Photo by Bill Hardesty

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“The Hell’s Angels Letters & The Origins of Gonzo” Panel with Margaret Ann Harrell | Louisville, KY | North Carolina Writers’ Network (ncwriters.org)

Event Artwork: Grant Goodwine

Matt Hahn and Margaret Harrell, Gonzofest ’23

William McKeen and Ron Whitehead, GF ’23

The Hell’s Angels Letters panel, Gonzofest

The Hell’s Angels LETTERS Esteemed Panel, Gonzofest ’23

Tim Denevi (Freak Kingdom) and Margaret Harrell (Hell’s Angels Letters)

Dr. John Brick, GonzoFest panel,, and Danielle

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Click to read the marvelous interview conducted by John Kennedy.

I thoroughly enjoyed myself. He sets the interview up this way:

Never for a moment quail before your antagonists. Your fearlessness will be to them a sure token of impending destruction, but to you it will be a sure token of your salvation—a token coming from God. – Philippians 1:28

She says life has taught her that being spiritually fearless and unapologetically yourself is an essential component of identifying and nourishing the God-given gifts and purpose one is born with. She realized that to achieve that for herself she needed to cast aside crippling self-consciousness. Achieving that easier-said-than-done goal, she remembers, was greatly assisted by some of the notable men in her life. In her memoirs, Harrell illustrates how  Thompson, Klonsky, and Mensaert particularly exhibited the sort of authenticity that was vital to helping her learn how to express her true self.

JWK: You’re latest book is called The Hell’s Angels Letters and is a full-color coffee table book that follows up on your Keep This Quiet! memoir as . . . 

Click on the link to read the article.

A marvelous thank-you to the publisher, John Kennedy.

The post On beliefnet.com – How Hunter S. Thompson, Milton Klonsky and Jan Mensaert taught me the power of fearlessness appeared first on Margaret A. Harrell.

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From Paul Krassner – Realist

Diving into my garage boxes, I found a follow-up note from Paul Krassner that confirms what I remembered: he explains that in my absence (I was in Las Angeles with Hunter during a quick weekend visit) he sent me a letter but addressed it to the wrong person at Random House. So here is how I found out about that and – yes – I hurried down to the Obscene Letters area to rescue it and read it. True, such a section existed at Random House down in the basement. It made for amusing reading, and I kept both letters as souvenirs.

Read excerpts from the original, funny – mash – letter here.

The post Paul Krassner’s Second Letter appeared first on Margaret A. Harrell.

In the 1950s, almost everything one wanted to read was published in Paris by Maurice. And banned. Lawrence Durrell, Samuel Beckett, Jean Genet, “Pauline Reage &/or Dominique Aury” aka Anne Desclos’ Story of O, Marquis de Sade, Jean Cocteau, Vladimir Nabokov, Chester Himes, Alexander Trocchi, Terry Southern, “Akbar del Piombo” aka Norman Rubington, “Harriet Daimler” aka Iris Owens, Nikos Zorba the Greek Kazantzakis, “Wu Wu Meng” aka Sinclair Beiles’ only novel Houses of Joy, Gregory Corso’s only novel The American Express, Philip O’Connor’s Steiner’s Tour, Raymond Queneau’s Zazie dans Le Metro and Georges Bataille to name just a few. American graduate students earned their tuition by renting out reading copies to undergraduates of the books published by Olympia Press. So when I arrived on the Left Bank during the summer of 1960, having reached the age of my majority, the first thing I did, like so many others of my generation in search of meaning, was head for the bookstalls on the quays along the Seine to buy my Traveller’s Companions, green-covered copies of Henry Miller’s Tropics and William Burroughs’ dust-jacketed The Naked Lunch.

Continue reading.

Below in the excerpt from Keep This Quiet! My Relationship with Hunter S. Thompson, Milton Klonsky, and Jan Mensaert, I discuss my interactions with Sarah (who lived in the brownstone next door on Bleecker Street) and, by extension though not in person, Girodias:

 Ensconced in my old Village apartment, I was now a Random House copy editor. My own book begun, whomever I met I looked at as a possible character. Bits of many people might figure in.

