Dr. Ruth signed copies of her book “Sex for Dummies.” Gwyneth Paltrow autographed her healthy cookbook “It’s All Good,” her healthy body guarded by bodyguards. Nile Rodgers shared selfies with fans who freak out to his hit Chic song “Le Freak,” the title of his memoir.
And me — what did I do during Authors Night 2013? Well, I inscribed “The Kingdom of the Kid,” my memoir of growing up and out on the South Fork in the late 1960s to early ’70s. Welcomed characters from the book. Heard stories that should have been in the book. Bonded like never before with my sister, who appears with me on the book’s cover. Raised roughly $200 from book sales for a fun fund-raiser for the East Hampton Library, my favorite East End lender.
This “Guestwords” — my 11th — is an inside-the-tent look at being an author at Authors Night, which will be held for the 20th time on Aug. 10, with astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson and ballet dancer Misty Copeland among the neon names signing and schmoozing under a big canopy in Herrick Park — where I caught a touchdown pass for the 1971 East Hampton Middle School football team. This essay doubles as a tribute to a rare blend of celebrity fiesta, literary feast, and bountiful benefit for a community treasure chest. Eleven years have passed, and a special event still makes me feel special.
Getting invited to Authors Night 2013 required some wrangling. Three unanswered email requests for an invitation left me thinking I was too far off the radar, a small-fry writer whose publisher couldn’t afford a publicist. Itchy and stubborn, I tried an old journalist’s trick called the gentle ambush.
One Monday morning in the middle of June, eight weeks from Authors Night, I made an unscheduled visit to the office of my email target, Dennis Fabiszak, then the East Hampton Library’s director and now its executive director. For 45 seconds he listened to me insist that a South Fork gala needed — no, deserved — a book like “Kingdom of the Kid,” a personal history of such long-lost South Fork splendors as the Bridgehampton Race Circuit and the Penny Candy Shop in Water Mill. I sweetened the pitch by adding that raising money for his library would let me thank his library for the microfilm and archives that helped me write my memoir.
Dennis immediately agreed to give me an Authors Night spot — as long as I promised to keep quiet until I received an official invitation. Once my feet hit Main Street, I broke my vow, sort of. I just had to phone the good news to my sister, my mother, and my childhood friend Karen Raffel DeFronzo, who knew she wanted to live in Wainscott the second she saw pick-your-own strawberry patches. The day before, during a Father’s Day party at Karen’s house in East Hampton, I gave a copy of “Kingdom” to her parents, Joe and Rosie, a gift for kindly treating me like their sixth child.
Why was I so obsessed about being an Authors Night author? Well, who wouldn’t want to be cool enough to mingle at a cool event with 1,000-plus readers who paid $100 to mingle with 100-odd writers of books covering all sorts of species under the sun and stars? Who wouldn’t want to support a public library, a citadel of free entertainment and enlightenment? Public librarians belong in my top 10 of essential workers, way up there with farmers, teachers, and nurses. (Writers? We hang somewhere between 15 and 20.)
Other reasons were more personal. Wouldn’t it be a kick, I thought, to be a semi-celebrity after decades of writing about famous folks like textile designer Jack Lenor Larsen, who transformed East Hampton woods into LongHouse Reserve, a wondrous arboretum, sculpture garden, and landscape-architecture learning center? Wouldn’t it be a gas to celebrate the 12 years it took to finish “Kingdom”? And wouldn’t it be a joy to invite my sister, Meg, to be my wing woman? Authors Night anchored our very first road trip together, a sibling ritual postponed by 30-plus years of demanding jobs, partners, and parents — plus, living five hours apart.
Geoff and Meg’s most excellent adventure began with another book party, this one in my honor. More than 40 guests heard me read “Kingdom” excerpts at the Wainscott home of Barbara and Dennis D’Andrea, my friends and hosts. We had met nine years earlier while I was researching a long-closed general store owned by Dennis’s grandfather. The antique building, which now contains Barbara’s studio, neighbors the former one-room school attended by Barbara and Meg, who had the same teacher in different decades.
The next day Meg and I parked at Gardiner Farm in East Hampton, a two-year-old site for Authors Night. My sister’s first act as wing woman was introducing me to a fellow author who wore the hat of my favorite baseball team. She didn’t know that I already knew Jeffrey Lyons as a TV movie critic and a Boston Red Sox trivia expert. I promptly challenged him by asking: Who did Carl Yastrzemski, Boston’s star left fielder and Bridgehampton native, rob of a home run in the 1969 All-Star Game? He couldn’t recall that the victim was Cincinnati Reds catcher Johnny Bench, who 20 years later joined Yaz in the Hall of Fame.
Jeffrey graciously declined to stump me. After a hearty handshake, he returned to his table to prepare to autograph a book of lessons from his father, Leonard Lyons, the influential gossip columnist. I retreated to my table, where I met my neighbor, novelist/playwright Peter Gethers, a founding member of the Baseball Rotisserie League.
