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- Hardcover: 175 pages ; Dimensions (in
inches): 0.78 x 7.96 x 5.28
- Publisher: Crown Pub; ; (August 6,
2002)
- ISBN: 0609609076
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Book Description
In this celebration of one of America’s oldest towns
(incorporated in 1720), Michael Cunningham, author of the best-selling,
Pulitzer Prize–winning The Hours, brings us Provincetown, one of the
most idiosyncratic and extraordinary towns in the United States, perched
on the sandy tip at the end of Cape Cod.
Provincetown, eccentric, physically remote, and heartbreakingly beautiful,
has been amenable and intriguing to outsiders for as long as it has
existed.
“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 haunted beauty of its seascape and the rambunctious charm of its
denizens.
Although Provincetown
is primarily known as a summer mecca of stunning 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—places you won’t read about in any conventional travel
guide.
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