The previous interview I did with her bounced all the way toVienna, where it sparked the plan to found a Gonzofest Vienna – whose first event then fizzled and started percolating in Dublin, Ireland. But it was a tall lift to find an untaken venue in Dublin on that short notice.

So we luckily were offered Garden District Book Shop in New Orleans – Gonzofest 2025. Putting GF Europe on hold, we are considering Italy 2026. Meanwhile, we have a tremendous lineup of talent ready to jump in a plane. More on this New Orleans event at its website.

Betsy Wurzel writes:

We reflect on the unpredictability of life’s twists and turns, sharing personal anecdotes of remarkable synchronicities. Additionally, Margaret delves into her latest revised-edition book, BEYOND 3-D: KEEP THIS QUIET! III, discussing its inspiration and the transformative potential of her LuminEsscence Light Body work courses in facilitating spiritual growth and emotional healing.

Margaret also recommends THE HELL’s ANGELS LETTERS: Hunter S. Thompson, Margaret Harrell, and THE MAKING of AN AMERICAN CLASSIC, available on norfolkpress.com. This interview provides a captivating glimpse into Margaret A. Harrell’s diverse body of work and the eagerly anticipated International Gonzofest.

She was Hunter S. Thompson’s first book editor, helping craft the Hells Angels book. She was also a friend and, as readers of her book Keep This Quiet! know, “special friend.” Some even say she was a muse at the most critical time of his career… she certainly pulls no punches during a live interview from Louisville.

Being interviewed by people that gifted, you cannot help but come up with fascinating material. I am grateful that they pulling me aside at the July 2021 Gonzofest in Louisville for an impromptu interview. (Planned by them.)

Also, recently, before that, did my first Interviewed with Betsy Wurtzel

on Passionate World Talk Radio. It was a lot of fun and roamed over many of the topics I’m most interested in. Betsy wrote:

I highly recommend reading Keep THIS Quiet! Too about Margaret A. Harrell ‘s fascinating life!

Please listen to my interview with Margaret A. Harrell about this book and how these 3 men helped Margaret to be fearless!

Matt Hahn and Margaret Harrell, Gonzofest ’23

The post NEW Interviews with Margaret appeared first on Margaret A. Harrell.

Follow it! 

Gonzo Flyers created by that inimicable artist

GRANT GOODWINE.

If you feel inclined to buy a T-shirt to help us bring the best contributers in the world to New Orleans, go here.

To browse the official website, go here. World-famous composer/musician David Amram is playing with four New Orleans musicians. Panels you won’t want to miss are booked. Old friends will be hanging out.  No Tickets needed, though if you like, there will be a donations option at the door. More here.

THANK YOU. See you there.

Also, in the news . . .

The Hell’s Angels Letters – Hunter S. thompson

This book in hands – IT IS MIND BLOWING JAW DROPPING!!!

I just can’t leave it alone!

I approach it, open it, flip through it, can hardly decide what to read first, enjoy some pages, close it, do something else, and walk back to it, open it…… – for hours now!

Feel like taking two weeks off to just stay IN IT!

All these letters from Hunter asking you to save the situation, etc. ADORABLE!!!!

Wow! Thank you. Remember, it’s 1/4 written by Hunter (his new writing presented in color scans, full size).

The post GonzoFest New Orleans – 2025 – Instagram Page: NEW!! appeared first on Margaret A. Harrell.

Eventually, I had to try in North Carolina.

That didn’t work out either.

Finally, I reached all the way over to Portland, OR, and we were gold. The audio will be out this November for the 2024 Christmas sales!!!

Here’s a warning. If your book is complex, perhaps with multiple voices, go to an experienced professional. And even that might not work. Audio is tricky and demanding.

Ultimately, it was all for naught. Both of the first two attempts. Then I fumed in bed, and it came to me to surrender. Instantly I found the next morning an audio company that asked: Do you have a project that needs out-of-the-box thinking?  And the rest is history. For my project, I had to go right to the top. But to go back and trace my initial misadventure, which was no fault of anyone – it was just a complex project – here goes.

I went down to Louisville, KY, one of my favorite places, for six days to haunt the sound studio of Bill Hardesty, who took the above photo of me at the Brown Hotel. Staying there is always a memorable experience. Ron Whitehead sat at my side almost the whole time as I read practically every word of the massive book myself. He read a small number of pages, always a treat A huge thanks to Ron, who set everything up. And to Bill for being fearless and generous.

