Very few! It depends on who you’re talking to. I could have told you. Everybody in the Village – that’s Greenwich Village – could have. Because we didn’t make anything of it. Now, if you worked beside him at the New York Times, that was different. The journalists didn’t know. Wonder why?

No one to whom it would have been a big deal knew. All of us who took it with a grain of salt – just a fact, nothing to even discuss with him – all of us who treated him as just human, we knew.

This story, “White Like Me” (June 17, 1996, by the brilliant Harvard professor Henry L. Gates Jr., sometimes called a “superstar”), was supposed to be the startling posthumous core revelation in the biography of the New York Times book editor/critic Anatole Broyard. Impeccably well written, the article was convincing. But as I pondered in the months since, it became clear that the slant should be corrected. That despite the fact that the story appeared to cover all angles.

But did it?

The well-known Harvard University author of this essay took a portion of a biography (from interviews, primarily) and—perhaps understandably—generalized. He was evidently unaware of the impression retained among Anatole Broyard’s friends and acquaintances.

To go back, then, to 1966. I was introduced to Anatole by his “closest friend for many years” (quoting the article, p. 69: this was “the poet and Blake scholar”), Milton Klonsky, who said to me one evening that we were to be joined by not just a Times reporter. But—going out of his way to make sure I did not miss this point—a Black man.

Why would he tell me this, and even before the introduction? Well, for one thing that fact wasn’t obvious. Nor was it, once known, pertinent to the friendship. So it was made completely clear. Nor was I even admonished not to tell anyone of it. I had the impression everyone knew; nothing led me to think otherwise – no attempt at concealment. But then, it was down in the Village. Race, sex, being gay – none of it was a deficit in that (Greenwich Village) community in that 60s period. Nor would it have been among that group, in any period.

1. To move on, about seven months before Anatole died, I revisited him, up in Cambridge. That is a revealing story—worthy of being part of his professional record. Collecting material from the 60s for his memoirs (published as Kafka Was the Rage, but which he died before completing), he was hoping to collect “Milton stories” from me. (“People want to read about the 60s,” he said.) That chapter never appeared – due to death. (For clarity’s sake, let me say that the Margaret in the publication is not myself.) The material he talked to me about that day – what he intended to focus on in his 60s chapter—is unwritten. He had set the chapter up, the slant, the focus (perhaps the “surprising switch” that he customarily used between the end of a chapter and the start of the next). But the book ended—before he got there.  He was jumping on the trampoline, sure he was going to live, in high artistic inspiration, when I talked to him by telephone, just after our conversation. Sometime later I learned that that October, he was dead, leaving a manuscript that could not conclude on the point proposed.
2. As to why some people knew he was black (and if like me, thought that everyone did), whereas others thought the contrary, I think it important to add some data. For instance, in the conversation referred to above (in 1990), he cited a cherished value—which obliquely or implicitly addresses this question. Ironically, he had avoided the disparity of being looked down on, due purely to birth certificate. (H. L. Gates, Jr. says, “Anatole Broyard, Negro writer, was the larger lie,” which he deleted from his life). But there was another side to that coin. He became looked up to. There is some suggestion (in the comments quoted) that he coveted this position. Anyone would. That is belied, however, by his exact words in 1990. He opened up to say, that he was greatly thinking about and missing Milton Klonsky—in that (word for word), “After he died no one talked to me as an equal.” Without interacting and dialoguing on equal grounds, life paled. He said Milton Klonsky was “an ironist” with him (“a romantic” with me). MK had said to me, “You’ve never played with me. I can go to any carnival. Put on any mask. I’m an ironist—on the very highest level.” That “very highest level” was perhaps the key, where settling the aspect of the racial factor would not be the end of it. Indeed, once given the privilege of equality, that you exercised it.  (Klonsky was known for indirection, when not being blunt. Anatole is accused of this same style, as if it meant insincerity or a drawback, if used. He lightly said the word here in Cambridge, as if it stated a certain breadth of approach, an ability to stand in distance, the way humor or self-deflection does. Or all the possibilities the true ironist knows how to assert.)
3. I believe this and other “replies” will turn up data that belongs in his Papers. If the added record is not printed in The New Yorker, I will look for somewhere in which to preserve this data. The touchingly “human” narrative of how he waited in the snow at the train station in Boston for me, recovering from cancer, positive, generous, in the January before he died—the beautiful pair of photos I took at that moment, young and healthy-looking. Unincluded information of how he came to write “What the Cystoscope Said,” for instance. Also, the counter-reply—that in his generation, not only he and Ralph Ellison had writer’s block; nor (further) was he alone in receiving a never-fulfilled advance for a manuscript. Further, as to why Chandler Brossard was asked to delete a reference in the text of the unpublished of Who Walk in Darkness, I have extra info.
4. Though here in America, there are numerous opportunities to read book reviews, if you jump to a country like Romania, where authors (such as Arthur Koestler) were blacklisted, you will notice how the intellectuals, even now, value the Sunday literary section of the Times. Who Anatole Broyard was and what he contributed belongs, in fact, in an international context, such as there, where there was no concern what color might have gone into the genes to create the information and style appreciated.
5. The essay does not mention the caricature factor (watermelon/black) in the manuscript of Who Walk in Darkness. What he would have replied to this 1996 New Yorker story, we do not know. We do know (or I know) what happened in the case of an earlier misunderstanding, when his father misconstrued the motive of a deathbed suggestion, in which the intention was to remove pain.
6. What was shocking in some quarters must have been that the “revelation” was considered a well-kept secret. Also, that many writers are praised (considered interesting) for “inventing themselves.” Take Faulkner, as example. So even here, because of having certain blood, was one to be denied a privilege accorded to artists, right and left—to invent the way they see themselves, use their life material inside their creativity? No one told me, “This is a matter to be kept hush-hush.” This is a truly troubling point. Though an eminently researched opening presentation, which is highly contributive—up to the point it stopped, due to (probably) the inaccessibility of other material.

            There must be at least one person on The New Yorker staff who would be interested in hearing what material is available, to revert to a fairer portrait of such a figure in the US publishing scene.

Very sincerely yours, with the highest respect for your great publication,

MARGARET A. HARRELL

Postnote: No one was. Though kindly replying that this was their position.

