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What kind of person was he in college?

Sort of a dreamer. He played the piano beautifully all his life. He was one of the most self-centered men who ever lived. He did what he wanted, you know, and what didn't interest him simply didn't exist so far as he was concerned.

Would there be little discussion groups in Weaver's room?

No. We'd just sit and talk. When Dick came, we asked him to play the piano. We loved music. What I didn't know then was that Weaver and another English professor named [John Angus] Burrell were very, very, very “close friends.” We were terribly young and unsophisticated in those days. If people were leading what was an irregular life, it never occurred to us. Today those things are taken absolutely for granted and nobody cares, and that's the way it should be. But in those days this would have been a very shocking thing for the student body to have known.

I always like to ask this question: What would be your definition of an education and do you think you got it at Columbia?

Yes, mainly through my work on Jester and Spectator.

Can you elaborate a little bit? Would you call this an education?