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Land's End: A Walk in Provincetown

Name: Land's End: A Walk in Provincetown
Author: Cunningham, Michael , Brick, Scott
ISBN: 9781415900758

by Cunningham, Michael, Brick, Scott

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Overview

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 intoits history, its mysteries, its peculiarities--places you won't read about in any conventional travel guide.

About the Author, Cunningham, Michael , Brick, Scott

Michael Cunningham is the author of Flesh and Blood, A Home at the End of the World, and, most recently, The Hours, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and soon to be a major film. He lives and works in New York City.

Biography

By the time he finished Virginia Woolf's classic Mrs. Dalloway at the age of fifteen to impress a crush who tauntingly suggested he "try and be less stupid" and do so, Michael Cunningham knew that he was destined to become a writer. While his debut novel wouldn't come until decades later, he would win the Pulitzer for Fiction with his third -- fittingly, an homage to the very book that launched both his love of literature and his life's work.

After growing up Cincinnati, Ohio, Cunningham fled to the west coast to study literature at Stanford University, but later returned to the heartland, where he received his M.F.A. from the University of Iowa in 1980. A writer recognized early on for his promising talent, Cunningham was awarded several grants toward his work, including a Michener Fellowship from the University of Iowa in 1982, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 1988.

In 1984, Cunningham's debut novel, Golden States, was published. While generally well-received by the critics, the book -- a narrative chronicling a few weeks in the life of a 12-year-old-boy -- is often dismissed by Cunningham. In an interview with Other Voices, he explains: "I'm so much more interested in some kind of grand ambitious failure than I am in someone's modest little success that achieves its modest little aims. I felt that I had written a book like that, and I wasn't happy about it. My publisher very generously allowed me to turn down a paperback offer and it has really gone away."

With a new decade came Cunningham's stirring novel, A Home at the End of the World, in 1990. The story of a heartbreakingly lopsided love triangle between two gay men and their mutual female friend, the novel was a groundbreaking take on the ‘90s phenomenon of the nontraditional family. While not exactly released with fanfare, the work drew impressive reviews that instantly recognized Cunningham's gift for using language to define his characters' voices and outline their motives. David Kaufman of The Nation noted Cunningham's "exquisite way with words and ...his uncanny felicity in conveying both his characters and their story," and remarked that "this is quite simply one of those rare novel imbued with graceful insights on every page."

The critical acclaim of A Home at the End of the World no doubt helped Cunningham win the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1993 -- and two years later, his domestic epic Flesh and Blood was released. Chronicling the dysfunctional Stassos family from their suburban present back through to the parents' roots and looking toward the children's uncertain futures, the sprawling saga was praised for its complexity and heart. The New York Times Book Review noted that "Mr. Cunningham gets all the little things right.... Mr. Cunningham gets the big stuff right, too. For the heart of the story lies not in the nostalgic references but in the complex relationships between parents and children, between siblings, friends and lovers."

While the new decade ushered in his impressive debut, the close of the decade brought with it Cunningham's inarguable opus, The Hours (1998). A tribute to that seminal work that was the author's first inspiration -- Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway -- the book reworks the events and ideas of the classic and sets them alternately in 1980s Greenwich Village, 1940s Los Angeles, and Woolf's London. Of Cunningham's ambitious project, USA Today raved, "The Hours is that rare combination: a smashing literary tour-de-force and an utterly invigorating reading experience. If this book does not make you jump up from the sofa, looking at life and literature in new ways, check to see if you have a pulse." The Hours won both the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, and was adapted into a major motion picture starring the powerhouse trio of Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore, and Nicole Kidman in December 2002.

To come down from the frenetic success of The Hours, Cunningham took on a quieter project, 2002's tribute/travelogue Land's End: A Walk Through Provincetown. The first installment in Crown's new "Crown Journeys" series, the book is a loving tour through the eccentric little town at the tip of Cape Cod beloved by so many artists and authors, Cunningham included. A haven for literary legends from Eugene O'Neill to Norman Mailer, Cunningham is -- rightfully -- at home there.