          West 4th Street: Human Like Me
Another Look at the Portrayal of Anatole Broyard, in “White Like Me”

West 4^th Street, the location where, as reported in “White Like Me,” Anatole Broyard, stepping out of the subway, became white, is ironically precisely the street where Milton Klonsky lived, though not precisely at the subway. Two of Milton Klonsky’s best friends were Anatole Broyard and Seymour (Sy) Krim. They were very different as writers, but they belonged to the same literary period, which Krim has characterized in What’s This Cat’s Story? , explaining how the high value put on intellectualism affected his generation rather adversely—noteworthily including himself. Krim’s kinetic effusiveness of style is opposed to that of the New York Times critic Broyard, who was uneffusive, while being exquisite (see Kafka Was the Rage).

What causes me to write this, even having waited some time to do so, is that I saw Anatole nine months before he died, and that from the first day I was introduced to him—back in 1966—I was not told I was to meet Anatole Broyard, the writer/critic, but Anaole Broyard, the writer/critic, who was black (or was the phrase “spade”?). This seemed unnecessary, but I had no choice but to learn this. Anyone whom Milton Klonsky, Anatole’s “closest friend for many years,” introduced to him got this information up front, as if it were the most open nonsecret in the world, and with no restrictions whatsoever about whom one told. For this reason, I was completely taken aback and baffled at the implication that “the world” did not know this (in a fascinating, masterful New Yorker revelation after his death).

Certainly what I would call the Greenwich Village world—in particular, the West 4^th Street world—did know him. Any reporter (back then) could have dug up the information, despite the fact that he did not brandish it on letterheads. I could have written a news story about it and in fact when Anatole and Milton were typecast as characters in the manuscript of Who Walk in Darkness, the author was threatened with a suit for caricature by Anatole (the character based on was to be depicted with the flagrant detail of “eating a watermelon”). Thus, caricature. This particular information I received from Milton Klonsky.

Milton Klonsky would never have endured a friendship in which, as Anatole himself said, in his obituary tribute, there was any “compromise” whatsoever (“which,” he said—the refusal of compromise in a relationship—”condemned him to a rather lonely life”). The racial detail about him was stated without stress or emphasis—just included, if no other part of the introduction were kept.

I happened to live in Greenwich Village in the last half of the 60s, just around the corner from Milton Klonsky (who lived between West Fourth and Eleventh streets), during which time I saw Klonsky many evenings. Jumping to nine months before Anatole died: after not seeing him during the intervening years, I had an appointment for a dramatic meeting with him in Cambridge. I would like to record the graciousness of that meeting and something of the subject. He was working on Kafka Was the Rage. By the flukes of life, then, I have some insight into how the book would have gone on. For at our meeting, he was convinced he would live, would finish it; just afterwards when I telephoned, and instead of letting the machine speak, he picked up, he said he had been “working out on the trampoline.” That he felt great, in high energy, inspired. That he was going on with his chapter of Milton stories (the chapter perhaps never written, certainly never published); that he approved the character creation in the text by me I had given him, in that he found himself now calling “Milton” (as he wrote his own 60s text) “Robert” (in his mind). “Robert” was the fictional name that I used. There could have been no greater blessing given me, than that the publication I envisioned was honorable.

Let us describe that snowy day in Cambridge at the train station, in 1990, after not seeing each other for 20 years. He a famous critic.

The ground was covered with snow. I came in by train. He had assured me that he would wait at a particular place near the station exit. I couldn’t find him. After twenty minutes, I telephoned his home, to see if he was there. He was still at the station, waiting. Then I saw him. It was easy to recognize this handsome man in the snow, wearing a scarf around his neck, which—in that it hid the wrinkles you see on other photos on book covers—left the impression of a man 50. He did not say, or imply, that he was young. He had told me on the phone he was “an old man now.” Nothing of the sort. On the contrary, I took two, as it turned out, showpiece photos; from them, anyone can see this is a beautiful person: in one, he is smiling; in another, looking reflectively, or introspectively, down, at nowhere in focus.

He was recovering from cancer, he told me; that he was going to be all right, but that he had a cold (even so, he had waited in the snow); and so he invited me to a light, informal lunch. Remembering him from the late 60s, I would have expected nothing else, though he didn’t know it. He said he was writing his memoirs on the 1960s (“People are interested in the 60s”), currently “collecting Milton stories.” As his Kafka never reached the 60s, this now looks extremely poignant. He said to me “You were an important person in Milton’s life.” (He had the plan of contacting other people as well; I say this, in case they never found out.) He also showed no judgment at my choices in life. He said, “You seem to have found the formula for happiness.” I have to admit that in such a situation, I could not remember the stories I can now, stories partly prompted by reading Kafka Was the Rage. As the book ended, and I knew that he had died only nine months after this meeting, that I had seen him hopeful, artistically energized, and that this had all been reversed,  then playing out conversation, I realized (or interpreted) that the book did not end where it was intended to, at least on that January day in Cambridge. I searched my memory for what I had not brought to mind then. I would have reminded him about one of Milton’s favorite stories—how much Delmore Schwartz loved the Giants. That one day when Delmore’s radio broke, he listened to the rest of the game on Milton’s radio—telephoning to ask him to put the receiver by the radio and let him listen till the end, which he did. Or I could have noted that Milton said that Delmore and Anatole were so handsome that when they used to walk down a Village street together, a whole street of heads turned to look at them.

I also remembered—per the end of Kafka, which implies the opposite (at the end of Kafka, Anatole is finding solace in feminine beauty, in pointed contrast to Klonsky, who is not; and Anatole uses the situation to hold forth on a seemingly philosophical value of his), how “What the Cystoscope Said” came into being:

Anatole’s father was dying, in very great pain. The son thought his father would appreciate if he offered to put him “out of pain,” by bringing extra medicine. The father did not appreciate the suggestion. He misunderstood. Milton suggested they go on a double date, to take his mind off it. To get the full impact of this requires reading the closing implication in the final chapter in Anatole’s posthumous publication. In an exact reverse of the last paragraph there (of the manuscript as it stood at Anatole’s death), as if it were a dichotomy laid out with a ruler, in this turning point in his career, so far as achieving skyrocketing fame for it, it is Anatole who rejects all prospect of diluting the pain or deflection. And sits down in solitude at his typewriter, to produce the monument to the memory of the incident concerning his father’s death. Thus becoming anthologized in short story collections—in fact giving him a certain fame. It was partly in remembering this that I felt a no, at the end of his book. The structure of the prior chapters practiced the technique of impression reversal. The next chapter, I felt sure, would have reversed—or shown the contrary side—as he recaptured his masterful decision, the day he began “What the Cystoscope Said.” How could it end, short of showing this reverse facet, as prior chapters had—in the technique he handled so gracefully: to convince the reader of a stated situation, then follow that buildup (that uncontrovertible impression) with a total 180-degree shift, even what the reader thought engraved in solid rock. So what impressions of himself would he, the writer, reverse, had he gone on? Even some impressions that he himself had not seen through the pattern of; Milton had called writing “heuristic.” It was a place where you learned, about yourself also.

