I stand naked before you, computerless. Humidity may have been at fault, or ants. I don’t know, but there I was on deadline with no “h,” no “j,” no “g.” It was very disconcerting, especially given the fact that I know my failings when it comes to dust and mold and mustiness in general, i.e., it probably had been because of my neglect that the computer didn’t work.

    Things got worse. The next morning, as I was about to leave for GeekHampton in Sag Harbor and the dump, the trunk packed full with garbage and Henry’s musty bed that Mary had tossed, I discovered that there were two inches of water on the basement floor, the result of the deluges of the day before. I looked in vain for our shop vac, which apparently had been loaned out, and resolved to buy another posthaste.

    On to the dump. Where, on wheeling in, eager to rid myself of the car’s noisome cargo, I saw the gates barred. It was a Wednesday. I still haven’t learned that the dump is always closed that day.

    Farther down the road, I snapped up the last shop vac the Power Equipment Plus store had, saying that I’d be back later to pick it up after having gone to the computer store and having dropped Henry off at The Star.

    Reluctantly, at GeekHampton I agreed to divest myself of the computer, absenting myself from felicity for a few days so they could fix it, and realized on reaching for my credit card, which I needed to pay the deposit, that I’d left it at Power Equipment Plus.

    Of course I got no work, no ostensible work, done.

    “A hard house day,” Mary, who is quite familiar with them, said sympathetically on her return from work at Rogers Memorial Library. She gently stayed my hand as I began to reach into the dryer for the laundry I’d done.

    Later, as I cooked up a savory pork stir-fry, she wondered why she always teared up when the kids’ bicycles in “E.T.” lift off the ground and fly.

    “We cheer and tear up because they’re free of all the shit we call reality,” I said. “Not that what happened today qualifies. There’s shit and then there’s deep doo-doo.”

   Elizabeth Kotz recently put me on to Electro Mix, little packets of minerals — heavy metals, her husband, Steve, told me — that I have found to be quite effective when playing tennis in humid heat.

    I had never known what electrolytes were — I still don’t — though Mary has always told me they’re very important and that I should not neglect them. Well, I’m here to tell you that one packet of Electro Mix dissolved in a bottle of water when exercising provides a marvelous boost; I can literally feel the electrolytes bounding around inside me. Indeed, as I should have said the other day as a three-hour agon on Buckskill’s grass courts was under way, “I sing the body electrolytic.”

    The next thing, someone’s going to tell me Electro Mix provides an improper edge. I hope not, even though I have said that after a certain age — 50, say — drugs ought to be mandated.

    And then there’s Tuesdays at Robbie’s, where, for an hour, I am put through the wringer, to such an extent that, as with the miracle mix of magnesium, calcium, and potassium, I can feel the salutary results.

    From wringer to ringer! Well, not quite that, but my serving shoulder is stronger, less achy, I’m holding the racket at the end rather than choking up, which I’ve done for the past two or so years convinced I was becoming weaker with age. In fact, during last winter’s men’s doubles league, I remember asking Tim Ross to “beam me down, Scotty, beam me down.”

    They say warp speed is theoretically possible — I read it this week in The Times — so perhaps I should stop thinking of age as some kind of impenetrable barrier.

    What was it Bobby Harris, the 67-year-old high jumper, who was to have competed in the Senior Games in Cleveland last week, once said to me? “You don’t stop playing because you get old — you get old because you stop playing.”

    “When East Hampton Indoor’s league starts up again this fall, I’m going to say to Tim, ‘Beam me up, Scotty!’ ” I said to Mary this morning.

    She urged caution, but I’m more inclined to throw caution to the wind these days — if only there were some.

   As any habitual reader of this column already knows, my neighborhood — or, anyway, the property surrounding my house — was, last fall and winter, home to a resident family of deer. Five would appear at once, and two were fawns. For the most part, they ambled, rather than ran, across the lawn or down the lane; they seem to enjoy visits to the adjacent East Hampton Library grounds, too. I never could figure out where they bedded down. But while other members of our household railed against them, I took a benevolent, maternal attitude. If any of the grandchildren were around, I would join them in rushing excitedly to a door or window to see what the deer were getting up to next.

    I am hardly a vegetarian. I’ve eaten, cooked, and enjoyed venison over the years. I remember that I once even thought it might be a good idea for deer to be raised on Gardiner’s Island for the market. And I am not opposed to hunting, especially if the quarry ends up on the table. But I have come to think of my house deer almost as pets. It follows, therefore, that even if it might be somewhat out of line with my stated beliefs about wild-animal life and death, I don’t quite like the thrust of the long-term management plan that East Hampton Town has just adopted, which advocates killing to control overpopulation.

