival's artistic director, Mr. Foss, had guaranteed "an adventurous series of concerts designed to challenge the performer as well as the listener, by playing classical music as if the ink were not yet dry and by treating contemporary works with the respect usually given only to the music of the past."

Promising, indeed. And judging from the tremendous lineup of concerts the festival offered last season, I am sure the festival, which continues through Sunday, will deliver a good deal of fine music and, no doubt, more surprises.

The sea surrounds us, its unpredictable moods commanding respect and sometimes fear. But there can be peril on the shore as well, where few would think to look for it, as last week's horrifying accident at Wiborg's Beach in East Hampton once again reminds us. Treacherously shifting sands caved in on an 11-year-old boy playing in a pit he had dug, burying him and leaving him fighting for life this week.

It was not the first such incident in recent memory. About 10 years ago, something similar happened at Indian Wells Beach in Amagansett, where an adult crawling through a deep sand tunnel was suffocated when its roof collapsed.

Last Thursday's incident, though, was every parent's nightmare. It "wrenched everyone's hearts," as Larry Cantwell, the East Hampton Village Administrator, said the next morning.

Over and above the sadness, the incident raises the issue of emergency monitoring in public places, particularly beaches.

In East Hampton Village, where there are five ocean beaches, only two - Main and Georgica - offer lifeguard protection. The others - Two Mile Hollow, Wiborg's, and Old Beach Lane - are considered "road ends," not public beaches. Under state health laws, the latter must have both lifeguards and restroom facilities.

From time to time over the years there have been moves by Suffolk County to shut down beaches used by the public despite their lack of lifeguards. Just how that would have been accomplished, much less enforced, was never made clear, but the matter eventually wound up in court, where a judge decided municipalities were under no obligation to provide either bathrooms or lifeguards. Instead, as a compromise, signs are posted indicating where a beach is unprotected and warning swimmers that they enter the waters at their own risk.

With each summer bringing more and more people, however, and more and more of them seeking out the less populated beaches, it may be time to rethink matters. Mr. Cantwell himself said as much this week. He also noted that the village, if it saw fit, could well afford to provide both the facilities and the personnel. It would cost a total of about $500,000 to build bathrooms at the three beaches, plus $25,000 annually to maintain them and about $100,000 a year for the staff.

The people at Wiborg's and the nearby Maidstone Club beach last Thursday responded with heroic alacrity and everything that could have been done was done. And, of course, even the presence of emergency personnel would not have prevented the accident. It's not a lifeguard's job to supervise children on the shore.

But the benefits of having trained people near at hand who have both lifesaving skills and two-way radios connected to ambulance dispatchers are clear. The question is not, "How much is too much to spend?" but rather, "How many tragedies must there be before we act?" There is no price on the value of human life and safety.

In a split second a carefree day at the beach can turn into a life-or-death crisis, on land as well as sea.

Suppose you were an alien and suppose you were dropped out of your spaceship into the vortex of a Hamptons summer frenzy.

Frightening concept, isn't it?

You would, of course, need guidance. And God knows there's enough of that around here to help you decide where to leave your spoor this season.

I thought I would play tourist/ignoramus/alien and thoroughly immerse myself in all the shiny, glossy, pretty, extremely large informative publications about town. I even found something called "The Hamptons Video Guide, Your Exclusive Entree to the Hamptons." I must tell you now that the wisdom of trusting Country, Hamptons File, International, or Hamptons magazine is as ill-advised as permitting Humbert Humbert to drive your little Lo, Lola, Lolita to summer camp.

Granted this is an area of constant flux this time of year: Not all restaurants and relationships gel. One minute Hamptons File is proclaiming Ron Perelman and Patricia Duff as the hot, hot, hot must-have couple. Next minute, oops! One minute the shiny sheets promise that if you go to the Honest Diner you're sure to be rubbing cholesterol-laden elbows with Billy Joel and Steven Spielberg. Next minute, oops! Jeff Salaway and Toni Ross have closed it and are focusing on yet another establishment in N.Y.C.