As Anatole and Milton conversed daily at the end of Milton’s life, so Anatole told me, he added that “After Milton died, no one talked to me as an equal.” It was a stunning moment.

“Cystoscope” showed himself in the act of understanding that his father did not want to be spared even excruciating physical pain; in biographical life. Remembering the surprise due to his father’s shock—bringing great energy to the task first in the writing and parallel to that, in the life situation—he might, had he lived, have tackled the corners where the race issue lurked. Writing induces virtually simultaneous shifts in consciousness and priority, when a topic creates a breakthrough, in the act of writing on it.  We see this in the memoirs of Carl Jung, where he comments that he picked up, for his autobiographical reflections, only places still holding energy—that is, saved till then to be dealt with. Those situations already dealt with had no energy and were ignored in his autobiography. That is, it is sometimes the very structure of a writer’s life that subjects s/he is intended to deal with, in the writing, hold the energy until used in that way. This block—being opened, at the time of death—left “open” what he would then have done about it. He died, knowing full well that this so-called secret would not “die” with him.

So I didn’t come up with valuable Milton stories for Anatole that day. I could bring up many now.

I also remembered how Milton had finished that conversation the day when he told me “When the time comes to finish—just finish.” He had exclaimed, “They were waiting for me.” That is, his friends. Was it true? This was no an arrogant statement, but something almost gasped, as if wrenched out. The conversation was on the subject of his advice about writing (“I don’t want you to make the same mistakes I did.” Pause. “Though in many ways, they weren’t mistakes.”) By his friends waiting for him, I took it to mean that it was a group, blocked in a force field; and that they were waiting, as it were, for the first step forward of one—at which point as a group they would have all begun to race onto the literary (perhaps world) scene. This was the impression in Krim’s portrait, when he pictured Klonsky as having the potential to be an Einstein or other great pioneer. In the coterie around Krim in the fifties, such predictions could seem reasonable, as they routinely had what Krim called almost illegally high ambitions. A New York intellectual environment that did not produce in literature this imagined result, but was virtually unreported on, in the figures that one by one dropped out.

Cyril Connolly had written of Milton Klonsky, in a London publication, that there were people who were friends of very famous people, who were quoted by them and sometimes turned into characters. But who were less-famous themselves. He said that perhaps they were “too proud to compete.” He said Milton Klonsky was such a person for his generation.  I had thought that he didn’t do enough. When I approached Anatole, reflecting this idea of Krim’s and of myself, Anatole said that he thought Milton did rather a lot. He began to list what he thought were the important works. This unarrogant, generous judgment, I felt, was evidently the way he saw ambition, and his own seasoned choices in his life. As we know, writing can be a great healer and self-interpreter. In the end, approaching this chapter, on the 60s, something stopped the writer. And I, having seen how intent he was, on going forward, find it a more intriguing question than the one of race; for after all, I knew about that for 24 years beforehand, and could have myself “blown the whistle” at any second. But I thought everyone knew. I encountered the reference from the moment of having an appointment with him one night in 1966, set up by Milton Klonsky, who was there too. The Harlem story, in Kafka, makes the information on his birth certificate, as C, transparently probable. He fit in down there in Harlem. Why? But he also had the manners of a gentleman. He went to great lengths to honor Klonsky’s memory, which he thought deserved, in a shared story as a Times Obituary for Klonsky. That, to him, was important. Really important. He made dead-sure that it got done.

I somehow feel, having listened in 1990 as he told me, at the end of his life, the value he put on being “talked to … as an equal,” the time had come to turn the tables and be very very sure that slant was mentioned, along with the other information.

It gives extraordinarily profound precision, to say of someone that he “wanted to be a writer, not a black writer. So he chose to live a lie rather than be trapped by the truth.” I found this indefensible. What I did find defensible, on the other hand, was the perceptive comment: “Broyard had confessed enough in his time to know that confession did nothing for the soul. He preferred to communicate his truths on higher frequencies.” On the other hand, while I am sure it is true he “preferred to communicate his truths on higher frequencies,” I am not sure about the first part—based on a quotation I took down, in which MK said precisely that he (himself) liked to “beat upon my breast”; i.e., his graphic picture, with its ancient references, to confession. If, as Anatole graciously said of Milton (in print), one could not “presume” to say anything about him, it’s seems “ironic”—that’s it—that one can say everything about himself, seizing on a facet, his Birth Certificate, penned down by people who (as Gates helpfully documented) did so, the very next year after “close to” 100 blacks were “lynched.” (This would be a good place to take a look at a dream Anatole reported.) In the new century, we will not confine people to one single frame of references—as here. Though this material on race should not have to be excluded. But we will multiply and make combinations, diagonals—as he, I believe, already did.

 See the March 7 obituary of Klonsky written by Broyard for The New York Times Book Review Supplement (1982), in which he uses this phrase (“His originality was such that though he was my closest friend for many years, he would suddenly strike me as a total stranger,” a phrase perhaps instructive in the present circumstances). As a sidelight of this sentence, he was defining originality—that it might include the ability to totally surprise. If it did so, it could be looked at from that point of view, though it could also be put into other lists of motivations and value (or psychological or sociological) systems. Which was it, ultimately and primarily?? Was it originality, and thus organic in the total personality or soul level, or was it primarily an escape or complex of some sort? The answer was all-important if a judgment were to be reached.

