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 In the Hamptons, Plain and FancyNew York TimesDAN RATTINER loves to invent preposterous tales. In Dan's Papers, the free newspaper he founded in Montauk in 1960, he occasionally runs a bogus story to see if anyone notices. In 1966, he reported on a sea serpent sighting in Bridgehampton (WCBS fell for it and sent out a helicopter). And in 1991, he made up a festival called Flight to Portugal, in which contestants raced cars off a cliff into the ocean by the Montauk Point Lighthouse: "The one who gets the farthest toward Portugal wins." But nothing he's ever written seems more far-fetched than one scene he describes in his memoir, "In the Hamptons." Driving on a sunny June weekend through the "sleepy little villages of Westhampton, Hampton Bays, Southampton, Bridgehampton, East Hampton, and Amagansett," he doesn't get stuck in a single all-Range-Rover traffic jam or spot one herd of Calypso-clad weekenders grazing at overpriced brunch cafes. Each town he passes is "quiet as a mouse," all the stores closed. This neutron-bomb tableau is not one of his hoaxes: it is 1956, on the day the author, then 16, first set foot in Montauk, before the philistines approached the hedgerow, before the Hamptons were "The Hamptons." Mr. Rattiner pays tribute to the local figures, famous and obscure, who have weaved themselves into his personal mythology over the last 50 years. Each portrait is written in unassuming language, with emotional punch, telling detail and impressive recall. There's the flawless young heiress who captivated Mr. Rattiner at 20, tearfully inviting him to a midnight tryst on the beach after her parents made her cancel a date (German shepherds barred the way to the mansion). There's the artist Willem de Kooning, in his cups and off his chair at a restaurant, ranting in slurred words, "I'm the greatest living painter in the world." (Mr. Rattiner helped drag him away from public scrutiny and into the back seat of his car). Less glamorous but no less compelling are the middle-aged hoteliers Esther and Sarah, who basked daily on aluminum lawn chairs in front of their Memory Motel, "tanned, heavily oiled," and wearing "nearly identical jaguar bikinis"; and the smooth, good-natured Bing Crosby look-alike, Frank Tuma Jr., vice president of the Montauk Improvement Company, who let Dan's Papers occupy the mezzanine of his building for free. Mr. Rattiner is a great appreciator of other people. To find as many memorable New York characters gathered between two covers, you'd have to look back to Joseph Mitchell's "Up in the Old Hotel."
By Jasmin Rosemberg
Published: June 29, 2008 IN THE HAMPTONS: A SUMMER READ FOR THE SOULThe HUFFINGTON POSTAs your sandy summer read dwindles down to its final pages and August's shorter days have you dreading a month of Mondays, Dan Rattiner's latest book In the Hamptons arrives offering life's saltiest stories told with more heart than a Oprah book club pick. For nearly fifty years, in his publication Dan's Papers, Dan Rattiner has been chronicling the stories and marking the lives of the characters that have made Long Island's tony East End their stage. Rattiner's well-respected publication is arguably America's first free paper, but definitely the barometer, judge and jury or what is real or seasonally silly under the magical light of America's Riviera. Now is his new book, In the Hamptons, Rattiner presents a collection of funny, enlightening stories that speak to the universality of love, life and the clash of temperaments and temptations when three hundred year old potato fields can sell for tens of millions of dollars. Rattiner is a storyteller like no other offering us insight into our own humanity through the individualists he has met and the fantastically full life he has lived. In one chapter of this collection of thirty-plus short stories, he tells of his brief unrequited love living in an infamous old house above the sea. Dan struggles through a raging storm to rendezvous with his hormonal satisfaction; it's a story not unlike the story he tells of Frank Mundus who battles against the largest shark ever to be caught on a rod and reel. In both cases something winds up flopping on the beach. It's a page-turning, wonderful, reminiscent read.
August 21, 2008
50 YEARS OF SUN FUN AND FAME IN THE HAMPTONSUSA TODAY7-16-08 In Dan Rattiner's Hamptons, you won't find any tales of PR queen Lizzie Grubman plowing into clubgoers with her SUV. Or dispatches from any of P. Diddy's Ciroc-fueled soirees. Which is both as refreshing as a dip in the ocean at Main Beach and as frustrating as a 2-mile backup on Montauk Highway. Rattiner, longtime publisher of the locally beloved weekly newspaper Dan's Papers, provides a beach-chair view of New York's storied swath of spot-lit sand in his new memoir, In the Hamptons: My Fifty Years With Farmers, Fishermen, Artists, Billionaires and Celebrities. His charming vignettes about the area's residents and guests mostly reach deep into the archives: *John Steinbeck's reluctant role as the honorary chairman of the first Sag Harbor Old Whalers Festival. *The year the celebrity umpire for the annual Artists and Writers Charity Softball game was some governor of Arkansas named Bill Clinton. *Rattiner's rocky relationship with Billy Joel. (We hear the story of a skipping, drunk-with-joy Joel walking into a pole in East Hampton during the happy days of his Christie Brinkley era, but Rattiner seems too respectful to delve into the singer's run-ins with various Long Island trees and houses with his cars.) Rattiner writes in discreet chapters, which doesn't allow for much analysis into how and why the Hamptons transformed from potato farmland to WASP playground to artist colony to arriviste McMansion-ville -- or any insight into how much more velvet-roped-off the community will become.
By Olivia Barker
Predictably TerrificAmazon.comAugust 4, 2008 DAN'S PAPERS are a local institution in The Hamptons, where I live myself. And, yes, there really is a Dan. And it's Dan Rattiner who, for about the past 45 years, has made his papers great. (Actually, by now, there are just two editions, a small one for Montauk, at the extreme end of Long Island, where Dan grew up himself, and a large one that serves a widespread region.) Though Dan was not born in The Hamptons, he did move here as a teenager, more than a half century ago. From the reminiscences in his memoir, IN THE HAMPTONS, he always had the keen eye of an observer, even when he still was an architectural student at Harvard. Dan writes in an easy, effortless style and he appears to miss no details -- ever. Except when the subject is serious, his pieces are suffused with humor, and he does not suffer fools gracefully. Issues of DAN'S PAPERS may have as many as six, even eight, pieces that he has written. I feel fair in saying that everyone who lives in The Hamptons -- indeed, everyone on the entire eastern end of Long Island -- loves this weekly news magazine. So it was with great interest that most of us awaited the publication of IN THE HAMPTONS. Knowing Dan's style, the book is everything one could expect. He effortlessly covers the long history of this area, first settled in 1639, when the Gardiner family arrived from England. By virtue of his long tenure here, he pretty much has seen it all and he definitely remembers all that he saw. Dan offers wonderful anecdotes about the ROLLING STONES, Bianca Jagger, Andy Warhol, the family of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and the other early-arriving socialites -- Mrs. Onassis actually was born in East Hampton -- the rock stars such as Billy Joel and Paul Simon, the visitors like Bill Clinton, so many artists and writers that they have an annual charity softball game, and on and on. And on. All of Dan's anecdotes, without exception, are fascinating, and each one is reported in Dan's literally inimitable prose. On the other hand, in an area so rich in history and accomplishment, Dan obviously had to choose among his favorite topics to tell his story, and he had to have left out more than he could include. Lots of authors, media people, fine artists, rock stars, movie stars, billionaires, and leading classical musicians were not even mentioned. I can't wait to read the sequel of IN THE HAMPTONS.
By HeyJudy
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