    The 17-page document (not including maps) was devised by a group of experts and various government officials. The plan augments but does not revise the recommendation that a town committee made more than two years ago, to the effect that hunting should be expanded. It describes other methods that might be used to control deer, but only after the population is brought down to a more manageable level. And, as might be expected, it leaves every action in the hands of existing or future members of the town board.

    For its part, The Star editorialized on the plan a few weeks ago, decrying how long it is taking for anything at all to get done about a situation that is not just a nuisance but, in fact, deadly dangerous to drivers, deleterious to the health of humans and house pets, and, in winter, quite desperate for the hungry deer.

    Back in my yard, once spring arrived, the deer disappeared. I dutifully sprayed the plants around the patio with Tony Minardi’s “Deer Away” and made sure the potted hibiscus was close enough to the house to keep an eye on. Friends suggested my house deer had found other browsing grounds after being frightened by the noise coming from the construction crew at work on a house just over the fence.

    That theory was borne out by a few rather amusing treatises on deer “deterrents” I found on the Internet: Every imaginable form of obnoxious noise, from strings of metal cans to high-frequency sound devices, was touted. The only complication, according to these Internet experts, is that, as we on the East End know all too well by now, deer are amazingly adaptable; they are wily, and easily learn how to survive in changing human environments.

    Their adaptability undoubtedly explains why I have come home on several recent occasions to find a deer lounging on my front lawn and, well, grinning at me. That deer are almost impossible to permanently shoo away has been further proved, unfortunately, by the return, too, of at least one brightly marked doe, perhaps one of the fawns now a teenager, and the inevitable devouring of some house plants that had been doing nicely under the lilacs, where I put them for the summer. 

    The East Hampton Town deer-management plan uses some phraseology that, in my view, creeps close to doublespeak: Expanded opportunities for hunting can “effectively and compassionately” deal with the problem until deer are “ecologically and culturally sustainable,” it says. And it dismisses immunocontraception, which may in fact  actually be an ecological and compassionate method. Apparently, according to the document, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation does not believe in it.

    Immunocontraception, which involves shooting darts rather than bullets to vaccinate deer so they are no longer fertile, has so far not been proven successful, but the Village of Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y, has asked the D.E.C. to approve its use in a program devised by the Tufts University Center for Animals and Public Policy. If, as seems likely, it is going to take years for the East Hampton hunting plan to bring our local deer population under control, it makes sense to me that immunocontraception should be given a try in the meanwhile. What do you think?

   I know it’s after the fact and thus irrelevant to the recent acquittal of George Zimmerman in the killing of Trayvon Martin, an African-American teen whom Mr. Zimmerman, an armed neighborhood watch volunteer, had pursued while the youth was returning to the condo his father’s fiancée rented in a gated Florida community, but one wonders why on earth a neighborhood watch volunteer was carrying a gun in the first place.

    Thinking on that reminded me that armed “auxiliaries” were once proposed here.

    The date of our first story on the subject appeared in the Sept. 22, 1977, issue, and was written by Val Schaffner.

    Val was told that the Village Police Department (whose chief at the time had made the proposal) would “have to be very careful about recruiting.” The up to 15 armed volunteers, he was told, would help the 16-man force with crowd control at football games, parades, and at the L.V.I.S. Fair, and could come in handy as well should there be looting after a hurricane. And they, of course, would also aid the force in serving as its “eyes and ears.”

    The next chief, Glen Stonemetz, thought better of arming the volunteers, though a letter writer warned at the time that if they weren’t, this place could well become “Home, Sweet Home for felons and lawbreakers.”

    That letter was written in response to a column Arthur Roth had written, and I too received some volleys over the bow after adding my voice to the disarming side, one of which said, “Jack Graves’s ‘Point of View’ wherein he objects to the arming of auxiliaries, terming it ‘vigilantes’ and ‘vigilante antics,’ is a prime example of bias and ignorance. [. . .] On behalf of legitimate firearm owners, let me assure Mr. Graves that even his purple prose will not inspire any of us toward ‘vigilante antics.’ ”

    I’m glad, some 35 years later, that that purple prose hasn’t. And I’m glad that the armed-auxiliary idea was ultimately deep-sixed here. Tragically, it wasn’t in Florida.

