The reporter turned essayist turned novelist Tom Wolfe, seen through his own writings, will be the subject of a staged reading at Guild Hall tomorrow night at 8. Curated by Judith Auberjonois — “ I hate to use that word,” she said, “because it is a little too trendy, but I did curate it” — “Big Bad Wolfe” has her husband, Rene, playing the author, via excerpts from his work starting with the early 1960s.

    Mr. Wolfe first walked into the New York Herald-Tribune building  in 1962. Newspapers didn’t have a very elaborate hiring system then, he said in a phone interview last week. “I just happened to walk in on the day Lewis Lapham left to start his own magazine.” The typewriter on his desk had Mr. Lapham’s name on it.

    He came to New York from Washington, where he’d worked for The Washington Post. “I was like every other news reporter — I wanted to get to New York. I started off in Springfield, Mass., in 1956, then I got the Post job in 1959.”

    The city had seven dailies, morning and afternoon, in 1962: The Herald-Tribune, The World-Telegram and Sun, The Journal American, The New York Times, the New York Post, The Daily Mirror, and the Daily News.

    “The Daily News used to be the hot newspaper,” Mr. Wolfe said. He recited a 120-something-word lead that he remembers word for word, written by Art Smith, brother to the famous sports columnist Red Smith, that began with a question: “Who do these New York cops think they are, anyhow?”

    Gay Talese of The Times and Jimmy Breslin of the Trib were his demigods. “Some of those stories [Breslin] wrote are absolute marvels of fast reporting and fast writing,” said Mr. Wolfe.

    Mr. Talese, finding himself cramped by Times style, “would write these amazing pieces  for Esquire . . . He believed in saturation in coverage. He and Breslin were the two I noticed. I began using their techniques.”

    He used them well. Mr. Wolfe’s first article for Esquire, “There Goes (Varoom! Varoom!) that Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby,” was published in 1964.

    It was Pete Hamill who gave a name to the burst of creative journalism coming out of the Big Apple at the time, said Mr. Wolfe. “He said, ‘Why don’t we do a story about new journalism?’ and the name stuck.”

    At the same time as New Journalism was altering the way writers and readers looked at nonfiction, the newspaper business was contracting. Following a printers’ strike that crippled three of the broadsheets, The Herald Tribune, The World-Telegram and Sun, and The Journal American, they merged, creating The World-Journal-Tribune. A few months later, in the spring of 1967, that paper shut down, leaving the city with only three newspapers. The Daily Mirror had folded in 1963.

    Mr. Wolfe found himself at a fork in his career. While he was now out of a job, his first book, a collection of his articles with almost the same title as that first iconic Esquire piece, was enjoying critical and commercial success.

    He started freelancing, but leaving the newspaper business was not easy. “I always enjoyed writing for newspapers. Even if you write a bad story, nobody remembers the next day.”

    He was searching for a book idea. “I wanted to do a nonfiction book, sort of the way Truman Capote had done ‘In Cold Blood.’ There was an invitation on a desk” — someone else’s desk, with that person’s name on the invitation — “to a party for the Black Panthers,” R.S.V.P. only. Mr. Wolfe called the number on the card. “This is Tom Wolfe, and I accept.”

    It was the infamous fund-raiser for the Black Panthers, given by Leonard Bernstein and his wife, Felicia Montealegre, in their Park Avenue duplex penthouse. The apartment was wall-to-wall with the New York intelligentsia and artistic elite, giddily rubbing shoulders with the leadership and members of the Black Panther Party. “It was such a scene,” Mr. Wolfe said.

    Though he was looking for a book idea, he had a reporter’s bloodlust for news. “The old firebell rang and I couldn’t resist.” The result was “Radical Chic: The Party at Lenny’s,” published in New York Magazine on June 8, 1970, later to become part of a book, “Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers.”

    Mr. Wolfe’s uncanny talent for unpeeling the layers to get to the pith of a story propelled him through his 1979 book on the early days of the American space program, “The Right Stuff.”

    “The real reason I wrote it was, I had read in the original report [about the first seven  astronauts] that all of them were white, all were Protestant, four of them were ‘Juniors.’ ” That described Mr. Wolfe as well, though “I felt no more like an astronaut than I did a professional wrestler.”