A trailer, based on images taken at the Brown that weekend by a young whiz named Yunier Ramirez and images in the book is just finalized except for the credits at the end. Click the link for a sneak preview.

DESCRIPTION:

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 an impoverished nobody journalist to growing legend.

Kyle K. Mann, Gonzo Today. Print available only at norfolkpress.com.

At last, with print book and the soon-to-be-released audio of the Norfolk Press print book The Hell’s Angels Letters: Hunter S. Thompson, Margaret Harrell and the Making of an American Classic, the public can go inside the experience of Hunter Thompson at Random House. This book, which focuses on his letters to his copy editor, Margaret Harrell (available nowhere else), is an important revelation in the legacy of Thompson. “If Hell’s Angels hadn’t happened I never would have been able to write Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas or anything else . . . I felt like I got through a door just as it was closing,” Hunter told Paris Review. Check out the $9.95 Amazon E-book and (soon to be released) full-295-page audio book (Amazon).

TRAILER credits:

PUBLISHER (print BOOK): Norfolk Press of San Francisco

The Hell’s Angels Letters | Hunter Thompson, Margaret Harrell and the Making of an American Classic (norfolkpress.com)

E-book: Amazon.com

ART ILLUSTRATIONS & FRONT COVER: Grant Goodwine, https://grantgoodwine.bigcartel.com

 LICENSE RIGHTS: Excerpts from Hunter S. Thompson Letters used by permission of The Wylie Agency LLC

and The Hunter S. Thompson Estate, with thanks to Juan Thompson, Hunter’s son, and George Tobia

at Burns & Levinson law firm.

 HUNTER’S FACE in trailer: Alanbeckerphotographer.com

FUN FACT: see Outlaw Poet documentary on Ron Whitehead

The post AUDIO of The Hell’s Angels Letters on the way – Trailer Link Here appeared first on Margaret A. Harrell.

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

The post Gonzofest – The Hell’s Angels Letters – buy it personally signed appeared first on Margaret A. Harrell.

11, 12, 13

Palimpsest

Time with his old face

Death with his skull face

God with his No Face

Under my own face

—Milton Klonsky

What did William Blake have to do with The Hell’s Angels Letters book?

More than you might think. In my mind his artwork was the artbook I didn’t work on in 1971 or so. This was the artbook I did. It all went back to that.

But let’s take the story slowly.

1994. It was an unlikely event for me to be attending – called “Opening to Channel.” Living in Belgium, I had not had much experience personally with this more American practice in 1994. But I had just started taking light body experiential meditation work, which means getting to know the energy around you—your personal field—and from there subtle energy in general: how it works in us (somewhat in line with quantum theory but experientially). That’s where the first signal came that something was up about this book.

But maybe I should earlier, 1978. In the apartment of my close friend, a bit romantically, poet Milton Klonsky, whom Beat-generation author Seymour Krim described as having “an IQ that could stutter your butter.” Krim, by the way was a New Journalist, a “recorder of the scene as filtered through his intellect slanged vision.”  A fabulous author, he  taught writing a Columbia and at Iowa, and received both a Guggenheim and a Fulbright. In this somewhat shabby rent-controlled one-bedroom apartment of Klonsky, a tall bookshelf richly filled almost a wall-to-ceiling of the living room. Among the signed copies, by friends, was one by poet Marianne Moore. There he sat, in his (somewhat shabby too) maroon or gray sweater, surrounded by plates: William Blake printing plates from the Tate Gallery in London. Klonsky and Blake were two deep eccentrics, except for all his mental travels Milton did not talk to spirits the way Blake did. He did, however, get so engrossed in his work it could be almost a trance. Telling me about the illustrated manuscript, Blake’s Dante, he was working on for Harmony Books, he said: “You do the text.”

What??!! Sputter. Sputter.

The text was brief or long blocks of commentary on Blake’s engravings of Dante’s Divine Comedy. About the most erudite thing I could imagine. Certainly not housed in my brain. Plus translated excerpts. Whoo. That meant having at my fingertips all of Dante’s Comedy, plus getting into Blake’s mind at the intersections. And I didn’t know Italian. I was awed. How could he think me capable of such expertise put together wittily? He said, “Come on. I’ll introduce you to the publisher of Harmony Books. I’ll get him to give you $1,000.” $4,821 today!  Temporarily, I said yes, though I backed out when we returned from midtown, but I kept the memory. Including the awe.

