The Accompanied Library, a private library and artists’ club on Gramercy Park, held a party replete with rose petals, incense, pomegranate punch, and a sitar player. The Indian decor and entertainment celebrated Harper’s editor Lewis Lapham, author of “With the Beatles” (Melville House), which recalls his visit to India in February 1968 to cover the Beatles. The famous rock group had traveled there on a pilgrimage to meditate with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who founded the Transcendental Meditation movement.

In attendance at the reception were Iris Brooks and Brooke Geahan, founders of the Accompanied Library; personal trainer Eileen Kelly; and painter Lowell Boyers. Indian votive candles cast a spiritual air in the room, with its floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. Mr. Lapham described that period in history as the hinge of the 1960s: “By the end of 1968, America’s optimism is turned around 180 degrees and the ’60s darken.” The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. followed in April and that of Robert Kennedy in June, with riots at the Democratic National Convention in July. “Another 20 months and the Beatles were no longer together as a band.” He said he wrote an account in the Saturday Evening Post, of which the book is an expanded version, “as a kind of eulogy for that lost promising moment.”

Mr. Lapham recalled the editor of the Saturday Evening Post taking him to lunch, having said beforehand, “We’re going to talk about a trip to the East.” “I was sure he was assigning me to go to Vietnam,” Mr. Lapham recalled, but “instead, he said, ‘I’m sending you to the Mountains of Infinite Bliss.'”

Arriving at the ashram in Rishikesh, Mr. Lapham recalled seeing the Beatles dressed in Eastern garb with their long dark hair. George Harrison was intensely interested in sitar music for transcendence, Mr. Lapham said, while John Lennon was ironic and more enigmatic, listening to the guru with respect and some skepticism. Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney were more indifferent to the maharishi’s recitations.

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KEEPING TABS ON HUNTER A crowd filled Elaine’s for Tab Hunter’s book “Tab Hunter Confidential: The Making of a Movie Star” (Algonquin). “They don’t come any better than him,” noted Nick Malekos, who has known Mr. Hunter since the latter was age 12. When Mr. Malekos had surgery for throat cancer in May, Mr. Hunter called him from California every day.

Later that night, Foster Hirsch interviewed Mr. Hunter further downtown before a live audience. Mr. Hunter described being on the set of the film “The Sea Chase” with John Wayne and Lana Turner when he was 23. He was tongue-tied upon first meeting Turner, he said. The audience laughed when Mr. Hunter recalled having blurted out, “I’ve been a fan of yours since I was a kid.”

gshapiro@nysun.com