    He collected material for his first novel, 1987’s “Bonfire of the Vanities,” in the tradition of the reporter in the trenches, going to criminal court to watch the arraignments. “I went about it the way I would on any piece of non-fiction. I went down to Manhattan. They said, ‘This is nothing. You should see the Bronx.’ ” Good advice.

    Mr. Wolfe is saddened and troubled by what he sees happening to newspapers today. The lack of sourcing in blogs, as well as in traditional news services, deeply disturbs him. “It’s not just the new media. There is no competition left. You go across the nation. There may be two newspapers in a town, but they’re all owned by the same company,” he said.

    Rather than send two reporters to cover a story, jointly owned papers will send one, if they send any at all. “That’s going to happen now, as the newspapers dissolve into online publications,” said the author. “There’s nobody covering the police today, nobody covering the education beat. Now they just cherry-pick their stories.”

    “There was less news coverage in the 1960s than there was 75 years earlier,” he continued. “That coverage will not exist at all unless somebody does something radical.”

    Mr. Wolfe is working now on another book, which he described as “the theory of evolution, 1858 to 2013.” He is examining how faculties in major American universities react when challenged by proponents of intelligent design.

    “Intelligent design is treated as if it were some sect of right-wing Christians railing against the theory of evolution,” said Mr. Wolfe. “I don’t pass judgment on it myself. I think it’s entertaining. I envision it as a short book.”

    Mr. Wolfe is very pleased with Mr. Auberjonois’s Tom Wolfe.

    “Rene approached me,” he said. “He had been asked to read something of mine on the West Side. He has a great voice and is a terrific actor. I’ve been to two of his readings.” Mr. Auberjonois, he joked, sounds so good as Tom Wolfe that Mr. Wolfe may do audio books only in the future.

    “The work itself has told me what this is about,” said Ms. Auberjonois. “It’s about transformation, the transformation of Tom Wolfe from journalist to novelist. The transformation of America.”

    Tickets range from $50 for prime orchestra seats, with a small discount for members, down to $30, again with a slight membership discount.

   Robert Hobbs, author of “Alice Aycock: Sculpture and Projects” published by M.I.T. Press in 2005, will speak on “Alice Aycock: How to Catch and Manufacture Ghosts” tomorrow at 6 p.m. at the Parrish Art Museum. Tickets are $10 and include museum admission.

    “Since the ’70s, Alice Aycock has created works that question the many ghosts inhabiting our contemporary world, particularly those involving electricity, physics, computers, constructed world views, and the mind/body dichotomy,” according to Dr. Hobbs. He will examine how these ghosts operate in her work, including one with the title “How to Catch and Manufacture Ghosts.”

    Dr. Hobbs is a visiting professor at Yale and the chair of the Virginia Commonwealth University art history department with a specialty in both late modern and post-modern art.

    Preceding the talk will be the museum’s Jazz en Plein Air series from 4 to 6. The Ada Rovatti Band will perform, free with museum admission. Ms. Rovatti is a young saxophonist born in Italy. Her 2005 recording “Airbop” was nominated by “All about Jazz” as one of the top 10 CDs of the year.

    The museum is also seeking entries of short, non-commercial surf movies shot on location between Montauk and Westhampton for its “Atlantic Vibrations: Surf Movie Night” set for Aug. 23 at 6 p.m. Films should be no more than five minutes in length. They will be judged and compiled by Michael Halsband, a surfer and photographer, and Mike Solomon, an artist and surfer. Up to five films may be submitted online at parrishart.slideroom.com, no later than July 19. The submission fee is $10.

    You know it’s high season when Guild Hall’s John Drew Theater is booked every night, not to mention the galleries that are filled with exhibitions. Looking at the calendar, “Big Bad Wolfe,” a staged reading about the author Tom Wolfe by Rene Auberjonois, will take place tomorrow night. It is covered separately on page C5.  Then, on Saturday at 8 p.m., the Upright Citizens Brigade Touring Company will take over.

    The UCBTourCo focuses on long-form improv, and the cast is hand-picked from improv comedians in New York City and Los Angeles, who are said to represent the next wave of comedy superstars. Tickets are $20; $18 for members.