Entering his apartment that afternoon now seems a kind of replica in astonishment of the opening pages of his American Review essay Art & Life: A Mennippean Paean to the Flea; or, Did Dostoevsky Kill Trotsky?—in which the natural philosopher Robert Hooke stared, in his dungeon laboratory in April 1663, as “out of the surrounding darkness” under his just-invented compound microscope he looked at a flea—“for the first time truly seen.” The flea was the carrier of the bubonic plague at the time, which he didn’t know.

Dazzled, my mind returned to Klonsky’s first Blake book: The Seer and His Visions. The erudition, the mix with street-talk, the brilliant colors and text-plus-image layout. It seered my awareness.

How does this connect to The Hell’s Angels Letters? It is one of the models underneath the book, a template peeping through, a palimpsest that started there. Or the start might have been—no, the pickup—my visit to Rome, to the da Vinci-inventions museum and the purchase of a book of illustrations/text of his imagined machines I stumbled on. Or my book of Michaelangelo’s paintings, or of my friend pop artist John (Jack) Wesley in New York. Or even, as while living in Belgium, I helped set up an exhibit for a museum, encountering their book Mozart in Belgium (in French).

Just as I began my first book by sitting in a Paris Montparnasse restaurant, Le Dôme, frequented in the past by Hemingway and Sartre, great writers and thinkers, painters, you name it, here was another, older flock of artists, this time visual, with texts digging into their great works. Sitting in that pond of art of the past ties in to The Hell’s Angels Letters, how? Underlying it in palimpsest mode. “Palimpsest,” a word I learned from Milton.

So let’s get down to it. At the channeling workshop in Ghent, Belgium, in 1994, I casually asked—in an exercise in twos—would my book be published? That is, Love in Transition: Voyage of Ulysses—Letters to Penelope, which I had worked on for nineteen years, unfinished because—what else?—of the death of Milton Klonsky (after whom my protagonist was named), after which he seemed to “come back from the dead” to initiate me. Are you following? There are a lot of winding trails like this leading up to the Letters.

The male in my Ghent channeling workshop answered, “I see a book by you in a bookstore window.” Wow.

A year later at the one hundredth-birthday celebration of the famous laboratory parapsychologist J. B. Rhine at the Parapsychology  Association convention in Durham, NC, in 1995, I had been asked to contribute, as I had known and corresponded with Rhine—letters again—and while at an evening event there I asked a parapsychologist, who said she looked for lost children for the New York City police sometimes, the same question. “Will my book be published?” SAME ANSWER. Twice now: “I see a book by you in a bookstore window.” 1995.

Fast forward to 2014. It takes patience to follow how the Universe plants. The players are getting ready in the wings as I enter Carmichael’s Bookstore in Louisville and a friend says, “Look, Margaret, your book is in the window!” Not just one book, but my two memoirs, just published in 2011, 2012, with Hunter S. Thompson as a key character, at last. In Love in Transition it had been Milton whose strange embodiments I had “memorialized.” But here came Hunter.

There, before a sparse audience on a Sunday morning (!) with most all the Gonzo Fest attendees in bed, I gave my presentation of his letters to me, the originals carried inside the plane from NC to Louisville, Kentucky. Spreading the collection, worth tens of thousands of dollars, out, I enthusiastically elaborated, letter by letter. In the audience Jinn Bug, a poet/photographer/graphic artist and importantly for our story, one who could receive energy messages, sat transfixed.

“Remember the spaces,” Hunter had written me: it meant tell the Random House production crew of Hell’s Angels (the printer worked from the manuscript hard copy) to reproduce the space around his newspaper-width quotations. Exactly. That’s an order. In the talented Jinn Bug’s mind, a vision of an artbook, formed. First of all, it was unlikely she would even be there, not often stepping into the Gonzo world. But she did. And that proved vital.

“Remember the spaces” opened up before her into—what else in our scenario?—an ART book, say, like, The Gorgeous Nothings (Emily Dickinson’s scribblings on envelopes, surrounded by barrels of space). Now, Jinn and her husband, Ron Whitehead, the founder/organizer of the Gonzo Fest, who had invited me to speak, together approached me. I had sometime back decided to write no more books without being asked, so as to get readers, not just good critical reviews. Jinn conveyed her vision, intending her role to be then complete. I stood still, rooted to the spot, captured by the image of the artbooks of the past.

A couple of years passed. I did nothing. How could I without my layout templates? Jim Bug had no interest in creating any templates, even one. But reluctantly, one day, hurrying down the airport corridor with me, she relented. (Probably to keep me interested.)

