End of the rainbow

Michael Cunningham takes a walk through P-town

By John Freeman

Land’s End By Michael Cunningham, Crown Journeys. New York 175 pages. $16.

NEW ORLEANS NORTH: Michael Cunningham’s slim volume.

Finally, the publishing industry has wizened up to our Lilliputian attention spans. First came Penguin’s short biographies, then there was Bloomsbury’s adorable series on cities. Now just about every publisher in New York has assembled such a list. But will these cute little books actually be read? By virtue of their handsome packaging, it seems more likely they will go the way of designer cookbooks, and wind up on end tables. This is a shame because every now and then there’s a truly inspired volume in the bunch, such as Michael Cunningham’s book on Provincetown, Land’s End.

It’s hard to think of a more apt pairing of subject and author than Land’s End. P-town is a place of immeasurable beauty, but it can also be a chore if you’re there in high season when its two main thoroughfares are clogged with tourists and slowly meandering families. A good guide then ought to be a veteran, someone who can tell us all how it was way back when, parsing the good from the bad of its contemporary condition without getting too hot under the collar. He also must be able to capture what’s brought people to P-town for so long — the light, the air, and of course, the sex.

Cunningham is up for the task on all accounts. He first came to this tiny slip of a sandbar on the tip of Cape Cod on a writing fellowship some 20 years ago. Although it might seem a bit indulgent to reveal these enviable circumstances, Cunningham smartly weaves his portrait of the town around them. In 1978, Cunningham was a recent MFA graduate with no plans and no real prospects — Provincetown provided sanctuary for him. And as he goes on to show, P-town’s been offering sanctuary for other lost souls for almost 400 years.

The first group to wash up on P-town’s sandy beaches were the Pilgrims of the Mayflower, who arrived after 66 bruising days at sea. They didn’t stay long, which is one reason why Plymouth got bragging rights. There also wasn’t much to remember of the place. Writing in a journal, one settler commented that the landscape was rife with “shrubbie pines, hurts [huckleberries], and such trash.” Four people died over the winter.

When the railroads connected it to Boston in the 1800s, Provincetown gained a sense of permanency that its fishing industry had never promised. Still, life there was a losing battle against the elements. Soil had to come from ships that had stopped over to pick up cod. That sense of transience is still there. A hurricane could blow it away, and that’s part of the appeal.

Cunningham drops these historical tidbits with the breezy assurance of a tour guide, one intent on making his own singular experience of the town felt. Land’s End is, as its title promises, “a walk through Provincetown.” Cunningham literally zigzags his way across the town’s three-block grid, pausing to describe the refurbished homes of friends, the place where people go for pizza and ice cream when the bars close, the place where men have sex with one another on the beach, and so on.

Although this style can be somewhat disorienting — one has the sneaking suspicion that this book visits some corners twice — it has the virtue of presenting the town as best experienced, on foot, and with an eye for how things work. During one section of the book, Cunningham actually toes his way along the beaches, beginning at Herring Cove, progressing through the gay and lesbian hangouts, past the family area, and winding up at Hatches Harbor, demarcating their differences.

While Cunningham seems to know the town in and out, there are times when he feels more like a booster than a guide, especially when he describes the town’s artistic lineage. Writing of Eugene O’Neill, John Dos Passos, Mabel Dodge, Edmund Wilson, and more, Cunningham describes how “[t]hey argued and drank at the A-House and the Old Colony Tap. Everybody slept with everybody. Some of the writers started writing plays, usually about their complicated love affairs, jealousies, and political disagreements.”

Land’s End is truest to Provincetown when Cunningham tells us what he has experienced there. The most touching parts of the book, then, concern people; friends who have since passed on from AIDS, others who live there still. What other place in America can bridge the gap between WASP vacationers and seven-foot-tall drag queens? What other hamlet could support the edifice of Norman Mailer (who owns the only brick home there) without sinking? This spirit, Cunningham argues, has carried over today, making Provincetown a kind of “New Orleans of the North.” It might seem like an odd comparison, but after Cunningham’s walk is done, it’s a name that sticks.

John Freeman can be reached at jfreeman4@nyc.rr.com.