Best of all are the graphs differentiating each Hampton or type of Hamptonite or how to know "you've really made it in the Hamptons." There seems to be a consistent obsession with membership in the Maidstone Club, any kind of visiting royalty, you know, like J.F.K. Jr. and his Prada-obsessed bride, Carolyn, the H. Classic, polo, Alec and Kim, Christie and Peter, Ron and Mort, Jann and Matt, Nick and Toni.

Hamptons File June 11 says, "You know you've made it in the Hamptons when Alec Baldwin asks you to be his eyes and ears at the East Hampton Town Meeting so he can keep those letters to the editor at the East Hampton Star coming while he's shooting on location." Better yet, "when Alec Baldwin asks you to write those letters."

Vanity Fair's August issue lists another cool, easy-to-understand summer guide with favorite restaurants, lust objects, toys, etc. Under favorite restaurants they mention the usual suspects, but under favorite stores they list Yama Q. Um, last time I looked, it was a restaurant. Perhaps Vanity Fair's writer was hoping to purchase that handsome Steve Hammock.

Someone named Dylan L.C. Brown has just produced "Brown's Activity Guide" to "help others find what excites them, what makes them have fun!" Dearest darling Mr. Brown, East Hampton is two words, Engel Pottery is long gone, and advising bike riders to cruise on 27 should be punishable by banishment from Sunset Beach for the entire 1997 summer season.

The Hamptons magazine Memorial Day weekend edition offered an endless guide of shiny-faced youngsters rated by such essential traits as womanizer, status seeker, social climber, been-in-Hamptons-forever, manipulator, etc. I, Pauline, am quite proud to say I have never laid eyes on any of these creatures and hope never to meet anyone with a name like Count Allesandro de la Ribbonstreich von Hohenswid.

One Philip A. Keith published "The Hamptons Survival Guide"

feeling enormously qualified because he has lived here an eternity of five years. When I saw the Amagansett Farmers Market listed as the Tiffany's or Saks of farmstands, I felt it would be prudent to wait until Mr. Keith has been here perhaps just a few more months before I bought his next survival guide.

Even the usually reliable New York magazine makes seasonable boo-boos. In their obligatory summer '97 blastoff to the Hamptons issue they suggested stopping by Pamela Fiori's Get Juiced in Bridgehampton. Well, gee, last time I looked, the lovely Ms. Fiori was too busy editing Town and Country magazine to be squirting parsley juice down the gullets of Donna Karan and Barbra Streisand.

Last but not least, I viewed with relish the 30-minute Sally Hansen Hamptons Video Guide. Armed again with my trusty stopwatch, I found the following items of interest. A total of 47 seconds was devoted to the history of the East End. Whew, got that out of the way. The rest of the video is devoted dotingly to cars, bars, cigars, Wilhelmina models, Jack Russell terriers, celebrities, horsies, cars, bars. . . .

The music throbs throughout and the camera pans menacingly along the beachscapes and Main Street, slowing down once to focus on the lone swan of Town Pond. Did he sign a model release?

The Hampton Classic gets four minutes 10 seconds, real estate two minutes 57 seconds, restaurants three minutes 57 seconds. At the end, local art history gets 52 seconds followed by two minutes and two seconds of "fresh new talent painter/poet" Carolyn Beegan, who informs us that William de Kooning was an artist who moved here long before she did. Right you are!

We are then treated to a snippet of Ms. Beegan's poetry, which strangely suited my mood after immersing myself in Hamptonia as seen through others' eyes and pens. I was somewhat distracted by her intriguing beauty mark but I think I heard her right:

"I, just newborn, lay inside soft skin,

ill-prepared for what breathes, slinks, and stirs

in God's jungle."

The video ends mysteriously with two models in thongs. They bend over. Is this a secret message to the aliens?

Why have Ruxford and his quadruped canine cronies been sniffing around the Morgan Rank Gallery?

A broken promise can hurt. That is what happened on Sunday, when Brandon K. Hayes, 18, died of injuries suffered 11 days earlier in a Sagaponack car accident.

Graduating from East Hampton High School scarcely a month ago, Brandon was the homecoming king of his class, a Gold Key athlete, a running back on the varsity football team, a track champion poised to do his personal best at St. Peter's College this fall. He was by all accounts friendly, outgoing, and gracious.

He was not expected to die. For all those who awaited the promise's fulfillment, the heartbreak runs deep.