 Milton Klonsky, described as a Greenwich Village “poet genius,” a cult figure to Village literary people, in a book on “New York City in the 50s,” and as having “an IQ that could stutter your butter”—by Seymour Krim, in an essay on him, reprinted in his final posthumously published 1991 essay selections—was commissioned to write his memoirs on W. H. Auden, by The New Yorker, but died in the process in 1981. This long essay on Auden was included in his own (Milton Klonsky’s) posthumous selected essays, as “Chester, Wystan, Rhoda, and Me: A Fragment” (pp. 89-101, in A Discourse on Hip); it is otherwise-unpublished documentation about Auden, including the one nonhomosexual affair that he had, which was with Klonsky’s estranged wife. Klonsky told me, which is nowhere published, that he eventually came to believe that it was Auden’s roundabout relationship with him, that caused the deflected affair with his already-distant wife. Klonsky was friends with the other literary notables of the day, including such writers as James Ages. Klonsky begins the essay, walking along “West 4^th St.,” reading the Times. Having unfortuitously died while writing this commissioned article for The New Yorker, he is probably, for this accidental reason, not known to The New Yorker readers, though he is known to readers (in the past) of Commentary, Partisan Review, Hudson Review, etc. He was a very central figure in the coteries described in “White Like Me,” and was featured in the final paragraph of Kafka Was the Rage, in its posthumously published form—which was not as Anatole, had he lived, intended to continue it. He intended to continue, with a chapter of 1960s memoirs, beginning with his “Milton stories”—but ended the book in a broken-off version, cut short by his own death. In the accounts above, information was terminated as these figures of a generation of New York City friends and intellectuals tried to record their memories. Klonsky was the topic Anatole Broyard had reached in his memoirs, when he himself died, in 1990. The brief description, concluding the book, was not what he indicated to me was the note he wanted. Yet again, Klonsky did not go onto the record in any update since Krim’s essay in the way he otherwise would have. The comments included here (in the current short essay) come from two sources primarily: Anatole Broyard himself and Milton Klonsky—who at one point talked to him daily, at other points weekly. Anatole himself said it was daily, in the late period. If anyone needs to comment on the record, and cannot himself, it would be this person, whom Anatole described, in print as “my closest friend for many years,” a New York City intellectual “poet genius,” who was Jewish, white, of Russian ancestry. Published  in 1991, A Discourse on Hip , his Selected Writings, was expected by the publisher to take off by word of mouth; therefore, was never publicized. Therefore, this information was virtually unavailable to any researcher. Only by looking in the poet Delmore Schwartz’s letters, and in the index finding the reference to a letter Klonsky wrote to the Draft Board, would one have some documentary idea where to start looking for anecdotes. Schwartz said that Klonsky wrote the Draft Board, who drafter him, that being a poet he could not be called away on such short notice. The Draft Board relinquished, and gave him an extension from the Draft of six months—to get his papers readied.

 The posthumous Paragon House selected essays, which Krim participated in collecting—among which was the reprint of his 1960 essay, entitled “Milton Klonsky.”

 The article specifically says, that stepping out on West 4^th Street, Anatole Broyard became white, which is, ironically, the very street on which Milton Klonsky had his walk-up Village apartment. Thus, in all Greenwich Village, this is the one street it would be least accurate to cite.

 We had set up the meeting, to recall “Milton stories”–on his part, for his memoirs. I had in fact taken down many of the fabled phrases of Milton Klonsky, that made him a cult figure (verbatim, as he said them). This picked up where Krim’s essay, ending at 1960, stopped. I came on the scene in 1965.

 On the very night that Delmore died, he went down to the Village. And he met Milton. I was almost there but had just left. They talked. It was one of the very final moments in Delmore Schwartz’s life, and his old friend was there, perhaps representing all the old friends who would have liked to be there. How was his mind? I asked. It went in and out of lucidity, I was told. But at times, it was “completely lucid.”

 A Discourse on Hip: Selected Writings of Milton Klonsky (T. Solotaroff, Ed.). Detroit, Mich: Wayne State University Press.

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Available NOW in audio at AMPlify Audiobooks; in a few weeks available all across the United States

The Hell’s Angels Letters: Hunter S. Thompson, Margaret Harrell and the Making of an American Classic – Norfolk Press

Read by Margaret A. Harrell, Ron Whitehead, and Becky Parker Geist

Click here to purchase

Coming in Audio in the spring of 2025 – An Underground PRINCIPIA

An Underground PRINCIPIA

An Underground Principia

Read by Margaret A. Harrell, with poetry read by Ron Whitehead and intriguing, teaser footnotes by Becky Parker Geist

Dive into Soul-Enriching Reads by Margaret A. Harrell

Both books Recorded by Pro Audio Voices, Portland OR, with portions recorded by La La Land – Louisville’s Best Recording Studio (lalalandsound.com), Louisville KY

Cover Images by Grant Goodwine

Print version: The Hell’s Angels Letters. Available at Norfolk Press of San Francisco

Print version: An Underground PRINCIPIA. Buy at any online/brick-and-mortar bookstore.

I’m still reading An Underground Principia. I find it very amazing. I really take time to absorb it. And then what I’m doing is—whenever I read something, I try to also incorporate it into my own practice, my own meditations, in the morning. I find it so eye-opening. It is amazing, the information you shared there.–Jef Crab, Taiji master, shaman

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Cover design: Deborah Perdue

I think this may be my most ambitious book yet. And most playful. I say to myself: Who wrote this?

order at Amazon.

Sir Isaac Newton famously complained about “action at a distance.” How was it possible, he wrote, that gravity, or attraction, operated between objects without physical contact? Well, jump to the twenty-first century, and we have a lot more to say about that. Readers will enjoy a brilliant, outrageous, playful exploration of quantum physics in everyday life, from a secret interplay of TV plots with us, in electricity, to other speculations, founded in the author’s decades of initiations as well as being an original thinker and a scholar.
An unusual feature of the illustrations in AN UNDERGROUND PRINCIPIA is a technique called “computer-PK,” or mind through matter in the creation of printouts that refocus the text on-screen in the printing so that nothing happens twice. As in Einstein’s “Credo,” the author exemplifies: “The most beautiful and deepest experience can have is the sense of the mysterious.”

In SPACE ENCOUNTERS II: AN UNDERGROUND PRINCIPIA, Margaret Ann Harrell leaps beyond existentialism, beyond cellular molecular electric, beyond epistemology, beyond phenomenology, beyond quantum physics, beyond first second and third person narrative, beyond fourth person singular, beyond tragedy, beyond comedy, beyond all genres, beyond space and time, beyond yin and yang, beyond dualism in all its manufactured forms, beyond encyclopedic knowledge, beyond gravity, beyond electromagnetics, beyond nondualism, beyond death, beyond 3-D, beyond sound and light to where there is no distance to where there are no gaps to where the ever changing creative imagination is the host of all and everything. SPACE ENCOUNTERS II: AN UNDERGROUND PRINCIPIA is a masterpiece, a miracle.
From start to finish beginning to end I was blown away by the brilliance the radiance the outrageousness the playfulness the hilarity the footnotes the simultaneous multiple conversations all of it!