Next door in another Bleecker Street brownstone was beautiful, thin, elegant, groovy Sarah Uman, the daughter of a black Chicago jazz musician. She was the mistress of Barney Rosset, Grove Press publisher, and would lead me to my main male protagonist. Waging legal wars in the US on behalf of Lady Chatterly’s Lover and Tropic of Cancer, publishing Ginsberg’s “Howl” and Burrough’s Naked Lunch along with Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, to name a few, Rosset, with his Grove Press and Evergreen Review, successfully toppled censorship. In “The Most Dangerous Man in Publishing,” Louisa Thomas wrote, “He found writers who wanted to break new paths, and then he picked up a sledgehammer to help them whale away at the existing order.”  More later.

I cultivated Sarah, who occasionally – in tiptop fashion and knockout sophistication – was sent to Paris on business . Rosset told her, she said, “You don’t know how to talk.” He then taught her. Sometimes I babysat her son. I believed he was Rosset’s, though perhaps he wasn’t. For my book I confiscated his line: “What’s a mecent mixer?”

I have to admit that babysitting was a ploy. I hoped through this association to get back with Lawrence . Once again I found myself in a room with a bowl of pot, which she said to help myself to and I didn’t. One night Sarah invited me to have a drink at the Corner Bistro. She stopped across the street at 375, to pick up the eccentric Marguerite Young—almost fifty, newly famous for Miss MacIntosh, My Darling—whose apartment I remember for the angels hanging from the ceiling. Young had received a Guggenheim and taught at Columbia, the New School, and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

Walking three abreast— Marguerite Young with short, straight, unglamorous hair, in a long dress with shawls and scarves—we headed out. Marguerite had spent nearly eighteen years on her thousand-plus-page novel. I was to beat that record, though I had no idea of such a prospect. Under other circumstances, this chapter would recall my unforgettable evening with Young. But that was wiped from memory by what happened next .

Click here for the NYT obituary of Girodias: A very colorful life, with many literature classics published by his press – Lolita (1955, Vladimir Nabokov) and The Ginger Man (1955, J. P. Donleavy), for example – which, at the time, battled charges that they were pornographic.

The post Maurice Girodias – A bit of Adventure – the Sixties appeared first on Margaret A. Harrell.

Read it with Keep This Quiet! My Relationship with Hunter S. Thompson, Milton Klonsky, and Jan Mensaert. This companion book narrates – sometimes in letters to me from Hunter himself – his experiences, objections and lively, pungent remarks regarding his whole Random House experience as a young author getting his first book published. And taking his first step out into the Larger World.

And if you like Keep This Quiet! consider reviewing it even very briefly. It only takes a few words. Thanks!

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Margaret Harrell with Juan Thompson, Deb Fuller, and Laila Nabulsi at the Gonzo Fest Louisville 2016

Come in out of the rain tomorrow to experience the Keep This Quiet! memoir series

With Margaret A. Harrell

Readings and Q & A

The Book Bar

2-4 p.m, Sunday, May 29

10511 Shadowlawn Drive, Suite 115 Raleigh, NC 27614

Meet Margaret as she guides us through some highlights of the Keep This Quiet! series, which evolves from New York City in the 1960s (Keep This Quiet!: My Relationship with Hunter S. Thompson, Milton Klonsky, and Jan Mensaert), through marriage to a Belgian poet (and life in Morocco), through the mysteries of spiritual initiations at the C. G. Jung Institute Zurich and after in Keep This Quiet! III. The evening will focus most on the first book, with Hunter Thompson letters on display and anecdotes. Alice Osborn will be on hand with guitar music.

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Beat Scene article

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A Margaret Harrell Q&A

The post An Interview with HST Books about the Keep this Quiet! Book Series appeared first on Margaret A. Harrell.