I was never pals with Howard Mitcham.... I knew Howard through his book. This book. Which was presented to me by a friend pretty much the first day I began working as a cook.
--Anthony Bourdain, in the introduction to the 2018 edition of Provincetown Seafood Cookbook
The new film Tony is about a formative time in the life of legendary chef, writer, and TV personality Anthony Bourdain. Set in Provincetown, Mass., during a summer in the mid-1970s, Tony is a fictionalized version of his initiation into the chaos, camaraderie, and multi-layered addictive qualities of professional cooking.
The film is excellent. My response to it was also enhanced by some inside information, since I'd recently been in conversation with Dan Simon, founder & publisher of Seven Stories Press; and Tim Barry, the owner of Provincetown's Tim's Used Books who had recommended bringing Provincetown Seafood Cookbook back into print a few years ago.
The 2018 edition features an introduction by Bourdain, perhaps one of the last things he wrote before his tragic death the same year. The cookbook also plays a key supporting role in Tony (including a spoiler alert on page 58). Can a cookbook win an Oscar?
"Seven Stories does many, many great books, but not so many fun ones," Simon noted. "Howard Mitcham's Provincetown Seafood Cookbook is fun--that rare title that captures the spirit of a place and its cuisine. Mitcham was a larger than life figure. A deaf person who was famous not only as a chef but also as a storyteller."
He added that the cookbook sold well from the start, but the film has sparked a dramatic increase, especially after director Matt Johnson shared in an interview that Barry had given him a copy, "then the director wove his story about the young Bourdain around our book, well that has really upped the ante. The book represents everything, a certain attitude towards living life with attitude, that Bourdain was looking for. In a way, he learned how to live from Mitcham. It's all in the film--which I liked a lot--and in turn it's all in Provincetown Seafood Cookbook."
Simon also cited the positive aftereffects of a New York Times article by Pete Wells, who described the cookbook as "the Rosetta Stone" of Provincetown seafood cookery.
"Provincetown Seafood Cookbook has gone crazy," Simon noted. "We have trouble keeping it in stock. We have been reprinting, both digitally and by traditional offset printing, and have been selling many thousands, but even so the minute a new printing arrives it's out the door."
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| Tim Barry | |
How did the connection between Simon and Barry happen? The bookseller said that about 15 years ago, they had a conversation regarding "books that people have asked for over and over that we never had enough copies of.... Can't remember whose idea it was for me to isolate titles that were out-of-print and have Seven Stories Press republish them....
"I showed him the 1975 Provincetown Seafood Cookbook, explained its desirability, and he said 'Great, find somebody notable to write an introduction'.... I'd read Kitchen Confidential, knew Anthony Bourdain loved Mitcham's book. Did a bit of forensic Googling, realized I could maybe get through to Bourdain through my bookshop acquaintance Gabriella Doob, a young editor at Ecco Books. She hooked me up with Laurie Woolover, Bourdain's assistant, who forwarded my 'ask' letter to Bourdain, and in less than a week he replied, 'Sure, what's the deadline?" Gobsmacked, I nervously replied 'We're on a tight schedule, I'll need it in three weeks.' It was a lie; he could have said 'I'll need a year to do it,' and we'd have said 'Great!' Two days later Bourdain dropped his essay in my inbox."
Simon recalled that when he met with Barry over lunch, the bookseller "presented several titles, Mitcham's among them, and he just seemed to me to have the gift. I offered him an imprint [now Tim's Books] at Seven Stories on the spot. Before we got to having our coffee. I have never done that before or since. Provincetown Seafood Cookbook was the first title."
Barry added that the book "is more of a social history of mid-century Provincetown through the lens of Portuguese cooking, and also showcases Mitcham's charming visual art. He regarded himself as an artist, had several books of his artwork published."
In Kitchen Confidential, Bourdain writes that "Howard was a revered elder statesman of Cape Cod cookery, a respected chef of a very busy restaurant, and the author of two very highly regarded cookbooks: the Provincetown Seafood Cookbook and Creole, Gumbo and All That Jazz--two volumes I still refer to, and which were hugely influential for me and my budding culinary peers of the time."
Although Barry never met Bourdain, "it is documented that he visited Provincetown several times in the 2000s, shooting for his show, so I like to think he may have poked his head into my shop. I do think his nonfiction books are endlessly readable," he said.
The next Tim's Books project is a collection of Herbert Huncke writings, put together by one of his literary executors, Jerome Poynter. More Howard Mitcham titles are also being planned.
"Tim is the legendary bookseller and he's the only person I've ever offered an imprint to," Simon noted. "Provincetown is a destination, a magical destination. Authors, actors, musicians, everyone goes there, in the same way that everyone goes to New York City or New Orleans. And everyone who goes to Provincetown crosses the little boardwalk from Commercial Street and visits Tim's Books. So Tim knows everybody and everybody knows Tim." Which is also why we still have Provincetown Seafood Cookbook.