It’s talking my language, and it’s a language that’s never been spoken! Ha! And Aha!

—Ron Whitehead, U.S. National Lifetime Beat Poet Laureate

Margaret Harrell has the most open-ended and far-reaching mind of anyone I know.

—Rhea A. White, Director, the Exceptional Human Experience Network

But who is ready for this culmination of a lifetime, written with multiple spirit guides, or let’s say packs of inspiration? Master Taiji teacher points this out:

My biggest concern is that I have no idea how many people will be able to grasp the depth of the principles you describe. It is amazing enough that you take a lifetime of experiences and connect them into a driving force that leads to the realization of one’s purpose.
Even more amazing is that you include the most subtle levels of existence that play a role in these processes. An Underground Principia connects life purpose, spirituality, depth psychology, and quantum physics into one all-encompassing movement.
Most breathtakingly, by reading An Underground Principia, the reader can gain the insight that all of this is happening, not in one lifetime, whether human or universal, but in an eternal now. Amazing achievement . . .

To help with this conundrum, be on the lookout for this book in audio.

Also, Jef Crab is going to provide some Reader Notes. And maybe assist in a stronger fashion through recorded Skype sessions we are doing together. I couldn’t be more blessed.

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The light body never failed to help me adapt and stretch to any situation. This is no exaggeration. It boosts your creativity because it comes out of boundless energy. The light body is older and wiser than any of us. However, its energy, when properly focused, goes right into our everyday lives and energizes us on all levels.

I learned this course the “hard way”—by foot, train, and taxi—and in a foreign language, Dutch. I lived in Belgium. But it was fascinating that way. The energies were there with me, regardless of the language and circumstances. I was amazed that I could visualize with my eyes closed, which I hadn’t experienced before. The energies danced into “visions” when I least expected it, and they transported that excitement into me. As they transformed, that excited energy remained in me. So as soon as I moved back to the States, I began to teach the courses. Till I was teaching practically every light body course that the founders allowed any of their teachers to teach.

I offer you a free introductory hour in which you experience the energies yourself, still being guided by DaBen and Orin, the founding spirits. And now being watched over as well by Duane Packer and Sanaya Roman, who were their channels here on Earth until their recent passing. Come, enjoy. I always do. And I think you will too.

The photos comes from the CDs in the six-box home study program of Awakening Your Light Body created by LuminEssence, www.orindaben.com; there, Sanaya Roman and Duane Packer describe these courses they channeled into the Earth, which are now taught worldwide. Great attention is paid to keeping them authentic and not over-commercialized. Are you ready for this course? If so, please contact me. You can start immediately.

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If you would like it personally signed, contact me.  I will take orders to deliver personally to the Gonzofest in July 2013! It’s a marvelous gift or for your personal collection.

Read reviews and a book description on BookLife here.

Below are some reactions to The Hell’s Angels Letters followed by photos related to the book and me. Cover: Grant Goodwine. For collectors, there is a limited edition of 120 (at $120). For the high-end coffee table edition ($60, 297 pages, many in color), you can’t go wrong, as underscored enthusiastically by every single reader. Attention: there’s now an ebook  option on Amazon here.

REVIEWS:

The eminent reviewer for the Washington Post Michael Dirda has given a Big Head’s Up to The Hell’s Angels Letters: Hunter S. Thompson, Margaret Harrell and the Making of an American Classic in his October 8, 2020, write-up about it inside a piece called “Can’t get enough Game of Thrones or Star Wars? New editions on cult favorites are here to satisfy:

Among late 20th-century American writers, none can rival Norman Mailer and Hunter S. Thompson in sheer force of personality, both on the page and in person. Mailer, whether in his fiction, polemical essays or reportage, always aimed to be consequential, to be fiercely engaged with his times. Would that he were living now! For a hint of what we’ve lost, check out the latest book-length issue, Volume 13, of “The Mailer Review” at the home page of The Norman Mailer Society. Thompson’s motto might well have been “Nothing in moderation.” For “The ‘Hell’s Angels’ Letters,” Margaret Ann Harrell — in collaboration with Ron Whitehead — has assembled a dossier of all her correspondence with Thompson during the time she worked as the editor of the gonzo writer’s “strange and terrible saga of the outlaw motorcycle gangs.” Typed manuscript pages, scribbled notes, photographs, interviews and all sorts of period ephemera relating to “Hell’s Angels” allow the reader a valuable, behind-the-scenes glimpse into the making of this classic of New Journalism.

Beatdom review by publisher David Wills, author of High White Notes:

Finding the truth amidst the Gonzo madness of Hunter Thompson’s life story is not easy. He was an incorrigible self-mythologiser and the books about him tend to incorporate many of his own fantastic – and totally untrue – stories as though they were fact. Harrell attempted to dispel at least one of these myths in Keep This Quiet and digs deeper in The Hell’s Angels Letters, determined to set the record straight about how and where Thompson got the idea for a book on the Death of the American Dream and how his pet snake can to a violent end.

As the title implies, this book is mainly comprised of letters between Harrell and Thompson, some typed and some handwritten, and all printed here in colour. Of course, there are already two collections of Hunter Thompson’s letters available, but somehow they are even more enjoyable when read in the original form. Whether typed or scrawled in giant letters with a red pen, Thompson’s correspondence is invariably annotated and corrected in his unique way, adding a layer of personality that was missing from the collections, as well – of course – as Harrell’s explanations that provide further insight.

Margaret Harrell, The Hell’s Angels Letters launch

In case you missed it, there’s a Gonzo Today review of The Hell’s Angels Letters Letters by Kyle K. Mann, Editor-in-Chief. It opens like this:

This is a big book, literally and figuratively. The short version:

The Hell’s Angels Letters is a must-have text for any Hunter S. Thompson fan. Lavishly documented and illustrated with the actual correspondence that led to the publication of his breakthrough literary effort, ‘Hell’s Angels,’ this coffee-table book literally shows how HST boot-strapped his way from a impoverished nobody journalist to growing legend. The author, Margaret Harrell, who was Thompson’s editor on his inaugural book, and her collaborator, Thompson’s friend and associate poet Ron Whitehead, have succeeded brilliantly to create a fabulous present for you, or anyone in your life who admires Thompson’s numerous achievements. It is not inexpensive, but no matter, it’s worth every penny. The Hell’s Angels Letters: Hunter S Thompson, Margaret Harrell and the Making of an American Classic gets five stars out of five! Bravo!

