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Title: Ptown: Art, Sex, and Money on the Outer Cape by Peter Manso ISBN: 0-7432-4311-0 Publisher: Scribner Pub. Date: 06 May, 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 2.69 (13 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Entertaining, if ultimately sad, story of fabulous Ptown
Comment: I first visited Ptown just after the mid-Sixties when two gay artist friends of mine bought a house there and turned it into a very barebones B&B with a gallery attached. Ptown was a great place, and I have returned there many times since.
I found Manso's book to be well written and entertaining, despite a minority of Amazon reviewers who found it quite otherwise. His style is straightforward, and the narrative is a combination of history, storytelling and gossip interwoven in a very deft manner. He develops various topics in the story of Ptown and does an excellent job of weaving in the life stories of a wide spectrum of Ptown's inhabitants. If you have a problem reading Manso's book, then "walk/don't walk" signs must be daily life threatening situations.
The author sketches in the pre-colonial and 19th century history of Ptown with interesting anecdotes; however it is in his presentations of the development of the Portuguese fishing community, the beginning of the arts colony and the arrival of the earlier gay settlers in the 60s and 70s - and their battles, cominglings and final integration - where he excells. The lives of many people are explored and they weave in and out of the Ptown story over the years so that one gets a real feel for the community.
There were three reviewers who claimed that the book is homophobic, though one of those reviews has now disappeared. As a gay man, I really feel compelled to comment on those claims. And my response is "{crud}!" One of these complainers after making that assertion, then goes on to also complain that certain topics are treated at too great a length - one of them being a gay man who has been at the center of Ptown's life for decades, and has been involved in many of community service projects. Maybe she read so fast she didn't realize he was gay.
Several members of the established gay community are featured repeatedly, prominently and positively in the book. Manso has certainly balanced his attentions very fairly among the Portuguese, artistic, and gay communities of Ptown, and he has done a great job showing how the town various elements could pull together when faced with crises.
However, in the end this is not just the story of the life, but the death by strangulation of an old diverse - get that word, "diverse" - rock 'em, sock 'em town funky old place. The impact in the Nineties of luxury real estate development aimed overwhelmingly at wealthy gay people and a flashy commercial environment for gay visitors has all but killed the town. The powerful arts and business conglomerates - very heavily gay in their makeup - are advocating more and more economic development and centralization; however, failing to point out that it will primarily benefit them, and not the old long time communities of Ptown.
The Portuguese, the artists and the old time gay residents are not only being pushed out by the sky-high costs of life in Ptown, they are not wanted by the wave of gay arrivistes who are indifferent, when not antagonistic, to Ptown's past history and traditions - and the new arrivals make no bones about. It is ironic that we gay people who make so much - in our political campaigning - about diversity are actively and with malice destroying it in Ptown. Manso is not homophobic on this score even, from my own personal experience I would say he's been, if anything, extremely lighthanded.
I had decided in the 90's to investigate Ptown as a place to settle in year around. I was fortunate enough to have enough money to consider purchasing an apartment there and felt that if it were well enough situated I could deal with the hordes of summer visitors that almost suffocate Ptown. However, I wanted to get a picture of the all-year residents, and, therefore, stayed for three off-season months with two gay friends who lived in Ptown. During that time they seemed to be constantly and unwillingly sucked into "us against them" conversations. Twice they were visited by recent gay female residents who proceeded to instruct them on what their attitudes should be on local issues, and in each case departed with a shameless warning that "If you don't support us, you'll be sorry you live here." I was stunned - my friends were established gay residents in town. I left convinced - and Manso's book confirms the rightness of my decision - that the new Ptown was not run by the kind of people I would want for neighbors. Ultimately I found that Europe offered more congenially integrated gay-straight society.
Rating: 1
Summary: Pass It By
Comment: Poorly written, badly researched and apparently not even edited. A truly awful book about a fascinating place. Mr. Manso's feelings about the gay people in Provincetown is made abundantly clear, ad naseum. I wont rehash it here. Instead, he chooses to glamorize small time crooks, drug smugglers and adulterers as the heroes of his sordid little book. His chapters about Jay Critchley, a sort of mea culpa for the hatemongering that comes before and after, don't even begin to flesh out a human being, let alone a strong gay man. He manages to reduce the extraordinary down to the most common of stereotypes.
Your best bet would be to get in your car, and head up Rt 6 to see for yourself. Since you're a visitor, it will only serve to drive Mr. Manso crazy. GOOD!
Rating: 1
Summary: Ugly and stupid
Comment: This is a sloppy, lazy, badly written piece of work whose only purpose is to argue that Provincetown has been ruined by those awful homosexuals. Manso tries to cover himself with stories about Jay Critchley, but the real driving force of the book is his hatred of gay people. If you hate homosexuals, especially those with money, you might enjoy this book. Otherwise, I suggest that you skip it.
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Title: Land's End : A Walk In Provincetown by Michael Cunningham ISBN: 0609609076 Publisher: Crown Pub. Date: 06 August, 2002 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: Invisible Eden: A Story of Love and Murder on Cape Cod by MARIA FLOOK ISBN: 0767913744 Publisher: Broadway Pub. Date: 24 June, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Provincetown: Stories from Land's End (Massachusetts Town Memoir) by Kathy Shorr, Anne Rosen ISBN: 1889833339 Publisher: Commonwealth Editions Pub. Date: May, 2002 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: In His Garden: The Anatomy of a Murderer (Cape Cod Murders) by Leo Damore ISBN: 044020707X Publisher: Dell Pub. Date: 05 June, 1990 List Price(USD): $5.99 |
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Title: Great Fortune: The Epic of Rockefeller Center by Daniel Okrent ISBN: 0670031690 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: 25 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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