   Though normally I try not to say anything if I can’t say anything nice, there are just a few things I have to get off my chest. Because here it is August and this summer, before it was even July, I couldn’t take any more. My eyes hurt from rolling, and my new seasonal utterance, “Puh-leeze,” was already overused.

    Maybe it’s because I’m subject to the seasonal barrage of entreaties from P.R. lackeys desperately trying to get attention for their clients, touting the next great Hamptons this or that.

     Or maybe it’s because, as a resident here for over 30 years (do I really have to also say ‘year-round,’ or can it just be assumed that living somewhere means you live there, all or almost all the time?), I am pretty tired of having my life, and the lives of my friends and colleagues and associates, diminished in the eyes of visitors who think somehow that because we live “in the country” our lives are not as interesting/fulfilling/glamorous or fill-in-the-adjective as theirs.

    Guess what? Did you ever think you might be the sadly shortchanged ones? Or that there might be a deep and satisfying and comprehensive world out here, of which you perceive only a part?

    How many times do I have to endure the fading interest of a conversation partner, once they find out I live here (heavens!)? Or the mincing questions, “You mean all year?” Or “What’s it like?”

    Well, it’s like living somewhere. I mean, like, in a community.

    Which leads me to the list.

    1. Geography and nomenclature. I don’t live “in the country” or “at Hamptons” or in “a Hampton.” I guess you could call this “out east,” but that presumes a starting point. Maybe you live “over west.” I’ve heard it called “up west” or “UpIsland.” But all of those assume one or the other geographic supremacy, a concept I shun.

    2. Don’t presume. Get to know this place, and your place as a visitor, part-time resident, or interloper. Don’t be an interloper. Listen, think, soak it in. Do real things and learn real things. Don’t presume. Try to act with a little sensitivity. This place is like it is; don’t barrel in and override it. Enjoy. We live here. It’s a real place, with a real flavor and heartbeat.

    3. Note: While there is hardly anyone that I interact with who would ask me the inane question “which Hampton are you from?” woe to the clueless jabberer who does.

    4. Don’t dub yourself — anything. Especially when it starts with “The Hamptons,” or requires a capitalized noun. That just marks you as a yahoo here to play in the great Hamptons playground, and not someone who’s interested at all in learning what this place is like.

    5. Food is food. I like good food as much as anyone — healthy or decadent. But blasting social media with every detail of your intake is boring. I don’t want to spend my time looking at pictures of your plate, or read your sappy little posts about the extraordinary, special, amazing, fresh and better-than-yours meals you make using hand-raised, sung-to, and massaged vegetables that are amazing.

    Guess what? People have been raising vegetables forever. Just because you got out of the city and discovered a field of growing things doesn’t make your discovery interesting to me. I get it. You eat. You like food. You find it amazing that you can buy fresh eggs, or pick your own strawberries. Get over it. Or take these common pleasures in quietly, without constantly trumpeting about them.

    Key word, again: quietly. Deeply. Like a human being with a soul. Take all of the quiet pleasures in quietly. Nobody’s saying you can’t come out here and love the sun and the wind and the fresh vegetables. But the ability to tweet or post or brag about it is not what makes it a valuable experience.

    6. If you’re a stockbroker, you’re not a farmer. Don’t dub yourself “Farmer Whoever.” That’s bullshit. If you want to change your life, do it. And derive your satisfaction from the changes you make, not from the “Look-at-me, look-at-me, look-at-me!” factor.

    Maybe there’s a 6(a) here: From where I sit, there’s a whole lot of “Look-at-me, look-at-me, look-at-me!” behavior. Ask yourself, am I doing this/wearing this/buying this/going here for any reason other than to see or be seen?

    It’s here I make my plea: try not to be shallow. There are important things in the world, and the possibility of real, heartful, spiritual rewards.

    Ask yourself, if I was doing this/saying this/acting this way anywhere but the “Hamptons,” would I seem foolish?

    7. You don’t need knee-high galoshes to stride from your Range Rover into the deli, just because it’s raining. Those kinds of boots are for mucking out the barn. So if you’re not slogging through horseshit, it’s just for show. This is a town, not a stage.

    8. And speaking of . . . yes, this is a real town. We live here. We’re not just extras in the background of your summertime-fun movie. In fact, we are real. Most of us don’t posture.