The long version:

I was delighted to get the package at the Topanga Post Office from Ron. I got it home and opened it eagerly. As I flipped through the pages, I was astounded to see typewritten and even handwritten letters from HST. Beyond amazing! But, how the freaking hell am I going to review it?

It sat on my desk for weeks, demanding attention. I found myself resentful as the days went by… what am I doing with this monstrosity? I’d open it and recoil due to the intensity of HST’s personality, roaring off the page. I tried getting stoned and looking anew, but nope, way too heavy to digest and analyze in that state. Yet, Ron had sent it to me to review, and I knew our Gonzo Today readers wanted, even needed, to get my take.

To continue reading, click here.

In the Hunter Thompson Kitchen, Frazier Museum

First official reader review:

The Hell’s Angels Letters is a unique combination: at the center is Hunter Thompson’s letters to his contact person at Random House as his bestseller Hell’s Angels comes into being. (That contact continues thereafter.) Beside this is the admiring and excited perspective of that beautiful young woman at Random House, who then changes course to set off on some adventures of her own. (She turns out to be very interesting and deep in her own way, becoming more complex as she matures.) Interwoven is a history of the times, from literary and political perspectives, with a cast of characters from then. Plus interviews and short articles by authorities exploring Hunter Thompson’s  legacy. Photographs. And witty cartoons. 

I found this highly accessible book intriguing in a down-to-Earth very human way, requiring not metaphors, but rather—it seems to me—a deeply self-revealing honesty. I have liked it tremendously.

Paul Krassner, a player in The Hell’s Angels Letters

Virginia Williams, PhD, President of Williams LifeSkills

With Rory Feehan at the Frazier 2019

Juan Thompson, Margaret Harrell, Tim Denevi

Tim Denevi and Margaret Harrell

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Human memory awakens and extinguishes at will.

This quote offers a good launching pad for why memoir wiriting is so educational and also so transformative. You can start writing a memoir and stop for a year, blocked by what you will have to reveal. Or you can stop as at a wall because you think you have forgotten. Well, of course, you have. But that doesn’t mean you can’t write a memoir. In this talk I give some tips for new writers and experienced ones, on the challenge of memoirs.

If you missed this year’s conference, all the videos are accessible with a one-year pass for juat $59. Loads of inspiration for writers.

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New Poems – Patching Me Together – Cover Design: Grant Goodwine

Following the critical success of Particle Pinata Poems, Harrell’s new release doesn’t disappoint. It more than delivers. “Margaret Ann Harrell stands in direct lineage with the poet prophets of old while simultaneously being a modern cutting edge experimental poet. She steps off the edge and into the unknown. In her own distinctly original poetic voice, she performs a whirling dance with the numinous creative forces of the universe, with Rumi and Blake and Rilke and Yeats. PATCHING ME TOGETHER is the work of a master. I can’t recommend it highly enough.”—Ron Whitehead, U.S. National Beat Poet Laureate

ALSO PUBLISHED IN 2022: 

ELECTRICITY “TRANSPORT TRAINS”:

Cover Designer: Grant Goodwine

Let’s dive down into our relationship to the universe’s creative impulse, creative energy—the energy that can move mountains, can explode cities— through our common affinity for and content of . . . ELECTRICITY. Electricity “Transport Trains” presents “some personally experienced secrets of how we get roped into the universe’s scenes and stories.” Margaret A. Harrell spent the decade of the 1990s at her computer, but it was no ordinary experience. The computer worked with her, in what is called “computer PK.” In this parapsychological phenomenon, the computer repeatedly restructured portions of a whole page of text that was on-screen, reducing it to mouthfuls. No page printed the same way twice. This was a collaborative experience between artist and, if you will, spirit illustrator (humorously put). With piles of examples of this type of refocusing, not only did she have her consciousness altered and expanded, but she used the illustrations in her Space Encounters series, some of which are reproduced in Electricity “Transport Trains.” The Space Encounters series was published in Romania while she lived in Belgium. Resurfacing out of this ten years of seclusion and artistic hermitage in 2001, she relocated in the United State with a shipping container that held many examples of this nonstop ten years of creativity, all supported, or instigated, by “the spirit world.” Blinking in the light of returned-to everyday reality, she published more books, but shifted focus. Now she is aiming for short, easily accessible, entertaining books that have a very deep undertone. In addition, she brings insights into how human electricity interacts with the electricity-filled universe that she learned but did not understand in an initiation in 1985. Decades later, it’s all so clear. And she shares it in this book.

Chuck full of meditative Sun creations. In fact, there is a section title: The Sun as Painter.

Book Description on Amazon:

How does Leonardo’s theory of chance images, “accidental” inspiration, relate to clouds? In Cloud Conversations & Image Stories, Margaret A. Harrell weaves her own cloud photography into the art history of chance images, bringing in related drawings, scrying, and our relationship to Mother Nature. Regarding Robert Desnos’ trance drawings, Andre Bréton called the “tangled web of lines” a result of chance, but the figures that “appear suddenly from this chaos,” he said, were “born somewhat like those one sees in clouds or in the cracks in walls.” Soak up the beauty as these clouds reveal images, many of which look like paintings. In nooks, in corners, of the photo, an unexpected face or whole scene appears. Harrell began photography, walking in the steps of dreams that showed her looking up, seeing scenes unfold, shifting panoramas everyone else failed to notice. One day the dream stepped into reality. In this book, Harrell gives Leonardo da Vinci a prominent role, as he found clouds and other nondescript stimulants to the imagination useful. He had a theory about stains, blots, clouds, as have other artists, such as Victor Hugo. Harrell brings them in, joining with her to take on a relatively untackled topic in art history and creativity: where creation comes from. She asks repeatedly whose images is she photographing? Why do they appear to her in clouds but not on a blank canvas? Printed in full Premium color, each image composed only of sunlight dazzles down on the page.

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His wife, Susan Miner, is pulling back the curtain on aspects of his teaching and life that she observed at his side these last decades. To do this, she will have a weekly newsletter, the first one having just come out August 5, 2018. She writes:

My focus will be on what I believe is the central message of the Lama Sing Group, through all 45 years, underscored in Al’s final year +. I will reiterate their message in layman’s terms based on conversations he and I had, as well as those we had with the Group sometimes in private readings, and include accompanying excerpts from as far back as 1973 because the message never wavered. Go here to read the first newsletter. I especially love the part about the lions.