Now the winding trail wound into new corners. Keeping the waning project alive, investing it with dynamite, though so far not a single step in it had been taken, one day Jinn Bug got the idea of inviing in in Ron and Juan Thompson. She broached the idea. I said yes. They said yes. Juan’s entry miraculously guaranteed that the reprint permissions from the Estate.

Without Juan’s nod and generosity, no book.

And everyone felt the book was Hunter’s wish!

The ducks were in a row. But another year passed. I was still in that living room of Blake’s plates from the Tate Museum, or in Leonardo’s book of drawings with text, waiting for my template, the palimpsest of art books in the past standing with me. My stuck brain thought of no one to ask for templates, not yet even thinking of going to a designer. That would have been the obvious act. But I knew no Gonzo-inspired designer.  And I wanted text and template to go hand in hand.

Finally, Jinn and Ron said it was time for the editing—in the form of questions. That meant I had to write text, which was actually easy, given the familiarity I now had with the topic. Immediately, Jinn began drawing my own personal story into the book, where I had not planned on including it much. To bring me in, to widen the audience outside Gonzo, was her idea. Also, that I answer questions in written form in back-of-the-book Notes. Notes to be deleted later.

Then Ron announced he had a narrow opening to read the manuscript in six weeks. Could I be ready? Jinn added: forget waiting for the templates, she and Ron would drag text from my manuscript under and beside each illustration. All they needed was the text to drag, let them choose which. Wow. My heart dropped to the floor. My first reaction was, what a lot of trust that required of me, introvert that I was (extrovert in some ways too). But trust I had (the extroverted me) and in fact wasn’t this a collaboration? I said yes.

Also, they both insisted I leave excess material in for them to see. This required to restrain me in chains, as it were. I, of all people, identified myself by my ability to cut. One author I edited called me “scizzors lady.” How ironic. Because 1) I am an expert in cutting. It was like a trademark, my TM. A footprint of me.

I remember (painfully but gratefully) a lesson—shortcut—from Alan Rinzler, one of Hunter’s editors, who around 2009 read my memoir Keep This Quiet! in manuscript when what would become the first two volumes were still one long text. He berated the excess “ephemera.” Yes! My intuition had already told me that. So I raced through the book, cut one third, slashing away as in an overgrown vacant lot, without a glance backward, with nary a pittance of regret. This sealed the deal for me to always listen to my own intuition at a certain point—siding with it, as it nodded vigorously, if needed.

Now, with trust, trepidation, gratitude and curiosity as well, I turned in the text—at the very same time the Universe granted Ron an artist-in-residence assignment in Estonia, alone! No sooner had I turned it in than off he went.

Well, he would not back out, he soon informed me. He would edit it there, but what would happen to the plan? Unbeknownst to me he knew nothing about the plan.

So he received a text with no chapters, thus no chapter openings and closings. Now, those are  a fabulous tool I refresh myself on in bedtime mystery novels nightly. But this manuscript had no chapters, because (I thought) he was now to “place” portions of text under and around and in between the illustrations! Ron didn’t know! And I didn’t know he didn’t know. As I had only seen him a few times in person and found him rather intimidating (I admit), we had had no long phone conversations (a difficult feat in itself, as he is like a fire hydrant, the words pouring over each other).

I said, “Ron, cut anything—a paragraph, a page, a section—move paragraphs around. But please just do no line editing.

He said, “Thanks. Good to know. OK.” End of instructions.

That was the extent of the communication, except he repeated I was not to cut excess material, as he needed to see it to decide if it belonged in or not (not, definitely!).

So over in Estonia he weighed, wrestled, wondering how the text could be made “conversational,” he later said. I now know he must have meant to deemphasize any hint of anything academic. That was fine with me. A good idea.

I didn’t mention the plan that he and Jinn—now himself alone—were to drag and cut and paste my text under and beside and between illustrations. I mistakenly just assumed he had been told. Possibly Jinn thought I told him. Or that, no matter, it would all fall into place. (Which it did.)

Regardless, he sweated, then returned the manuscript with no markings. Just the finished product. A clean text. No questions.  I looked. YES.  As if my mind had been glued to his (and perhaps it was), he 100 percent agreed. Eye to eye. He deleted everything I’d shuddered at leaving in. And left in what I loved. Talk about mind meld.

But Ron was now emailing out the text for early reading. Ye gods! I hastily made chapters – with openings and closings created for dramatic effect. And by luck found designer Deborah Purdue to do Sample Pages. She just fell out of the sky. Deborah happened to live in Medford, Oregon, I soon realized—the headquarters of my light body work, from whence the Opening to Channel workshop had stemmed.