    Roger Rosenblatt, the author of 16 books and 6 Off Broadway plays, will be at Guild Hall on Sunday, at 11 a.m., to read and sign books. Mr. Rosenblatt’s most recent work is a memoir called “Kayak Morning.” Other works, which have been national best sellers, are “Unless It Moves the Human Heart,” “Making Toast,” “Rules for Aging,” and “Children of War,” which won the Robert F. Kennedy Book Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Award. His first novel, “Lapham Rising,” was also a best seller.

    Mr. Rosenblatt, who teaches English and writing at Stony Brook Southampton, is well known on the South Fork. He lives in Quogue.

    Then, on Sunday evening, the doors will open for a screening of  “The Doors Live at the Bowl ’68,” which is usually seen as the band’s best performance on film. The concert, “Live at the Hollywood Bowl,” was recorded in 1968 but not released until 1987. A new version was released in October 2012. The digitally re-mastered film includes the previously lost performances of “Hello I Love You,” “Texas Radio and the Big Beat,” and “Spanish Caravan.” The screening is not only for Doors fans, but for those who would like to become more familiar with classic American rock. General admission  is $12, and $10 for members.

    A performance by a master of the slide quitar will take over on Wednesday at 8 p.m. in a program organized as a Crossroads Music Showcase. Kerry Kearney’s unique style, which is referred to as Psychedelta, contains an upbeat mix of American blues and roots with a personal mix created with his vintage, stock, and custom-made guitars. Mr. Kearney was inducted into the New York Blues Hall of Fame in this year.

    Earlier in the week, at 8 p.m. on Tuesday, Neal Feinberg, a comedian and actor, will star in  his own a one-man show, in which he portrays 40 different characters. Written by Becky Mode and directed by Rob McCaskill, “Fully Committed” follows the story of a reservationist at the hottest restaurant in New York City. Mr. Feinberg is known for “Colt 40 Feinberg” from “The Howard Stern Show.”

    Looking ahead, Guild Hall will sponsor two programs on Friday, July 5. “Jurassic Park” will be screened outside at the Mulford Farm at 8:30 p.m. The tab is $5 and picnics and seating have been suggested.

    At the same time in the John Drew Theater, the second part of a documentary film on fracking, “Gasland, Part Two,” will be shown. Alec Baldwin will introduce the film as host of SummerDocs, a program sponsored by the Hamptons International Film Festival. The film’s director, James Fox, will answer questions following the screening.

    More than 100 singers and the members of the South Fork Chamber Orchestra will join together on Saturday to perform George Frideric Handel’s well-known Baroque masterpiece “Israel in Egypt” and Cantata 79 by J.S. Bach. The Choral Society of the Hamptons will team up with the Greenwich Village Singers in the performance. Both groups are directed by Mark Mangini, who will conduct. Suzanne Schwing, mezzo-soprano, and Mischa Bouvier, baritone, are known here from previous concerts with the Choral Society. Sara Paar will be the soprano.

    Second only to “Messiah” in popularity among Handel’s oratorios, “Israel in Egypt” is based on the Biblical story and dramatizes the struggle for freedom from slavery. The concert will feature those portions of the oratorio that describe the Exodus, as the music evokes drastic events ranging from the seven plagues to the parting of the Red Sea. The society’s president, Daniel Mc­Keever, commented, “This is a universally appealing work that hasn’t been performed here in years. We are thrilled to be presenting it, and think our audience will be, too.”

    The concert will take place at 7 p.m. in the Parish Hall of Most Holy Trinity Catholic Church in East Hampton. A benefit dinner to follow at the Palm restaurant in East Hampton has been sold out.

    Tickets for the concert are $25 in advance, $35 at the door. Youth tickets are available for $10 in advance, and $15 at the door. Preferred-seating tickets are $75. Tickets can be purchased by going to the society’s Web site, choralsocietyofthehamptons.org, or by calling the executive director at 631-204-9402. They also are available at the Kramoris Gallery in Sag Harbor.

   The Bridgehampton Museum will open its second of two summer exhibits tomorrow from 5 to 7 p.m. The exhibit, “Next Stop, Seaside Board,” re-enacts the boarding house era from the innkeeper’s perspective. Boarding houses began well before the railroad arrived on the East End and were an important part of Bridgehampton’s history. Julie Greene, the exhibit’s curator, will talk about the era during the opening.

