Bringing books back from the dead

Hello!

This is Xander Beattie (aka Alex Matthews) — swimmer, artist publisher and author of The President. You're reading this because you're subscribed to my newsletter, a swimming pool library.

In this issue: a celebration of recent reprints, opportunities to encounter The President in the wild, and a handful of recs.

A big gay reprint renaissance

"Old books," the author Austin Kleon says, "are good spaceships for time travel: they let us visit the past, meditate on the present, and better fling ourselves into the future."

Much as I love buying secondhand books, unless I know what I'm looking for, finding past gems can be a daunting task. Reprinting helps solve the discoverability challenge, because it makes old books new again, putting them back into bookshops and in libraries so that contemporary audiences (or at least the ones who go to bookshops and libraries) can become more easily acquainted with them. A reprint offers an opportunity to celebrate, showcase and perhaps re-evaluate books that have become forgotten about, overlooked or become very hard (and/or expensive) to get hold of.

To bring back books and writing long buried by obscurity is a financial gamble – lack of name recognition means today's readers might just not buy the book. If the author is dead, they're not going to go on tour or promote the book on their socials (though the latter arguably has limited impact, anyway). And reissues can involve a complicated untangling of rights and permissions. Yet despite the risks, the costs, and the effort, some folks insist on resurrecting books they care about (and want you to care about) anyway. I find that to be a wonderful, hope-stirring thing.

Lazarus lit: an incomplete bibliography

All of these have been released in the US in 2025:

• Tramps Like Us, the Joe Westmoreland novel first published in 2001 has been reissued by MCD Books.
• Nightboat Books has published a new edition of Memories That Smell Like Gasoline, a selection of stories by the artist and activist David Wojnarowicz (first published in 1992, the year Wojnarowicz passed away at the age of 37).
• The nonprofit press also recently published The Faggots & Their Friends Between Revolutions, a facsimile of the original queer "fable-manifesto" first published 40 years ago.
• Nightboat will also soon be releasing Padam Padam, a doorstopper collection of long out-of-print poems by the late legendary Bay Area scribe Keven Kilian.
• Love is a Dangerous Word (New Directions), is a selection of the late poet Essex Hemphill's poems that hypnotically traverse the terrain of desire, Aids, racism and addiction. (I came across it while browsing BGS-QD, the bookstore at the LGBT Center in New York City in May; if you're in the Big Apple, it's worth checking out)
• After reading this piece about Robert Plunket, an almost-forgotten 80-year-old novelist who lives in a trailer in Florida, I'm keen to get hold of his two novels, My Search for Warren Harding and Love Junkie (both reissued recently by New Directions).

Also:

• Homodoxy, a press preoccupied with the intersections between theology, literature and queer sexuality, is planning a host of reprints too. (If you're curious about queer theology, I recommend its newsletter.)

The return of Butch

I had the great pleasure of interviewing the San Francisco-based historian, writer and bookseller Brendan McHugh about the (tenacious and collaborative) effort to bring The Butch Manual back into print over four decades after it was first published. Penned by the late Clark Henley in the style of a women’s glossy, The Butch Manual is a hilariously witty and darkly satirical guide for gay men on how to appear more masc.

Click below to read our chat:

“It makes me have zero regrets about not completing my PhD.”

An interview with public historian and writer BRENDAN MCHUGH about the collaborative effort to bring The Butch Manual back into print over four decades after it was first published. Penned by the late Clark Henley in the style of a women’s glossy, The Butch Manual is a hilariously witty

a swimming pool libraryXander Beattie

RECS! RECS! RECS!

I devoured (with enthralment, admiration and some discomfort) Theory & Practice, Michelle de Kretser's slim, silken, spiky novel.

In My Trade is Mystery, Carl Phillips gives us seven pithy essays about the writing life. I loved these gentle, quiet, helpful and wise reflections.

I am a big fan of Austin Kleon's newsletter on creativity, and finally got around to reading his book Show Your Work, which offers up ideas of how and why you should share your creative practice. So inspiring!

I'm a long way from making up for the dearth of translated works in my reading diet but a step in the right direction was reading Cuíer, an anthology of queer Brazilian works from the San Francisco-based publishing arm of the Center for the Art of Translation. (The book is beautiful, too.)