So now we entered the Art Book arena—layout, color, design fantasia. And lo and behold, as the self-organizing Universe would have it, it fell to me to drag and place the text! We were off to the races.

In the next year, in combing through agent options, I butted against my karma. I reached the spot where with earlier books I would give up. Was it karma? I began to think so. A stone wall I had to blast through. Ron masterfully pushed me, always upbeat, past every rejection letter.

Ron said, “No, keep going.” Jinn: “I think there’s a publisher out there.” What? I believed in her hunches.

And lurking in San Francisco, a needle in a haystack, he was.

(If you do not understand why the book was noncommercial, just imagine the cost of color printing. For sure, traditional publishers would, cost effectively, destroy the whole purpose of the project, by retyping, in black and white, excerpts of letters. Excerpts only. No scans. No primary documents on display, no doodles, no color. No coffee table book. Keep This Quiet! all over again. Why bother? No dice. Imagine the yawning of the Gonzo community!)

Grant Goodwine, the perfect illustrator, came in.

One year later in a phone call magic happened. I thought I was dialing a printing house to test what the color printing fee (in any case unaffordable by me; still, it didn’t hurt to ask) would be.

But the printer had a publishing arm. I’d dialed that by accident; by chance he himself picked up. He interrupted: “I’m the publisher of Norfolk Press. I want to publish your book. Do you have a manuscript?” And that was it. Next day, a contract waited. The book would come home to roost in San Francisco. Ah ha. Home to where Hunter typed the very first letter to me.  Closing the circle.

But that wasn’t the last hurdle. I signed in March 2020. COVID lurked. Frowning and forbidding. We got the book out July 18, 2020—no launch allowed.

However, then another hurdle, another karmic stop, as it were, remained. This one still in effect. Will this roadblock get lightly lifted as well? A proud, open highway? The hurdle now is how readers can get the book—available on just the publisher’s website. Ever mindful of dropping hints, the Universe showed its hand here too. An Amazon distribution center popped up right outside the Norfolk Press window—in 2021, saying: See how accessible I am. Take the leap! Charles Cunningham, the insightful, risk-taking publisher, noted the “hint.” But didn’t budge. Yet. Then one day Fat City Gallery, run by DJ Watkins out of Aspen, offered to put the book up on its site for sale. Ah ha. Another surprise in store. Moving now to Aspen, just miles from Hunter’s Woody Creek home. Are we tracing a trajectory on a map?

As we started with Blake, I think of the plots of the Universe: After his exile from Florence, “poet and politician Dante Alighieri . . . wrote his masterpiece, The Divine Comedy, as a virtual wanderer, seeking protection for his family in town after town.”

The Gospel of Thomas: (29) “Jesus says: “If the flesh was produced for the sake of the spirit, it is a miracle. But if the spirit . . . for the sake of the body, it is a miracle of a miracle.”

That is, this winding road is the path of the art of old. Hunter won fame. Celebrity. Notoriety. But for a taste of the “old way,” this might round out the picture. Michaelangelo was enormously wealthy. But most artists were not.

I cannot thank Ron enough for pushing and pushing, never washing his hands of this project. Ron always available to give his suggestions, out of years of experience. Quick, unhesitant. If I would doubt, the solution was: Ask Ron. Quick, snap of the finger, he fired back. And I would go back now to nod at my first publisher, Didi Cenuser, in Romania, as he appreciates being remembered. Who could forget him? Jinn Bug, of course, for capturing several Universe messages during this long journey, without which I don’t think the book would exist.  Thanx, one and all.

To Be Continued.

https://www.beatsupernovarasa.com/thebeats/thebeats.htm
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/dante-is-exiled-from-florence

The post A Palimpsest of Thanks appeared first on Margaret A. Harrell.

Below are the updated, final (corrected) public links to all the Launch events July 16-18. The San Francisco Launch turned into a FESTIVAL.

Margaret A. Harrell Interview by David Streitfeld

Panel with Peter Richardson, William McKeen, Dr. Rory Patrick Feehan and David Streitfeld

The State of Gonzo Address: Ron Whitehead

Dr. Rory Patrick Feehan: Hunter S. Thompson Archives

Tim Devevi Interview and Reading

Live Gonzo Art with Grant Goodwine

At the historic Canessa Gallery where Janis Joplin, Jerry Garcia, and others, over the years, all passed through

Watch Dr. Rory Patrick Feehan display and describe his collection of Hunter Thompson artifacts – old magazine articles, etc. – all the way from Ireland

The hardcover is “the beautiful limited edition of just 120 books, signed and numbered by the Author.  Signature sewn, the hard cover is hot stamped with white foil, on black Italian book cloth.”

