I have now received three books from readers that they have written, since I have been in Winter Quarters. This is indeed a blessing. I noticed as far back as 2014, that at least 10% of my readers were writers and have been proud of that. Of course, being a writer that other writers like to read, is one of the key signs that your writing will not be popular in your lifetime. Which is fine. To be popular in Our Time is little different from being that substance that draws flies in a stable.

I am not able to read Clark’s entire book, due to my eye condition. It is 278 pages with small font and thankfully well-spaced lines, which will enable me to read a few pages a day until I have to leave it in winter quarters for a year. I lost 60% of my bodily strength, upper, lower and core, over the last year, and have to practice ultralight hoboism and cannot haul books.

I have skimmed the book and read three sections in depth, the table of contents and Clark’s examination of the fighting man’s relationship with the Eternal, and will discuss those parts and give a few quotes. In skimming Clark’s work I found a reference to Gardiner, a historian of physical culture for men who did an excellent treatment of ancient athletics in the early 1900s, with a focus on antiquity.

Clark has a pleasing style, writes better sentences than I do in my nonfiction and offers a holistic view of masculinity as vested in combat valuation, placing him in agreement with all of the great men of Antiquity and the Middle Ages and in stark disagreement with the sissy denizens of our current bitch matrix.

First, the cover graphic is brilliant, a helmet from man’s most dehumanizing war that retains a warrior identity within the shackled industrial slaughter house of mere soldiery.

Within the book is a friendly note:

“James, I mention you enough times in here that I thought it appropriate to send you a copy. Best, Clark.”

A man who writes under his real name—hope proposed in ink in a world run red with the blood of underthought.

Clark demonstrates, in the 23 pages I have read skimming the book, a clear understanding of ancient Hellenic metaphysics and civics, a working knowledge of fitness and combat training, and an actual understanding of The Gospels, which is unusual and refreshing:

Clark begins a footnote with,

“You probably conceive of Heracles as some hulking, massive figure…”

and goes on to describe that this is a later Roman influence, for Rome had many more similarities culturally to Modernity than did earlier Hellenic antiquity. The mid point of the book spends significant time in sorting out our corrupt cartoonish image of bodybuilding and real combative fitness, as exemplified by the Spear-bearer of Polykleitos which the author placed on the back of the book. Numerous examples of weightlifting having come to distort our image of fitness over the last hundred years or so, are given. Clark departs early from our sports-based and meat-based view of fitness and discusses hiking and rucking as baseline fitness pursuits.

Between pages 155 and 170 Clark discusses the merits of slashing and thrusting with a wide range of lucid observations, pointing out that that our view of the sword has been distorted by a sporting or dueling orientation over mass combat and melee.

From 174 to 179 he gives a useful overview of boxing for warrior purposes, and, as with the other arts under discussion, intelligently places it in sporting, metaphysical and practical contexts.

The favorite part of Clark’s book, for me, is the discussion of how pacifism and feminism have corrupted Christian ethics in our time. Many a time, over five decades, have I seen a church lady pressure her husband or fiancee to denounce combat as unchristian.

From page 231:

“The one passage that truly puts the lie to the notion that Christianity embraces radical pacifism comes to us in the Gospel of Luke. During the Last Supper, after reminding his disciples that they had lacked nothing on their mission-journeys, Christ counseled them: ‘And let him who has no sword sell his cloak and buy one.’”

As he does with sword work and the discussion of sources earlier, Clark then discusses this passage in context.

For this old coot, beyond using most of the body-purposing advice given in this well-organized primer on being a man in a woman’s world, King of All Things has been an enjoyable tryst today, as I digressed into the text from points of interest. However, when I was a young fellow, particularly in my 20s working as an overnight laborer in Baltimore, being hunted by Black and Blue to my ordained extinction, I would have benefited greatly from a book like this—but as far as I know, they did not exist. In those days, combining insightful historical inquiry, practical training and God, was not a publisher-friendly format for ideas.

Thanks, Clark.