    We’re concerned with substantive things — with our real-world concerns, families, friends, food we feel the need to eat and enjoy with loved ones, but not necessarily to brag about. Making a living, maybe having some fun if we can fit it around the shenanigans of you folks parading about the “Hamptons.”

    By the way, I like summer. And all this said, I don’t really believe in prescribing to others, or making demands. I try not to judge — honest. And I’m not really down on everyone who’s here. The more cosmopolitan, the better, I say. But it sure feels good to rant a minute. Maybe I’ll be more patient for it during this very trying month.

   Joanne Pilgrim, an associate editor at The Star, imagines a life one day in an area without East Hampton’s wild seasonal mood swings, but can thrill to the ride — most of the time — while she’s here.

   At an age when many of my peers have retired or, if they are not quite of retirement age, busy with new interests, I’m still pounding the keys at The Star and continually confused about which of the zillion enticing summer events I should pursue in my hours off. A trusted colleague hit the nail on the head: “It’s a job just trying to figure out what to do,” she said.

    For a while, I thought it would be a good idea to let my (very good-natured) husband be our social secretary. He seemed to enjoy it; you see, he tracks everything he wants to remember, and everything that interests him, on his iPhone. Plus, being gregarious, he loves a good excuse, such as an R.S.V.P., to call someone up for a chit-chat. However, by the end of July it turned out that this arrangement just made our lives more complicated.

    I would check the in-box on my laptop, go to my engagement calendar, and then have to ask Chris to look at whatever information he had recorded for us electronically. Who could have imagined that in our 70s we would be managing a triple or quadruple-barreled diary? Somehow, with all this scheduling overkill, we sometimes end up not going out at all.

    My own cellphone is straightforward, with no bells or whistles or Internet, and I like it like that because it feels like a way to simplify life. However, together, my husband and I have gotten so used to relying on our take-everywhere phones that we forget to listen to the land line’s old-fashioned answering machine for days and days on end. Whoops. We keep missing messages, and not hearing about things until it is too late.

    The truth is, my workdays are less complicated than my weekends and evenings. No negotiations or schedule cross-checking is involved when I am at The Star. The project at hand might be exciting, or tricky, or rustrating, but it is much easier to deal with whatever pressing matter is directly in front of me than to try to decide what I might do in the evening or the next day.

    I am surprised to find the office a relief from the stress of life in “the Hamptons.” I guess my mind has just been boggled this season by all the hassle and crush.  I’d like to take a bit of time to cook the fruits of land and sea or to enjoy the great outdoors, with the incomparably lovely weather this week. But, really, the only respite seems to be the quiet around my desk, and those moments at the end of the day when I’m walking up the lane toward home. I love it when I can do nothing at all.

    It is said that many people revert, at least in some ways, to childhood when they get older. Perhaps that is at the heart of my befuddled mood this summer. The summers of my formative years were spent on a 108-acre farm in the Catskills. We splashed in the brook that ran through it, picked blueberries, and played in the shade of an old apple orchard. Now, if I could only find a nice, secret brook and an empty apple orchard, I would know exactly what to do.

   “I want to write about that,” I said, as I often do upon hearing about something I think sounds interesting, fun, and that the world would benefit from. The response from my new friend Bradley Francis, who I met a few weeks ago at a Wailers concert in Amagansett and again at Sunset Beach on Shelter Island, was “Okay, we’ll get you on a flight with us tomorrow.” Minutes later, his friend asked me a few questions and I was confirmed from LGA to ATL the next afternoon.

    This is not the norm for me, in the last 15 years anyway, and especially when I’m scheduled to work. I took full advantage of the opportunity, though, to use personal time to witness my new acquaintance rescue a horse farm in Georgia.

    The farm is called Dream Power, appropriately in my view. Because of the efforts of this young philanthropist, the dream of its dreamer — to offer therapeutic services with horses that help children and young adults with a multitude of disabilities from paralysis to emotional issues — was kept alive. My friend benefited himself, as well, from the giving feeling and his connection with the horses there.

    We stopped on the way to the airport to wire money that was needed immediately, then we were off to the farm to meet the volunteers and the horses.

    We listened to success stories from a counselor there, who is working as part of a program that helps victims of abuse and trauma. The farm’s founder shared stories of autistic children who have been transformed in the presence of the four-legged beings.

    During our travels, I mentioned that there was a similar farm in Sagaponack, and Bradley said without hesitation, “I’d like to help them too.” He suggested I reach out and offer solar panels to them courtesy of his Georgia business.

