Yesterday I had lunch with Jack Donovan and after a few hours he said, “Time for work,” and set up his smart phone to take a picture of us. I had no idea he was going to promote my work to a bunch of masculinists. Today, Bran Mak Sworn, a Christian Masculinist who found me through Jack’s work when Jack reviewed Taboo You in November 2014, called me and said:
“I know you don’t care about the money. But many people are all of a sudden interested in you and their first reaction is ‘What the heck, where do I start?’ My friend, your problem is you write too much and no one knows where to begin. You need to get online and post a short list of titles for masculinity, survival, combat and fiction. The other thing I need to know, is Jack Donovan the real deal, is he walking the walk?”
As far as being a man, Jack was kind to a lonely old dog, patient with my rambling about a life gone wrong and bought my broke-ass lunch.
Ironically, Jack ended our conversation in the front seat of his truck with the following observation: “I’m a pagan and some of the best men I know are Christians. If there was ever a time to hate on Christianity, that time has passed.”
I will be writing about my impressions of Jack on a private site, perhaps in May. In the meantime, I have to say that Jack has impressed me as having two overriding concerns in his life: being a stronger man and helping men who have awakened to being the target of our emasculating society to become stronger men, everything else, politics, religion and money being secondary and subordinate to those imperatives.
Jack was puzzled that I had been censored, as he observed, “You don’t sell,” and we spoke on that for a while. I see the two of us as having two different mission statements in the same culture war. Jack, as a man in his prime with some hard earned social capital, needs to move in those places where men are successful, in an attempt to promote the idea that masculinity has an inherent value among men who hold levers of power. On the other hand, me, as a man passed his prime and deteriorating rapidly, can afford to write on taboo subjects that would serve as a roadblock at the level of real power: the hierarchal path and the taboo path.
If you are one of Jack’s readers and are interested in my work, I have the following suggestions, keeping in mind that my books published before late 2017 were not edited or proofed, something being done now by a team of volunteers.
On Masculinity, I suggest Masculine Axis, Man Gearing and Let the World Fend for Itself, all edited by Lynn Lockhart and published in late 2017 and early 2018.
Masculine Axis
Man Gearing
Let the World Fend for Itself
On Combat, try Being a Bad Man in a Worse World, which offers perspectives on boxing, stick-fighting, MMA, knife-fighting and self-defense and should serve as a good late chapter introduction to my other dozen titles on the subject of combat.
Being a Bad Man in a Worse World
On the extensive Harm City category, or on being a paleface pedestrian in an urban world that hates you, start with 40,000 Years from Home, as it has all of my violent experiences summarized up until 2016, meaning all but about 30:
40,000 Years from Home
In terms of fiction, my best rated work is the novella Reverent Chandler. This book was written at the request of a paleface warrior who liked Astride the Chariot of Night but complained that the Caucasian hero slaughtered mostly other palefaces. I said, “How about if I write a story about the seven baddest dudes on the planet and they are all Arуan, slaughtering scads of POCs?”
He responded, “Now you’re talking!”
Of course, asking me to write your story always comes with a price: Reverent Chandler being a saga of the LAST seven palefaces on Planet Earth, a tribe of neo-Odinist/Amerindian warriors fighting to save the body of their last holy man from desecration at the hands of armies of raging Catholic fanatics in a dying world. The prequel, Malediction Song is available, and should be read second, and the sequel and end of the trilogy, Nightsong of the Nords should be written by this time next year.
Reverent Chandler
Also, there is the book Thunderbird, of anachronistic racial vengeance, a story about 40 time-travelling Mohawk Indians trying to kill all the men and rape all the women in Postmodern Baltimore City in a single night…
Thunderbird
Thanks, Jack.
some links to my sites
link jameslafond.blogspot.com
link patreon.com/jameslafond
link facebook.com/tabooyou
and the punching bag Jack mentioned on instagram
This could be a good alliance or cooperative arrangement. I have always been impressed with Donovan's writing.
Jack reminded me of my father in terms of his high level of networking skill and in appearance of my lifelong friend Rick, a body builder. His call to men to find a masculine hierarchy to test and improve themselves is pleasantly incongruent with his individualistic frame of mind, which I find endearing.