At 5 o’clock Authors Night opened for business. Readers poured into the tent, beelining to have books signed by novelist Nelson DeMille and chef Marcus Samuelsson. Within 20 minutes a good 30 people had perused the Gehman-Gethers station. Some were drawn by Peter’s popular books about his cat. Some were drawn by that week’s East Hampton Star profile of me, written by associate editor Baylis Greene, gatekeeper of “Guestwords.”
At one point I welcomed four contributors to my memoir, a magical procession. Bonnie Turner’s mother, Virginia, taught me to play tennis while smoking cigarette after cigarette. Lisa Michne’s father, Peter, was my father’s singing and drinking comrade. Dan Rattiner is the Dan’s Papers patriarch who shares a publisher with me. It was the first time I actually met the renowned raconteur who gave “Kingdom” a nice back-cover blurb.
I was especially glad to greet Star sports editor Jack Graves, the first newspaper writer who made me want to write for newspapers. Way back when he seemed to have the best job around, profiling everyone from musician Tom Paxton to a chain-saw sculptor, covering the waterfront with a you-oughta-be-here verve and wink. In “Kingdom” I saluted Jack as The Star’s most versatile writer, its Swiss Army knife. He returned the favor by taking a Star photograph of me during a July 2013 talk/signing at Canio’s in Sag Harbor, the East End’s best bookstore.
By 6:15 the Gehman-Gethers crowd had petered out, freeing Meg to leave me to roam the tent. She snapped a photograph with Nile Rodgers, matching great grins with the bassist/composer/producer; declined Clive Davis’s plea to buy his memoir, put off by the record-company mogul’s oily manner and melting makeup, and observed the commotion around Gwyneth Paltrow, an Oscar-winning actress then married to Chris Martin, the Grammy-winning frontman of Coldplay. Meg didn’t get close enough to smell the pungent meat snacks gathered by Paltrow’s table mate, humorist Christina Oxenberg, to offend the non-carnivore actress, whose fans and bodyguards had blocked access to Oxenberg’s books.
I was tempted to abandon my post to track down Alec Baldwin, the founding co-chair of Authors Night and a target reader for my memoir. Both of us are native New Yorkers born in April 1958; both of us love books, baseball, and the East End’s natural beauty. I thought he’d enjoy reading my tales about Truman Capote and Carl Yastrzemski, the much-admired nemesis of Baldwin’s beloved New York Yankees.
Instead, I stayed at my table, hoping for some inspiration, divine or otherwise. What I got was a writer’s dream: three people who read “Kingdom” carefully enough to tell stories about my subjects I didn’t know.
A Bridgehampton man remembered farm workers who watched movies for free at the long-gone Hamptons Drive-In, joining kids who avoided admission by hiding under tarps in the back of pickups. A Sag Harbor woman recalled eavesdropping on David Crosby, Stephen Stills, and Graham Nash as they rehearsed their first album in a North Haven home owned by John Sebastian, the Lovin’ Spoonful leader. A Wainscott lady confessed she was scared to buy penny candy at the general store owned by Chauncey Osborn, a rough-edged merchant who sliced bacon and ice cream with the same dirty knife.
With the planets aligning, it made cosmic sense that my next visitor was an astronomy authority. Dava Sobel, author of books about Copernicus and Galileo’s daughter, moved from her table to mine to chat about a mutual pen pal. Jeffrey Horning and I live in Bethlehem, Pa., where he messages Dava about her books and tells me what books I should read. It’s entirely appropriate that we met at the public library where Jeff and his wife, Jo, worked. I like to give him my unpublished pieces, knowing his critiques will be equally frank and funny.
At 7:30 Authors Night closed for business, leaving me high as a tent. Well-heeled readers headed to fancy fund-raising dinners starring the likes of biographer Robert Caro and culinary queen Padma Lakshmi. Meg and I headed to a modest meal in North Sea, singing songs from Crosby Stills & Nash’s first album, a nod to its North Haven origins. Asian fusion food fueled a terrific talk about music and family, work and love. It was our best one-on-one ever.
Authors Night didn’t change my writing life. No editor or agent at the gala offered me a three-book deal. But, hey, my dance card was complete, my scorecard neat. I sold 17 of 20 copies of my memoir, a nifty batting average of .850. Won a Red Sox trivia contest. Met old friends. Made new friends. Strengthened my relationship with my sister. And proved for the umpteenth time that books, like dogs, make humans more human.
Geoff Gehman is a former Wainscott resident, journalist, and author of the memoir “The Kingdom of the Kid: Growing Up in the Long-Lost Hamptons” (SUNY Press). He lives in Bethlehem, Pa., and can be reached at [email protected].
This article has been expanded from its print version.