Expert and entertaining contributors to the Launch (or Festival) included  the list below, which gathers into One Place most of the Hunter Thompson experts in the world:

Grant Goodwine is a Louisville-Based Illustrator who has long been affiliated with the GONZO movement, including helping illustrate The Hell’s Angels Letters and annual posters for Gonzofest and even for Churchill Downs to help celebrate Hunter’s “The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved.” Grant puts in his effort to help conserve Hunter’s Legacy along with hopes of keeping Gonzo going.

Margaret A. Harrell is a three-time MacDowell Colony fellow, who was Hunter’s copy editor and Jim Silberman’s assistant editor on Hell’s Angels at Random House, as well as working on many successful books there. With degrees from Duke University and Columbia University, she studied three years at the C. G. Jung Institute Zurich. She has lived in the U.S., Morocco, Switzerland, and Belgium and has fourteen published books, including the Keep This Quiet! memoir series and The Hell’s Angels Letters. Multifaceted, she is an author, editor, advanced meditation (light body) teacher and experimental cloud photographer.

Ron Whitehead, poet, writer, editor, publisher, professor, scholar, activist, is the author of 24 books and 34 albums. Ron has produced thousands of events and festivals, including 24 & 48 & 72 & 90 hour non-stop music & poetry Insomniacthons, in Europe and the USA. He has presented thousands of readings, talks, and performances around the world. He has edited and published hundreds of titles. The recipient of many awards, his work has been translated into 20 languages. In 2018 Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer presented Ron with a Lifetime Achievement for Work in The Arts Award. Ron Whitehead has recently been selected to become the US National Beat Poet Laureate (2021–2022). He was in 2019 the first US citizen to be named UNESCO’s Tartu City of Literature Writer-in-Residence.. He is co-founder and Chief of Poetics for Gonzofest Louisville. Outlaw Poet: The Legend of Ron Whitehead documentary will be released by Storm Generation Films/Dark Star TV in 2021.

David Streitfeld is the editor of Hunter S. Thompson: The Last Interview and Other Conversations (Melville House, 2018). The Last Interview series, which he edits, includes such authors as Gabriel García Márquez, Philip K. Dick and J. D. Salinger. He is a reporter for the New York Times, where in 2013 he was part of the team awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting. He has won various other prizes for his journalism. In the past he worked for the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post.

William McKeen is a professor and the Chairman of the Department of Journalism at Boston University; he is the author or editor of thirteen successful books, including Outlaw Journalist, Mile Marker Zero, and Everybody Had an Ocean. McKeen teaches courses on journalism history, literary journalism and rock n’ roll and American culture and previously taught at Western Kentucky University, the University of Oklahoma, and the University of Florida, where he chaired the department of journalism.

Rory Patrick Feehan, PhD, is a Hunter S. Thompson Scholar and the founder of Totallygonzo.org. He graduated with a doctorate in English Language & Literature from the University of Limerick in 2018. He has spoken at the Louisville Gonzofest and at the Speed Art Museum, Louisville, on the opening night of their exhibit Gonzo: The Illustrated Guide to Hunter S. Thompson. A regular contributor to Beatdom, he has also recently contributed a piece on Thompson to the encyclopedia American Political Humor: Masters of Satire and Their Impact on U.S. Policy and Culture.

Tim Denevi is the author of Freak Kingdom: Hunter S. Thompson’s Manic Ten-Year Crusade Against American Fascism (PublicAffairs, 2018) and Hyper: A Personal History of ADHD (Simon & Schuster, 2014). His essays on politics, sport, and religion have recently appeared in The Paris Review, New York Magazine, Salon, The Normal School, and Literary Hub. He received his MFA in nonfiction from the University of Iowa, and he’s been awarded fellowships by the MacDowell Colony and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Tim is an assistant professor at George Mason University and lives near Washington, DC.

John F. Brick is a Ph.D. candidate in English at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He specializes in American literary journalism of the 1960s and ’70s with a particular focus on Hunter S. Thompson and Gonzo journalism, and among his long-term career goals is to see the burgeoning niche of Thompson studies coalesce around centralized, comprehensive archives.  To that end, his work involves locating and cataloging—occasionally from unusual places—material by and about Thompson heretofore unknown to literary scholarship.  Alongside his dissertation, Gonzo Eternal, Brick is also presently compiling a thorough annotated variorum of Thompson’s seminal Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (but don’t tell his dissertation director about that).