Robert Wilson, the avant-garde director, artist, performer, and playwright, was expected to arrive at the Watermill Center, his multidisciplinary artists' colony/theatrical workshop space on Water Mill Towd Road, on Tuesday afternoon.

He was flying in - from where, a hurried assistant didn't say - to fulfill directorial duties for some of the center's summer projects.

Among the plays to be worked on there this summer is Susan Sontag's adaptation of Henrik Ibsen's "The Lady From the Sea." The work-in-progress will have its world premiere next spring in Ferrara, Italy. But in two weeks one of the first public readings will be a main attraction at a joint benefit for the LongHouse Foundation, a cultural and horticultural center in East Hampton, and the Watermill Center.

Wilson's "Hamlet"

Sharing the spotlight at LongHouse at the Aug. 9 benefit will be Mr. Wilson's 1995 adaptation of Shakespeare's "Hamlet," a monologue that he conceived, directed, designed, and performs in.

Development of Ms. Sontag's adaptation began at the center last summer. This summer Mr. Wilson will direct workshops of the play in August at the Watermill Center with Ms. Sontag and the French actress Dominique Sanda, who will star in it. An original score for the piece is being created by Wayan Sudarsana, a native Balinese drummer, and Charles Winkler, a composer from Houston.

Ms. Sanda, known for her role in the Oscar-winning film "The Garden of the Finzi-Continis," will read selections from the play at the LongHouse benefit.

Interest In Freud

While some of Ibsen's earlier works helped establish him as a "feminist" playwright, "The Lady From the Sea," one of his later plays, deals more with the forces of the unconscious. Sigmund Freud is said to have been a great admirer of Ibsen's later plays.

It seems fitting, then, that Ms. Sontag, a critic and innovative essayist whom some dub as "feminist," should have chosen to adapt an Ibsen work. And equally fitting that a work admired by Freud should be developed with Mr. Wilson's help.

The director has a long-standing interest in Freud. One of his first complete plays was titled "The Life and Times of Sigmund Freud" and the chaise longue used by the psychiatrist's patients occupies a prominent place in Mr. Wilson's TriBeCa loft, along with art objects from around the world and the unusual chairs Mr. Wilson designs.

He and Ms. Sontag also worked together on the 1993 production of Ms. Sontag's "Alice in Bed."

Though "The Lady From the Sea" is being fine-tuned at the Watermill Center, there is little word as to how Ms. Sontag has interpreted, adapted, or changed the original play.

Like Mr. Wilson, an iconoclastic and often enigmatic figure, much of what comes out of the Watermill Center, a former Western Union laboratory, is shrouded in a tantalizing self-imposed mystery and a director's sense of the pregnant pause.

Neighbors know Mr. Wilson and the artists at the center are busy, and they may have read about renovations on the building, which are nearly complete, or seen a collection of actors improvising new scenes in nearby fields, but they're never quite sure what happens behind the gate to the old laboratory. Chances are, if they were invited in for a day, they'd have even more questions then they do now.

Working On Designs

"That's part of the mystique," Steven Parkey, the director of Mr. Wilson's Byrd Hoffman Foundation in Manhattan, admitted Monday from Water Mill.

Expect The Unexpected

Architectural students in residence and an international team of architects will soon start working on designs and planning for the center's buildings. Also slated to start soon are workshops on Mr. Wilson's "Death, Destruction & Detroit III," which will be staged in 1999.

The Byrd Hoffman Foundation has an additional 13 performances, installations, and projects in the works over the next two months, several of them at the Watermill Center.

The activities at the center are not generally open to the public. It instead provides a creative refuge in which new works for the stage and theater, as well as architectural and design projects, can be incubated and slowly hatched away from the public eye. This makes the readings at LongHouse all the more intriguing.

But isn't that the idea?

Mr. Wilson's audiences have come to expect anything but the expected. He has produced a 12-hour "silent" opera and once convinced 2,000 soldiers to perform on a mountaintop in Iran for one production. He cast a woman in the role of King Lear and staged a play in three languages with no translation.

Bowie Collaboration

He also collaborates across media and across cultures, incorporating many art forms into his theatrical productions. David Byrne of The Talking Heads, Tom Waits, William S. Burroughs, and Allen Ginsberg are past collaborators, and Mr. Wilson is now working with David Bowie on a millennium-marking production for the year 2000.