    Guild Hall’s screening of “The Audience” tomorrow is sold out. The National Theatre Live presentation features Helen Mirren as Queen Elizabeth II in a series of imagined private meetings with prime ministers ranging from Winston Churchill to David Cameron.

    Despite persistent rumors, Ms. Mirren will not be attending the screening, nor was she ever slated to be there.

   All for the East End, a nonprofit that will raise money for other East End charitable organizations, will host its inaugural concert on Aug. 19 at Martha Clara Vineyards in Riverhead. Nile Rodgers will headline the concert, dubbed the AFTEE Nile Rodgers Dance Party. Joining him will be Avicii, a Grammy-nominated, multi-platinum Swedish D.J.

    Mr. Rodgers founded the band Chic, known for such hits as “Le Freak,” “We Are Family,” and “I’m Coming Out.” In a release, he predicted the concert, which is to be an annual event, will be the “greatest dance party the East End of Long Island has ever seen.”

    “We are very lucky to head out of the gate with such an amazing program produced by Nile Rodgers,” Myron Levine, AFTEE’s president and found­er, said in a release.

    The organization plans to distribute money to other nonprofits through a grant process managed and administered by the Long Island Community Foundation.

    Tickets to the Aug. 19 concert will cost $149, with a limit of four per person, but East End residents will have access to a limited number of East Ender tickets, offered at $50 apiece on a first-come, first-served basis. Both are available now online at aftee.org.

   The John Jermain Memorial Library is creating a special collection for the music of local artists and is looking for CD donations from musicians to add to its lending catalog of music. Eventually, the library plans to make its collection a searchable online archive available for music streaming.

    Eastern Long Island residents who would like their music included in the collection have been asked to contact Eric Cohen by phone at the library or by e-mail at [email protected].

   Hamptons House of Gardens in Southampton will host a comedy night on Saturday from 8 to 10 p.m. featuring Mary Dimino and Meghan Hanley.

    Ms. Dimino is 2010 MAC Award winner for outstanding female comedian from the Manhattan Association of Cabarets and Clubs, and is known for her New York-Italian humor and attitude, according to a release. Ms. Hanley is a comedian, actor, and writer also from New York.

    Tickets cost $30 at the door and $25 in advance through Michelle Simmons at [email protected].   

    Soldier Ride, a homegrown effort to raise money for wounded veterans that took root in conversations at the Stephen Talkhouse nightclub in Amagansett and has grown into an international initiative sponsored by the Wounded Warrior Project, sees its 10th anniversary next summer, and by then, it is hoped, a documentary tracing its extraordinary growth and impact will be ready for its premiere.

    Chris Carney, a personal trainer and owner of Railroad Avenue Fitness in East Hampton, was working as a bartender at the Talkhouse in 2004 when he decided he wanted to do something to help returning veterans. Supported by friends and colleagues, he took a solo coast-to-coast bike trip to raise money for the Wounded Warrior Project, a nonprofit dedicated to veterans’ causes. Beginning in Montauk, where he dipped his bicycle wheel in the Atlantic, he rode over 5,000 miles and raised over $1 million, ending with a dip in the Pacific Ocean.

    Mr. Carney, Nick Kraus — an East Hampton resident who is working on the documentary with Matt Hindra, a film producer and editor with a Wainscott business called Color Bar Video Productions — and Peter Honerkamp, an owner of the Talkhouse, have joined with numerous other local residents to organize and support what became a lasting entity sponsoring annual rides.

The cross-country rides evolved into a series of regional rides, and the project expanded internationally in 2010 to include annual trips in countries such as Israel, the United Kingdom, and Germany, with soldiers from those countries participating.

   “It changed my life, really,” said Mr. Kraus. He used a video camera given to him by an uncle who was a documentary filmmaker to begin taking footage of the first Soldier Ride trip, he said, meeting up with Mr. Carney at various points along the way. “And of course, it never stopped.”

   In 2005, Mr. Carney rode cross-country again, this time with Staff Sgt. Heath Calhoun, a double-leg amputee, and Staff Sgt. Ryan Kelly, a single-leg amputee.

   Mr. Kraus “basically just logged the daily ritual, and everything that happened along the way,” ending up with hundreds of hours of video.