TK Tran is a Bay Area native who spends his days working in communications for a cybersecurity company. During his nights and weekends, he writes and performs country music locally and leads an off-roading club of over 40 members. In the past, he has hosted two weekly podcasts and moderated over 500 international online webinars. He is active in organizations such as West Coast Songwriters and Musicians on Call.

Alice Osborn is apoet, singer-songwriter, and book editor whose poetry collections include Heroes without Capes, After the Steaming Stops, and Unfinished Projects. She is hard at work on an album and a historical novel about the ill-fated Donner Party of 1846–’47. Searching for Paradise is her most recent album, featuring crowd-pleasing favorite originals. Alice is the recipient of a United Arts Council of Raleigh and Wake County 2019 Professional Development Grant; the President of the NC Songwriters’ Co-op, and she also plays and teaches fiddle, banjo, and mandolin. She lives in Raleigh, North Carolina, with her accountant husband, two talented teenagers, and four loud birds all named after musicians. Visit Alice’s website at https://aliceosborn.com and check out her music at https://reverbnation.com/aliceosborn.

Nick Storm is the founder of Kentucky Fried Politics, Kentucky’s source for political news. He is a veteran statewide reporter, anchor, and the former managing editor of cn|2 Pure Politics, a Kentucky statewide cable political news program. Nick broke numerous national and statewide stories, including an expose on former Gov. Julian Carroll who sought sex in exchange for help getting a man into art school. Nick’s work has been featured in The Intercept, Politico, Roll Call, The Hill, The Daily Beast, and The Washington Post among others. He is twice Emmy nominated, and the winner of the 2018 Society for Professional Journalists Louisville Chapter Investigative report of the year. Nick is a graduate of Leadership Louisville class of 2020. Nick’s documentary film Outlaw Poet: The Legend of Ron Whitehead, the story of a friend and contemporary of Kentuckian Hunter S. Thompson, is due to be released in 2021. Nick worked for the United States Department of Justice from August 2018 until January 2021.

Timothy Ferris is the author of a dozen books—among them the bestsellers The Whole Shebang and Coming of Age in the Milky Way. . . . A former editor of Rolling Stone magazine, he has published over 200 articles and essays. Ferris wrote and narrated three PBS documentary films—The Creation of the Universe (1986), Life Beyond Earth (1999), and Seeing in the Dark (2007). Ferris produced the Voyager phonograph record, an artifact of human civilization containing music and sounds of Earth launched aboard the twin Voyager interstellar spacecraft. . . . Ferris has received the American Institute of Physics prize and a Guggenheim Fellowship. . . . A Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Professor Ferris has taught in five disciplines—astronomy, English, history, journalism, and philosophy–at four universities. He is currently an emeritus professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

The post FINAL YOUTUBE LINKS – July 16-18 – The Hell’s Angels Letters LAUNCH & FESTIVAL appeared first on Margaret A. Harrell.

INTERVIEW

AMFM Magazine: The Voice of the Artist

Margaret, the new book is published, THE HELL’S ANGELS LETTERS: HUNTER S. THOMPSON, MARGARET HARRELL AND THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN CLASSIC. Grant Goodwine, a protégé of Ralph Steadman, did the cover artwork. Could you tell us about this? How did the whole project come about?

Margaret Harrell: It was a series of coincidences—or unlikely events—from start to finish, beginning with the existence of the letters themselves from Hunter Thompson to me, without which there would have been no book, no record of the story. The journey reminds me of pataphysica (“absurd irony”), a word made famous by French symbolist Alfred Jarry. The letters existed because Random House editor-in-chief Jim Silberman, who assigned me to copy edit Hunter’s first book, Hell’s Angels, broke with protocol. Normally, I would have done the copy editing, gotten Jim’s approval, then invited the author to fly to New York City and sit side by side with me to go over the suggestions and penciled marks on his manuscript for a day, or day by day for a week. Just for Hunter, Jim canceled that procedure. So we had to communicate by letter and phone. Then, when I left Random House, I took the letters with me. I won’t go over the ironic coincidence that came up there. Next, they endured FIFTY YEARS—in acidic paper—while I lived in four countries, including Morocco. Fortunately, they were not in my carry-on stolen at the Carey shuttle terminal in New York and were not in my storage that got overrun with fire ants in North Carolina.

