New-Old Books
Last May, I published my second and doubtless my last novel, Now Look. Since then, as I should have mentioned before, Downeast Books, its publisher, has republished the first novel, A Place in Mind, published by Scribner way back in 1989 (!). The same house has re-issued my book of narrative poems, The Blainville Testament, originally issued by the estimable and now defunct Story Line Press. Downeast has also re-issued A Little Wildness, my book-length essay on busting through upcountry New England woods off-trail, recording what occurred to me as I did so. Finally, Downeast has re-issued my first book of essays, Hunting the Whole Way home, which chronicles a long life of hunting and fly-fishing but more importantly, of course, what those pursuits have meant to me as conservationist, father, husband, and so on. (Its publication precedes the arrival of our first of eight grandchildren.)
Good for you! Glad you are getting some new reissues. You deserve it.
Entering into old age as a writer has brought home to me how important publication, or republication, is--it at least allows the chance that those of us who have worked all our lives in comparative obscurity may have our work see the light of day, even if we don't live to see it. It has made me, in particular, anxious to talk up or, in one case, actually publish, the work of friends whose worthy work might otherwise be lost before it can be recognized. Two of the most worthy poets of the Nineteenth Century, Gerard Manley Hopkins and Emily Dickinson, could so easily have been lost to us if friends or associates had not preserved and push out their work. They were hardly known otherwise.