Cape Cod, Revisited

by Michael Thurston, Russ Rymer (Introduction)

Knowing that the Cape is more than tourist-riddled beaches and overpriced ice cream, Michael Thurston takes us on a late-summer retread of one of Thoreau's most famous walks. Blending travel writing and literary criticism, Thurston takes us along two centuries of the shore, reconsidering the dreadful shipwreck of the St. John, and considering the pliability of a hand-painted postcard. From artists like Joel Meyerwitz and Edward Hopper, to statesman John Hay and cinematographer Robert Richardson. CAPE COD, REVISITED is more than a beach read; it's a tapestry of geological history, personal memoir, and Thoreau's transcendent ability to measure that line between the beach and the boundless sea. MICHAEL THURSTON lives in Northampton, MA, and teaches at Smith College. He is the author of HOUSES FROM ANOTHER STREET (Levellers 2019) and of several books and numerous essays on modern poetry and fiction. RUSS RYMER has been awarded the 2013 Ed Cunningham Award for Best Magazine Reporting from Abroad by the Overseas Press Club, for his article about Vanishing Languages in National Geographic. He has contributed articles to major magazines and newspapers, including The New Yorker, National Geographic, Harper’s, Atlantic, Smithsonian, Vogue, Los Angeles Magazine, The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, and The Strad. He has written two non-fiction books. GENIE—A SCIENTIFIC TRAGEDY (HarperCollins, 1993) was translated into six languages and transformed into a NOVA television documentary, and was a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt published his first novel, PARIS TWILIGHT, in July, 2013.

113 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 7, 2020

About the author

Michael Thurston is the Helen Means Professor of English at Smith College. His previous books include Making Something Happen: American Political Poetry between the World Wars, The Underworld Descent in Twentieth-Century Poetry, and Reading Postwar British and Irish Poetry (with Nigel Alderman). He is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship and currently serves as Provost and Dean of the Faculty.