    Although this golden win-win opportunity was discovered via Facebook, I will not praise the social media gods once again in this column. Who I would like to take this space and opportunity to appreciate at the moment are those who might be considered “summer people,” my inspiration being one from south of the Mason-Dixon line who reminded me about Southern hospitality.

    For sure, the increased numbers bring more traffic and fewer parking spots, loud music and mass gatherings and less private beach time. Personally, I welcome opportunities to dance and socialize, especially with an increased diversity of thoughts, music, and even attire that brings splashes of color and inspiration. We can all use more music and fewer boundaries and separation between “us” and “them” in any form.

    I also remind myself of their support of businesses that would not otherwise exist for us year-rounders.

    I am grateful for networking opportunities, too, from visitors such as this one, who brought me a chance to have fun while I shared a glimpse of those who are making a difference. In an ideal world, this is what I would be doing with most of my time.

    “Did I tell you we’re going to Africa in October?” Bradley asked the next Sunday, in almost the same spot at Sunset Beach. When I snapped out of my jaw-dropping awe from words such as “helping,” “orphanage,” and “solar,” I simply replied, “I will get my passport ready.”

    Who knows . . . maybe I will be a summer person, too.

   Carrie Ann Salvi is a reporter for The Star.

   Gordon Grant, one of our neighbors, says now that our driveway’s fixed his kids will no longer have to wear waders when they come over on Halloween.

    Could it have been that that great system of lakes, seemingly scoured out by the retreat of the last glacier, was off-putting? I had never meant to give offense.

    “See,” I said to Mary the last time she complained of it, “one of the puddles is shaped in the form of a heart! Have you no concern for the environment?”

    And, in Spanish class, when they asked me where I lived, I’d always say, “Vivo en la Calle de la Vista de Puerto (Harbor View Drive) pero no tenemos una vista de puerto — es una vista des charcos (puddles).”

    I’ve always curried a little eccentricity, and yet I admit, as in the case of my late baby-puke-green 1967 Ford Falcon, it’s usually been at the expense of the neighborhood’s property values, which, because of our latest improvement, are now soaring.

    Geoff Gehman posits in his recently published (and very well-written) “The Kingdom of the Kid” that my fidelity to the deceased Falcon — “a home,” as I once said, “for wayward dolls” — was rooted in the sympathy I had always had for the anti-conventional Beales.

    Finally, however, a note left in our mailbox, to the effect that “the dead (the Falcon had given up the ghost one night in front of our house and I had backed it up onto the front lawn near the mailbox, where it was to remain for a long while) are usually interred” prompted me to act. And, with the dolls still in the jump seat, and with the obscenities affixed at our housewarming still on it, Reid Brothers towed the long-flightless Falcon away.

    I had no alternative then but to let the driveway go, and to put our bashed mailbox (replaced this past fall with a thoroughly respectable one) in a sling.  

    Scott King, our former highway superintendent, who did the driveway work entirely to our satisfaction, explained it graphically; our driveway was, in fact, a delta into which all the surface water of the neighborhood flowed (and into whose bogs copies of The New York Times often would have to be retrieved by our yellow Lab, Henry, who, luckily, loves to swim). Raise the grade a bit, Scott King said, and that would no longer happen.  

    Emily loves the wheat color of the gravel and whenever she sees a leaf on it she plucks it off. The gently curved entrance virtually says to visitors, “Come on in, and may you take comfort in the delightfully crunchy sound your tires and the comely stones make as the Graves’s estate hoves into view.”

    “A thing of beauty is a joy forever,” I said to Mary as we admired Mr. King’s handiwork. “Or at least a joy for a while. I’d quote more, but that’s about as far as I got in ‘Endymion.’ ”

   Up early Saturday and Sunday looking for waves worth surfing, I made an informal survey of beach conditions following what had obviously been two wild nights on the sand. Almost everywhere in town, the beach garbage cans had filled to overflowing, and people had left their trash in the general vicinity.

    At Georgica Beach, I salvaged a pair of tiki torches, used just once, it appeared, complete with a half-full jug of lamp oil from a post-party heap. I passed on taking a galvanized wash tub, still filled with burned wood from the night before. Sea gulls or raccoons had been there before me and had strewn the remnants of several picnic dinners around.

    And so it went. At one Napeague ocean beach, I saw in the distance a party winding down as the sun began to rise. What appeared to be a score or more people lay bundled in blankets and sleeping bags. (Later, I understood that Marine Patrol officers showed up to take names and see what was what.)

