'Not just accepting Human failure but sanctifying it", August 5, 2016

By The Leveller

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This review is from: A Once Great Medieval City: 2016: Impressions of Baltimore Maryland (Paperback)

This book borrows its title from a well known anecdote of H.L Mencken describing his hometown of Baltimore, Maryland. It is in many ways a more poetic and dare I say gothic work from the usually ebonic laden urban narratives LaFond is known for. It is punctuated with lo-fi photography of barren and ghost like scenery encompassing the old and worn memorials of a dying race.

The book is divided into three sections, the first, A Fallen Lady dealing with H.L Mencken himself. James spends the smallest amount of time on the Sage of Baltimore but makes it worthwhile, you can see that he is almost channeling the ghost of this man who saw humanity for what it really was and had the Nietzschian inspired courage to face it head on. Seeing democracy for the farce it is and for the ultimate tyranny it would bring about, worse than any external tyrant or Iron Heel.

He sums up America in a similar way to LaFond..Liberty. 'The Liberty to envy, hate and loot'. Mencken’s own views and Will to Power a self described 'counter blast to sentimentality'.

I have a feeling James is going to read more Mencken in the future.

The Second part of the book, Among Her Bones is more in the usual vein of LaFond's 'urban oral histories'. Jim see's it as his personal mission: "As a writer, I see it as my duty to write about the obscure folks that will never make it into academic texts, national news or onto library shelves'. One can see Jim's theories, on how society is being restructured for greater control using various buffer zones and playing to the weakness of the different pawns used against each other, being further developed.

The Third part of the Book, Stone Ghosts is positively haunting, in that the man who usually writes about urban crime and its colorful low IQ characters gets downright poetic. This may be the best part of the book with some of his best essays, showing the man is multidimensional in his writing.

'Sun Ghost' is his prose/poem/narrative of going to work and seeing the contrast between a rotting urban infrastructure and the timeless natural denizens of the Chesapeake(Algonquin for 'ShellFish Water').

'My Mutating Muse' details the surreal horror landscape of what it is like to just go for a walk in his neighborhood. Robert E Howard's dark and beautiful prose has made its mark on this writer.

'Iron and Paint' and 'Manly Deeds, Womanly Words' are multifaceted essays told in real time of examining the war memorials of the vanquished that now face their removal and nullification..in a Nation of Nullification, a country at odds with its own existence. Decadence, gothic beauty and the transcendent immortality of monuments to the Fallen..men who died fighting for a cause, a concept now so utterly alien and even evil to the modern marshmallow people who walk by. People who would condemn and banish to oblivion the mere remnants of a better and more balanced masculine/feminine humanity.

'Arbor Vide Angels' is maybe the best thing he has ever written, LaFond and beautiful in the same sentence? Don't worry he brings in the practical survival advice of sleeping in a cemetery for safety, all the while seeing the slow end of civilization for what it is..always to fall victim to the vines and overgrowth of nature, both of Flora and of Mankind in their respective Plantations.

This book shows LaFond going to another level in his writing and expression, seeking Transcendence beyond the street advice and gender observations.