Land's End

A Walk in Provincetown

Browse Return to Previous Page       Related Subjects All Subjects General Interest Literary NOT Theory Literary Studies Travel Travel Literature

by Michael Cunningham

Crown Publishers, Inc.

Due/Published August 2002, 176 pages, cloth

ISBN 0609609076

In this celebration of one of America’s oldest towns (incorporated in 1720), Cunningham (author of the best-selling, Pulitzer Prize–winning The Hours) brings us Provincetown, MA, perched on the sandy tip at the end of Cape Cod. "It is the only small town I know of where those who live unconventionally seem to outnumber those who live within the prescribed bounds of home and licensed marriage, respectable job, and biological children," says Cunningham. "It is one of the places in the world you can disappear into. It is the Morocco of North America, the New Orleans of the north."

He first came to the place more than twenty years ago, falling in love with the beauty of its seascape and the charm of its inhabitants. Although Provincetown is primarily known as a summer mecca of beaches, quirky shops, and wild nightlife, as well as a popular destination for gay men and lesbians, it is also a place of deep and enduring history, artistic and otherwise. Few towns have attracted such an impressive array of artists and writers—from Tennessee Williams to Eugene O’Neill, Mark Rothko to Robert Motherwell—who, like Cunningham, were attracted to this finger of land because it was . . . different, nonjudgmental, the perfect place to escape to; to be rescued, healed, reborn, or simply to live
in peace. As we follow Cunningham on his various excursions through Provincetown and its surrounding landscape, we are drawn into its history, its mysteries, its peculiarities.