Gayle Feldman, the author of “Nothing Random: Bennett Cerf and the Publishing House He Built,” will be at The Church on Saturday afternoon at 4 with Cathleen McGuigan, a journalist and critic. Their conversation will explore how Feldman wrote the landmark cultural history and delve into Cerf’s life.
Twenty-three years in the making, “Nothing Random” was called by The Washington Post “a work of biographical reclamation [and] a whole lot of fun . . . Feldman depicts a lost world, at times a lost paradise, when New York, Hollywood, and the literary life were at their most glamorous and privileged.”
Cerf fought for free expression, helping to overthrow conventional standards as to content and transforming how they would be published and marketed. Among the literary titans he published were Truman Capote, Ralph Ellison, Ayn Rand, Philip Roth, and James Joyce. Robert Loomis, Jason Epstein, and E.L. Doctorow, former Sag Harbor residents, were interviewed for “Nothing Random,” which was partly written in that village’s John Jermain Memorial Library.
The writers will take questions after the talk and Feldman will sign copies of her book. The program is presented in partnership with BookHampton. Tickets are $25, $20 for members.
The Insight Sunday series will bring Francine Fleischer to the Sag Harbor cultural center on Sunday at noon to talk about her internationally exhibited series of photographs “The Water in Between.”
That series was inspired by the contradiction of purpose in a magical swimming hole, or cenote, that Fleischer, who lives in Sag Harbor, discovered in Mexico. While it had been used by an ancient civilization as a domain for human sacrifice, today it is populated by recreational swimmers.
In a statement on her website, Fleischer says, “The waters are deep below the earth’s surface and lit from above by a hole in the ground revealing sky and sunlight. When I look down on these beautiful swimmers in these inky waters, it is like looking down the rabbit hole into another world.” During her residency at The Church, she edited the series for her first monograph, which will be published this year by Steidl.
Fleischer’s photographic work explores the intersection of people and nature, whether it be observing the swimmers in an underground cave or documenting the architecture of birds’ nests. Her work has appeared in Vanity Fair, The New York Times, Italian Vogue, The Telegraph, M Le Magazine du Monde, Elle, and Condé Nast Traveler.
Tickets are $10, free for members, who are required to R.S.V.P. Work from the series will be on view in the downstairs studio space through Sunday.
