Into The Twilight

Encounters with Beatles. The Hamptons’ fabulous, beautiful, and absurd. Meditations on the unique natural beauty of the South Fork. The good old days before Montauk was overrun with hipsters. And here and there, adventures in Not-So-Incredible-India. Christopher Walsh, a reporter for The East Hampton Star, escaped New York to return to the place of his youth. In this collection of essays, he looks inward at the boy he once was and outward, sometimes in disbelief, at his once and present home.

Encounters with Beatles. The Hamptons’ fabulous, beautiful, and absurd. Meditations on the unique natural beauty of the South Fork. The good old days before Montauk was overrun with hipsters. And here and there, adventures in Not-So-Incredible-India. Christopher Walsh, a reporter for The East Hampton Star, escaped New York to return to the place of his youth. In this collection of essays, he looks inward at the boy he once was and outward, sometimes in disbelief, at his once and present home. The author shares stories of his youth, when Montauk was relatively undiscovered country and the Hamptons were years from becoming the playground of the rich and famous and what some would consider a hideous self-parody. He recalls his life as a musician and music journalist, sharing experiences of rubbing shoulders with the likes of John Lennon and Paul McCartney, Elton John and Mary J. Blige, and, in the summer of 2014, a third Beatle, Ringo Starr. Readers can also visit India and experience some of its wonders, and its hazards, through the eyes of this faithful correspondent. Finally, the author returns to the South Fork of Long Island and finds, albeit fitfully, domestic bliss. “Into The Twilight” is Christopher Walsh’s first book. He is presently completing an oral history of the storied Stephen Talkhouse in Amagansett, New York. Tom Clavin, a columnist and co-author of “The Heart of Everything That Is," wrote of this collection, “‘Dying is easy. Being a columnist is hard.’ Actually, the 19th-century Shakespearean actor Edmund Kean contended, ‘Comedy is hard,’ but that was because he did not have to cobble together a column regularly. For the last few years Christopher Walsh has done just that, filling the ‘Relay’ space with observations and experiences that are both insightful and witty. He reminds us that the art of the personal essay is alive and well, not dying—that would be too easy.”

Christopher Walsh was born in New York City, where his earliest memories include lying on the floor next to his parents’ record player and listening to the Beatles’ White Album. He grew up in Montauk, at the eastern tip of Long Island where, at age 9, he met John Lennon. As a teenager he started a band with childhood friends, playing the nightclubs of the South Fork before he was old enough to drink in them. He then returned to New York, working as a musician and, later, journalist. He was a senior writer for Billboard magazine, editorial director of the Billboard Musicians Guide to Touring and Promotion, and a staff and freelance writer for other numerous publications and websites. In 2012, he returned to the South Fork of Long Island and soon found himself a reporter at The East Hampton Star, that town’s newspaper of record since 1885. He still plays music. “Into the Twilight,” a compilation of essays that originally appeared in The Star, is his first book.