    After a Soldier Ride in Israel in 2010, Mr. Kraus contacted Mr. Hindra, a high school friend, to talk about the video footage. “We decided that this needed to be seen,” Mr. Hindra said. They created an 8 to 10-minute video. The next year, Mr. Hindra went along on international rides in England and in France, “to sort of do a travelogue for the guys on the trip.”

    The documentary will tell the whole story of the organization, but centers particularly on Mr. Calhoun and Mr. Kelly. Follow-up interviews illustrate, Mr. Hindra said, “how they’re still giving back to their communities.”

    Following a yearlong recovery after being injured in Iraq in 2003, Mr. Kelly, who received several medals for his service, became involved in Wounded Warrior Project’s legislative efforts for disabled veterans, a member of the group’s board of directors, and a spokesman. He flies an air medical helicopter in Texas.

    Mr. Calhoun lost both legs above the knees following an injury in 2003, and completed the 4,200-mile national Soldier Ride in 2005 using a hand-cycle.

    After learning to use new prosthetics, he was able to walk independently, and has not used a wheelchair since 2006. He became a member of the United States Paralympic Ski Team, and, holding the U.S. flag, led Team U.S.A. into the arena for the opening ceremonies of the 2010 games. He is now training for the 2014 games in Sochi, Russia, and continues to dedicate time to meeting with other wounded service members at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and other military hospitals.

    A clip from one of Soldier Ride’s stops at the White House is included in a trailer for the film.

    “The reason I ask this group to stop by every year is because this is one of the most inspiring events that we have here at the White House,” President Obama said during a ceremony last year on the White House lawn, attended by more than 200 members of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and Coast Guard, along with Soldier Ride bikers.

    “I have to say, it’s better than most ideas that come out of bars. At least that’s been my experience,” the President joked.

    “It’s now really a global thing,” Mr. Kraus said this week. “Thousands of warriors are affected by this.” The program, he said, “has changed how wounded vets are treated when they return,” a marked difference since the Vietnam era, when returning veterans faced criticism from anti-war activists. “Politics aside,” said Mr. Kraus, “they’re there to protect us, and they paid a huge sacrifice.”

    A decade after Soldier Ride was founded, “every day someone gets injured or dies,” Mr. Hindra said. The film, he hopes, will inform those just returning from war that there is an organization to which they can turn, and “will show them that you, too, can start something from the ground up, and flourish.”

    “The sheer determination of these guys to bike across America. . . . They sort of just went into it and didn’t know if they would make it. The routine of doing it helped them heal somehow.”

    The film, he said, documents how “every day they spend a little more time together,” and the way the riders pulled together to deal with issues, such as accidents or bicycle breakdowns.

    East Hampton’s organizers are directly involved in the rides here, in Miami, and in Boston. Participating wounded soldiers, once about 25 on each trip, have doubled, Mr. Kraus said.

    This year’s local ride will begin on July 18 and end in Amagansett on July 20. Soldier Ride the Hamptons is dedicated to Lance Cpl. Jordan C. Haerter, a Sag Harbor native who was killed in action in 2008 and was posthumously awarded the Navy Cross for extraordinary heroism in saving the lives of more than 33 others.

    A launch party for the film will be held at the Talkhouse at 6 p.m. on June 22. A 30-day fund-raising campaign on kickstarter.com will begin then as well.

    The $60,000 the filmmakers hope to raise through Kickstarter will enable them to complete filming and edit the movie. Distribution efforts will require additional fund-raising.

    So far, Mr. Kraus has dug into his own pockets, putting more than $10,000 toward the project. LTV, the East Hampton cable access station, is accepting tax-deductible contributions for the film.

    Local screenings are planned for next year during the anniversary of Soldier Ride, and the filmmakers have approached the Public Broadcasting Service and HBO about showings.

    “The thing that always amazes me, traveling with or interviewing these guys, is really their resilience. And that’s what I hope the film shows,” Mr. Hindra said.

    “The film is hysterically funny at times,” Mr. Hindra said, despite the gravity of its subjects’ injuries and the challenges they face. “It’s just amazing to me how their spirits are so great.”

    The film trailer concludes with a quote: “A journey is best measured in friends, not in miles.”

    “It’s just amazing,” Mr. Kraus said of the decade-old Soldier Ride project. “It came up . . . sort of a novel idea at the time, and a great summer. I’m sorry that the need is there, but I’m glad that we’re there to fill it.”