Al Miner first comes into the Keep This Quiet! series in Too! He reappears in Initiations and Ancient Secrets Revealed. Here is how he is introduced:

Midway through Keep THIS Quiet Too!, after leaving my husband in Morocco, I was living in Charlottesville, VA. Happening to take a workshop at A.R.E. (the Edgar Cayce organization), I asked who was the most reliable psychic; the first name that came up was Al’s. I was not used to psychic readings. Being a novelist at the time, I counted on getting all my information through inspiration and self-enquiry. But something had changed. I had to get some urgent questions settled. Things had become confused. I thought Milton Klonsky, after death, was guiding me. So I needed a source who saw beyond our 3-D reality. See Al, I was advised. The suggestion was unanimous. And he really came through.

On his website Al introduces his psychic journeys (with the Lama Sing group):

For over four decades, while the Lama Sing group was giving information sought by individuals and groups, Al was off  in his own incredible journeys on “the other side.” NDE descriptions (near death experiences) often depict some of this, but the remarkable thing is that Al has an “NDE” every time he does a reading and disassociates from his body so completely it is much like the process of “dying.”

The purpose of this website is to share, not only the information given by Lama Sing, but also the insights obtained by Al during his journeys and his intent to return with full Consciousness in order to incorporate that Consciousness into his life on Earth.

Mystical  Channel

Allen Joseph Miner, a Western mystic teacher of Enlightenment, is considered by many to be the foremost trance channel of his day, and the successor to Edgar Cayce. An accidental psychic at that. He is the largely anonymous originator of such terms as “sea of faces.” He became a channel (a working psychic) though a series of unexpected incidents and mishaps (or tests) that revealed unquestionably his mission and level of consciousness. Today he is the author of forty years of readings, individual as well as general-interest. And of over 15 books. The tale is best told in “Al’s Story” on his own website,  which describes the Lama Sing group he channels as a collection of spirits from God-consciousness. But for a quick overview, some highlights are below. The quotations are with permission:

ABOUT CHANNELING. What is it?

Channel is that term given generally to those who enable themselves to be, as much as possible, open and passable in terms of information that can pass through them from the Universal Consciousness, or other such which are not associated in the direct sense with their finite consciousness of the current incarnation.

Al Miner and Lama Sing

Revealing a Life Purpose

In a chance hypnosis session with Dr. E. Arthur (Art) Winkler, it was suggested  “You will go back to that time and place of greatest spiritual significance to you now.”  What happened next is recounted as follows, reprinted in extracts with permission. A shorter account is on their current website:

The next thing Al knew, he was awake, but where seemingly moments ago he’d been lying down, on the leather recliner, now he was standing. Adjusting his eyes to the dark, he realized he was outdoors, apparently under a twilight sky that was giving way to nightfall. He looked at his hands to see if he was really awake, but they were different somehow, as if not his own, and the shirt he’d had on when he’d closed his eyes as Dr. Winkler had begun talking to him in that strange measured pace, had been replaced by a heavy, simple garment of some sort that went almost down to his feet. And there, on his feet, instead of his shoes were sandals. Abruptly aware of people talking behind him, he spun around. Not far away was a small fire with a group gathered close around it, obviously warming themselves against the frigid air. A bit further away were the silhouettes of palm trees next to a small pool, and far off in the distance, he could make out sizeable dunes surrounding them in a sort of gigantic bowl of desert hills. The members of the group were talking amongst themselves with excitement, not seeming to pay any particular attention to his presence off on the outskirts of the oasis.

Something from behind seemed to call Al, shaking him loose from staring at the scene. Turning, the voices carrying on in the background, he stood, gazing out toward the skyline and into the night beyond, a feeling of joyful anticipation growing deep within, that someone he cared about very deeply was soon to arrive. As he searched the horizon for an indeterminable time, he wrestled with thoughts. ‘What is going on? Who am I and where am I? Who is this I’m waiting for that I seem to know but can’t quite remember?’ all the while the thrill inside all but bursting forth in expectation that one so dear to him would, in moments, come walking out of the darkness down the dune to him and their small, waiting group. And then he started to hear a voice, calling to him. Softly, barely audible at first, but slowly growing louder, the voice of this Dr. Winkler calling him to come back.

This chance hypnosis session revealed an astonishing gift. Continuing from the earlier website account:

 Once fully back, Al wanted to tell his friends about his incredible experience, but instead, they began to tell him of their own experience and of information he’d been giving. Al refused to believe. “Well, that can’t be true. I was in this desert oasis and…” but they weren’t listening, too excited about what he…or someone…had spoken . . .  Laughing, they told him they’d actually been having a conversation with him and he had told them many things, even about another friend of theirs, who Al had never heard of, who lived in Maine and was in deep trouble.

Confused and not able to believe what was being said by the others, Al wanted no more part of this, when Dr. Winkler said, smiling, “I’d like you to hear this”, and reached down and began playing the tape that had recorded the entire session.

When the recording started, and Al heard the voice, he wanted to jump up and run out of the room. What he heard was obviously his voice, but not only was the accent not his, how could it be that he was speaking with them while he was having his own experience in the desert? The more upset Al got, the more everyone else laughed. Finally, Dr. Winkler brought a chair over and sat down next to Al.

“It’s okay,” Dr. Winkler said softly. This kind of occurrence is rare, but it does happen. You have an uncommon ability to move in the sonambolistic state of hypnosis very easily.”

What happened when he went back to a time several centuries in the past (while simultaneously diagnosing illnesses in the “present”) became the turning point, leading up to the decades as full-time channel that occurred since. However, the conversion was not without preparation or “tests.”

It would probably be well to add in conclusion that the “chance” hypnosis session happened after several out-of-the-ordinary occurrences in Al’s earlier life, perhaps in some way preparing him, giving him more of a propensity to believe in unusual phenomena.

There was a near drowning at the age of four in an icy Wisconsin lake, in which, as Al was floating peacefully down to the bottom, looking around at the beauty in the vividly clear lake, he saw a snake swimming towards him. The last thing he recalls, before remembering waking up in his bed with a pile of blankets stuffed around him, was the snake, which sight broke his trance and scared him enough to begin his frantic climb to the surface.