Good To Know

Cunningham's debut novel, Golden States, can be hard to find; check out our Used & Out of Print Store to find a copy!

Cunningham's short story "White Angel" was chosen for Best American Short Stories 1989 -- the year before his acclaimed novel A Home at the End of the World was published.

When asked by Barnes & Noble.com about any other names he goes by, Cunningham's list included the monikers Bree Daniels, Mickey Fingers, Jethro, Old Yeller, Gaucho, Cowboy Ed, Tim-Bob, Mister Lies, Erin The Red, Miss Kitty, and Squeegee.

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Editorials

From Barnes & Noble

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Cunningham offers this evocative, quietly beautiful portrait of Provincetown -- a "spectacular" place at the tip of Cape Cod that is steeped in history -- as the first book in the Crown Journeys series.

Publishers Weekly

Cunningham (The Hours) takes the reader on a leisurely, idiosyncratic tour of the fabled town at the tip of Cape Cod. He makes the rounds of his favorite haunts, from the beaches, marshes and dunes to businesses like the halfheartedly modernized Adams Pharmacy, which has a soda fountain from the 1940s; the Marine Specialties store, a repository of the overlooked, the lost, the surplus, the irregular, the no-longer-needed, and the outmoded; and the Atlantic House, a bar that is sexy in a damp, well-used way. The fish and whales that live in the ocean around the town have a place in his excursion, as do the dogs, cats, skunks, opossums and occasional coyotes that wander the streets. People interest him most, however the old-timer who sits in his yard, shouting, Hello hello hello, to everyone who passes by; the disheveled man who walks the main street night and day; and the more famous eccentrics, the refugees, rebels, and visionaries who have been coming to the town for nearly 400 years. There is also a large gay population, and Cunningham is especially fascinated by this community's flamboyant individuals, who add color even to the local A&P. His quirky guide, part of the Crown Journeys series, presents a very personal view of Provincetown, but at the same time it manages to convey the peculiar, inscrutable intensity characterizing the love so many people have for the place. (Aug.) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

A leisurely walking tour and shrewd exposition of that “eccentrics' sanctuary”—Provincetown, Massachusetts—from Pulitzer-winning novelist Cunningham (The Hours, 1998, etc.). It sits out in the Atlantic, the barb on Cape Cod's hook, a slip of land “that unfurls like a genie's shoe from the coastline of Massachusetts.” Only three miles long and a couple blocks wide, Provincetown is a world unto itself, intriguingly rendered by Cunningham. He takes his tour guide's responsibility seriously and eagerly, wanting readers to get both the grand and intimate view, animate, inanimate, and subanimate. He describes the wild swings of weather: bleached in August, the fog-muted greens of spring, winter revealing the “dreadful, rock-hard opulence of the world, that which remains when idealism and sentimentality have fallen away.” There are sturdy Baedekers to Long Point and the salt Marsh, the spare tranquility of Hatches Cove, the potent mysteriousness of Snail Road, Herring Cove's nude beach with its “unique opportunity to understand that the female breast is among the more profoundly variable of human wonders.” There is the undeniable sexuality of the place, gay and straight, “an improved version of the world at large, aversion in which sexuality, though always important, is not much of a deciding factor,” where “the Log Cabin Republican not only can't ignore the existence of stone butches but buys his coffee from one every morning.” Cunningham introduces its cast of refugees, rebels, and visionaries—from Mayflower Pilgrims to Robert Motherwell to the lady who walks only backwards—attracted by the exoticism and low rents (or, as viably, low-rent exoticism), and there are everyday notes on thepharmacy and A&P, the places where you can pee without having to buy something, the centers of buxom tawdriness, the Portuguese influence, the miraculous pleasures of watching whales, “green in the blue-green water, shadowy as an X-ray, netted with pallid light.” And “if I die tomorrow, Provincetown is where I want my ashes scattered.” That's a sense of place called home.