In his "Hamlet" he plays all the roles. At the LongHouse Foundation on Aug. 9, he will perform selections from the play in the new Mistral Pavilion, a unique big top designed for the foundation by the late Bill Moss.

Tickets are available through the LongHouse office on Hand's Creek Road in East Hampton. The LongHouse gardens will open at 5 p.m.

Why did U.S. Representative Michael P. Forbes hold a private meeting last week with employees of the Brookhaven National Laboratory? His staff said the employees were worried about losing their jobs in the face of management changes and Federal budget cuts, and Mr. Forbes wanted to lend an ear. That, however, does not explain why he would exclude the press and the public.

A spokesman said the Congressman hoped to encourage "as candid and open a dialogue as possible" and believed "they would talk more openly without the television cameras." That's unsatisfactory, given that the employees have been outspoken on the lab's behalf since its troubles began. In the past, incidentally, vocal Brookhaven employees have wielded considerable political influence.

More telling is a report from Peter Bond, the lab's new interim director, that Mr. Forbes made a "public" apology to the employees during that meeting, saying his comments in recent months about radioactive pollution may have overstated the problem.

That there is radioactive poisoning of the groundwater and soil around the lab is not in doubt. The contamination is serious enough that hundreds of nearby houses have had to be hooked up to public water and the lab's nuclear reactors shut down. The situation involves a cleanup of Superfund proportions and an interim management takeover by a team from the Federal Department of Energy.

Like many others, Mr. Forbes has criticized Associated Universities, Brookhaven's ousted management, for its actions or lack of them, but recently his voice has softened noticeably.

As one of eastern Long Island's representatives in Washington, it is incumbent upon Mr. Forbes to continue to monitor the investigation and cleanup at Brookhaven, and to keep close tabs on the choosing of a new and more accountable management. He should act as the people's watchdog, not as matchmaker between a select group of constituents and Federal officials. In that role, the Congressman will not further the effort to right the wrongs of the previous management, whose removal can be attributed in large part to its history of secretiveness.

Social changes on the East End are a bit like the game "red light, green light" - while you're looking, nothing seems to change, but turn your back for a minute and all hell breaks loose.

The season used to be from Memorial Day to Labor Day, and then the place would drop into a hibernating torpor until the next spring. Not anymore. Now we're Hollywood East, now we have film premieres, now executives can work year round from their country homes. And here comes the latest twist - those executives are organizing their corporate wingdings out here, miles from their home bases.

The first was Martha Stewart, who took over Guild Hall for a company meeting to launch her new K-mart line last fall. But she was far outdone by Reader's Digest, which celebrated its 75th anniversary on Saturday with a stunningly orchestrated extravaganza, complete with a performance by Jay Leno, at Deep Hollow Ranch in Montauk.

The setting was beautiful, and the coolest touch of all was that to reach the huge double tent a green carpet was laid right through the stables, with surprised horses peering from their loose boxes on either side as if to say, "Now we've seen it all!"

Phalanxes of elegant and efficient New York City waitstaff swanned between the tables of middle-aged, homogenous corporate employees, advertisers, and their families from Pleasantville, N.Y., and other non-party-worthy points elsewhere in the U.S. Eight hundred guests, a quarter of whom were put up in hotels, were bussed in, given twinkling security bracelets, and wined and dined in great style. They were a quiet and orderly bunch, maybe as surprised to find themselves in a horse field in Montauk as the horses were to see them.

After some exhortatory uncondensed company speeches - "biggest, best, 100 million readers, 48 editions, 19 languages" - Paula Poundstone, the first performer of the evening and working completely off-the-cuff, was brilliantly funny. Jay Leno, after one joke about "left-wing publishers" that sank like a stone, slipped into a familiar and generic comic schtick on plane crashes, cats and dogs, and VCR-challenged parents.

Mr. Leno's act was followed by dancing till midnight, but that didn't prevent a throng from attending a beach barbecue the following day at the Napeague Harbor house of the publisher, Gregory G. Coleman. What with the band, ventriloquist, and a bunch of security men with walkie-talkies and teal T-shirts with "investigations" emblazoned upon them, there was no skimping at that party, either.