    As the sun got higher in the sky, guests of the motels and condos along the Montauk oceanfront were hustling to stake out prime spots with towels and beach chairs. A determined-looking man coming down the steps from the Royal Atlantic in a big hurry nearly struck my head with a wooden umbrella post as I passed.

    I could not even get close to Ditch Plain, thanks to a surfing contest. Just why one of the town’s most popular beaches was given over entirely to an event that would prevent residents from going there struck me as a good question.

    On Saturday morning only Montauk Point was quiet, and I got into an easy conversation there with a parking attendant. Paying the $8 fee, I parked and surfed for an hour.

    Because the waves were small, few, and far between, there were only a handful of people in the water, which was fine with me. I have a number of friends who have either given up the sport or take the summer season mostly off to avoid the crowds. I suppose it is getting the same way with the beaches themselves, what with the increasing horde.

    East Hampton Town officials get interested every now and then about opening a new oceanfront beach. That notion is all well and good, but, as my weekend rounds indicated, the town does not adequately manage those it already has. As when my kids beg for another dog, bird, or pet pig, the answer has to be: Prove that you can take care of what we have first and then we can talk.

   The East Hampton Library, it seemed, broke into the highest echelons of good causes — up there with the Salvation Army, the Red Cross, motherhood, and apple pie — on Saturday, when a reported 2,000 people jammed into a tent on the Gardiner-Flynn grounds off James Lane in the village for the ninth Authors Night extravaganza. The crowd was estimated as 25 percent larger than ever before.

    While this has been a summer of collective moaning and sighing (and swearing) about crowds, traffic, noise, rude behavior, etc., the unmatched number of people crowded onto the South Fork has had a few positive effects, too, especially in raising the proceeds at charity events. Benefit parties are being sold out, and everyone says the amounts raised are only mounting and mounting.

    Authors Night was the culmination of a year’s planning by the co-chairs, Sheila Rogers, executive vice president of the library’s board of managers, Dennis Fabiszak, the library director, and Patti Kenner, reception chair. They worked with committee and subcommittee chairs who also met regularly. The proceeds, when you combine the $100 a ticket book-buying reception with the haul from 26 dinner parties following the reception, plus the take from the free children’s fair on Sunday, are expected to reach $375,000. Many of the essentials required were donated, keeping the budget for so large an affair minimal.

    But what amazed me were the logistics. A flock of about 100 volunteers started the day early, setting things up and shepherding authors and books, food and drink, and book — and celebrity — lovers to the right place. Ms. Kenner apparently kept an eye on plans for everything from the napkins on the food tables to the flowers and the check-out lines.

    I am told that 830 cars were parked on the field, and I myself saw many others lining Main Street. There were parking helpers and golf cart drivers to ferry guests back and forth. Eight security personnel were on hand (although no one was reported to have gotten rowdy).

    Given the size of the crowd, I was surprised to learn that fewer authors were invited this year. The number was 104, compared to 125 last year and 180 the previous year. Ms. Rogers said she always asks the writers what the library can do to make Authors Night better; honing the number was one of the results.

    Maureen Egen, a member of the library’s board — who retired not long ago from a top career with the Time Warner Book Group and Little Brown — acted as liaison to publishers and was instrumental in bringing in some writers of note for the first time. Every book was donated.

     Then, imagine: Volunteers were back on Sunday morning to dismantle it all and set up for the children’s fair, which included a book reception of its own, carnival rides and games, crafts, roving performers, and snacks. Of course, that had to be dismantled at day’s end, too.

    Although more than 600 guests attended the dinner parties, enjoying good food and conversation in honor of one or more of the authors, the event at the art dealer Larry Gagosian’s art-filled Gwath­­mey house on the dunes took the prize for glitz. Among the 120 who attended were Jack Nicholson, Paul McCartney, Jimmy Buffet, and Anjelica Huston, among others. Clive Davis was the honoree.

    Many of us remember the John Steinbeck Book Fair, a fund-raiser for South­ampton College, which began in 1977 at the college and became the annual Meet the Writers event at the Elaine Benson Gallery in Bridgehampton, heralding the summer season for some 20 years. It ended in 2002, four years after Ms. Benson’s death. Tickets were $15 and the college reported proceeds totaling $157,000 over the years. I think Elaine would be amused that Meet the Writers was the genesis of this very successful Authors Night, and bemused by the phenomenal numbers involved.