When he was nine, he was not expected to survive the rheumatic fever that had been ravaging his young body for more than six months. He was aware, as he lay staring at the ceiling, of the doctor speaking with his mother in a hushed voice in the next room and that she began to weep as he consoled her. And then, as she had so many times when the pain became excruciating and the fever too much to stand, My-Lady (as he called her) came to him as he gave way to deliria, holding her hand out, lifting him out of his body and into worlds beyond.

But this time was different. Instead of returning him, as she always did when the pain subsided, they traveled far away, and when they returned, it was not to his body but to somewhere just above his home. Somehow he could look down, past the roof, the ceiling, and into the kitchen, where he saw his mother weeping, and in the next room, his body lying still on the sofa where they had temporarily moved him. As My-Lady showed him the scene, Al knew he was being given a choice—leave with her to remain in realms beyond, or return to his frail, sickly body and to the pain. It was his love for his mother that caused Al to return. There would still be quite some time of pain and recuperation remaining, but it was strangely different, and somehow bearable. That was the last time Al would see My-Lady, though unbeknownst to him, she would be born on Earth four years later, and in the autumn of their years, would return to him to become his wife, Susan.

Finally, there was the time he was coming home very early in the morning after finishing a night in a club with his band, when he got a flat tire. Not really needing to be concerned about anyone coming at this hour of night on the deserted back-country road, but pulling onto the shoulder anyway, Al had gone around to get the spare and jack, and was buried to his waist in the huge trunk of his 55 Olds.

Suddenly a flash of light shined into the trunk from behind him, and the next thing he remembers, he was sitting on the bank of a ditch about ten feet deep, about fifty feet across from where his car had been, lights flashing and people running about, talking, shouting. A sheriff, pad and pen in hand, was calling across to him, “Son! How the hell’d you get over there?”

Somewhere down the road, Al could make out the other car, its front-in totally smashed, his own car upside down in the ditch. A shaken Al was having difficulty relating the incident: “I was trying to get the stuff out to fix my flat, when I saw this glaring light and that’s the last thing I remember.” By now, Al was hearing the sheriff’s voice more and more muffled, as if miles away, “Well, son, how can that be? They were doing about 80 MPH when they came up over that hill. Could only’ve been a few seconds before they hit you. I climbed down the ditch to look at your car. Back bumper’s rammed under your back seat. If you hadn’t gotten outta the way, that car would’ve cut you in ha—…”

With the sheriff continuing to ask him questions he could not answer, Al was quietly asking himself: “My life’s savings are gone—saxophone, clarinet, car. What’ll I do? And how did I get all the way over here? What’s happened here?” as the ambulance sped away with the other car’s occupants.

In a recent reading, Lama Sing said that, among many other things, certainly Al’s choice to change course in two major points in his life—first from the entertainment business and then from corporate America—were like tests for him to move from temptations—like the lure of money and stature—that would enable him to be a pure and open channel through which these works could flow.

I had the delight of meeting Al and Susan in person, and there was no more humble yet lofty, Light-filled person. Enjoy the website that accumulates his learning and teachings.

BOOKS AND PROJECTS. See Library of Consciousness™ | By Al Miner & Lama Sing for the many projects of the Library of Consciousness, a library of readings, and published and up-coming books.

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Harrell’s bold and searching collection takes readers on an odyssey of inquiry, with the first and foremost question being ‘How to establish that / Yes, I am / One with God and God is / One with You.’ But rather than provide an answer, Harrell’s poems seek to use the question as a gateway into a thought-space where the act of seeking knowledge results in spiritual transcendence. In a note, Harrell describes her spirituality as a conscious, living thing shaped over time by a series of spiritual events she calls ‘initiations,’ and through her poetry, Harrell seeks to divulge her spiritual wisdom.

The principle spiritual tenet in Particle Piñata is that all knowledge of the universe is united in an ever-shifting entity to which all people contribute and borrow, including the poet’s literary inspirations Baudelaire, Emerson, Whitman, and Joyce, and major figures from the poet’s own life, which include Milton Klonsky and Hunter Thompson. . . .

Touching on religion, philosophy, particle physics, linguistics, and more heady concepts, Harrell’s collection is a cosmic, often esoteric whirlwind which seeks to bring the poet’s conception of a spiritual being to life.
Takeaway: A cosmic, sophisticated collection that touches on spirituality, philosophy, and physics.

Great for fans of: Milton Klonsky, Delmore Schwartz.

From the Publisher:

The Particle Piñata collection spans over forty years of Life tackled from the heart. The genesis emerged when, living in Morocco in 1980, Margaret Ann Harrell began recording her dreams. And they poured in, introducing her to image trails.” She was in deep contact with the unconscious. In it resided this poet, a “second-class citizen” of herself. The poet to whom words came easily because after all she was in the unconscious, whereas the conscious prose author struggled, edited, cut, sweated, and was published. No longer is the poet in the closet. Having been a spokesperson for “the unconscious,” or collective unconscious, before, in this poetry Harrell brings in the transpersonal nature of us all. From after-death communications to stimulating RUMI-nations to metaphysics in “a bottle,” her poems bring puzzles, thought-provoking, with depth. Many are “To the Earth,” announcing prophetically, in the 1980s, the upheaval we are seeing today. True to the brand of humor of the unconscious, there is a section of brilliant word play, narrating insights about the untold stories of Jesus and Mary Magdalene, theChrist spirit, and the universal Christ consciousness.

From—Ron Whitehead, U.S. National Beat Poet Laureate

The time of the grandmothers, of the nurturing healing feminine energy has arrived. Patriarchy has sewn destruction long enough. We must all, female and male, become healers, seers. In her epic PARTICLE PINATA, author Margaret Ann Harrell stands in direct lineage with the desert mystics, the poet prophets of old and, simultaneously, with the contemporary cutting edge avant-garde. In a whirling dance with the creative forces of the universe Harrell draws explicit and implicit lines to Rumi, Blake, Yeats, Joyce, Jung, and others while forging mystical connections with clouds and coastlines, dancing in the borderlands of space and time, of being and not being, of embracing and letting go. And she accomplishes it all in her own distinctly original poetic voice. Through decades of carrying these poems from continent to continent, Margaret Ann Harrell has continued to add new poems and photos, to edit and revise, to transform her self into an ever evolving being, into this masterpiece book. I can’t recommend it highly enough. Go ahead, open the front cover and enter. You’ll never be the same.

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