So, basically, for years while I lived outside the US—in Morocco, in Switzerland, in Belgium—the letters survived transport and storage, as if they were charmed with an order not to disintegrate or disappear. By the time Hunter died, in 2005, I’d just relocated back to the U.S. He died, coincidentally on February 20, 2005, and I’d first met him in person February 20, 1967, when he had come to New York to start his Hell’s Angels book tour. Soon after he died I (with butterflies) contacted Doug Brinkley, the Estate literary executor, and he knew who I was (Hunter had told me), so he allowed me to excerpt from my letters in a memoir called Keep This Quiet! My Relationship with Hunter S. Thompson, Milton Klonsky, and Jan Mensaert (2011). I knew no one in the Gonzo community, but this book opened the door, and in 2014, I first spoke at the Louisville Gonzofest, by invitation of Ron Whitehead, the poet-performer-scholar who is the collaborator on this Letters book. That opened more doors. . . .

Keep reading this interview by John Wisniewski

Remember that The Hell’s Angels Letters: Hunter S. Thompson, Margaret Harrell and the Making of an American Classic is ONLY available for purchase at the publisher’s website: https://norfolkpress.com. Or check it out here: https://thompson.norfolkpress.com

Below are the updated, final (corrected) public links to all the Launch events July 16-18. The San Francisco Launch turned into a FESTIVAL.

Margaret A. Harrell Interview by David Streitfeld

Panel with Peter Richardson, William McKeen, Dr. Rory Patrick Feehan and David Streitfeld

The State of Gonzo Address: Ron Whitehead

Dr. Rory Patrick Feehan: Hunter S. Thompson Archives

Tim Devevi Interview and Reading

Live Gonzo Art with Grant Goodwine

At the historic Canessa Gallery where Janis Joplin, Jerry Garcia, and others, over the years, all passed through

The post AMFM Magazine Interview: “The ‘Hell’s Angels’ Letters” appeared first on Margaret A. Harrell.

One of many images at the Canessa Gallery exhibit – one of the best.

The festival took us back to where it all began, the letters Hunter wrote FROM a tiny apartment in San Francisco in 1966 and after have returned to their original home in coffeetable book form. Join us as we celebrate. Also, this is the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. And the book that started it all, Hell’s Angels,  had it fiftieth-year celebration in 1966! How the years flew by. He left us physically but left these books and memories behind.

MAIN EVENTS JULY 16 – JULY 18, 2021: HARD COVER BOOK LAUNCH

These events were streamed live and the videos are now online.

 

 

 

Below are the updated, final (corrected) public links to all the Launch events July 16-18. The San Francisco Launch turned into a FESTIVAL.

Margaret A. Harrell Interview by David Streitfeld

Panel with Peter Richardson, William McKeen, Dr. Rory Patrick Feehan and David Streitfeld

A panel consisting of William McKeen and Dr. Rory Patrick Feehan (on Zoom) and David Streitfeld and Peter Richardson (in the Canessa Gallery Live) will discuss “Hell’s Angels as a bridge to Hunter becoming the Gonzo figure in Fear and Loathing.” This is the fiftieth anniversary year of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1971).

Moderators: Margaret A. Harrell and Ron Whitehead.

The State of Gonzo Address: Ron Whitehead

“The State of Gonzo Address: Searching for Hunter S. Thompson.” A 20-minute talk by Ron Whitehead, followed by a 20-minute talk by John Brick, PhD candidate, on his research for his Marquette dissertation, “Gonzo Eternal,” ending with a 15–30-min. Q & A.

Dr. Rory Patrick Feehan: Hunter S. Thompson Archives

Tim Devevi Interview and Reading

A 45-minute Zoom talk by Tim Denevi discussing Hunter’s development and growth as a writer during the time he wrote the Hell’s Angels article and the book. Followed by 15–30 minutes of Live Q & A from Margaret Harrell and Ron Whitehead.

Live Gonzo Art with Grant Goodwine

At the historic Canessa Gallery

To attend any of these events in person, sign up below. Space is limited.

July 16, 2021— Friday evening at 7 p.m.
A 45-minute Zoom talk by Tim Denevi discussing Hunter’s development and growth as a writer during the time he wrote the Hell’s Angels article and the book. Followed by 15–30 minutes of Live Q & A from Margaret Harrell and Ron Whitehead.

Margaret Harrell, The Hell’s Angels Letters launch

 

 

 

 

ORDER THE HARD COVER OR HIGH-END SOFT COVER BOOK FROM NORFOLK PRESS

The post Photos – Highlights – The Hell’s Angels Letters FESTIVAL – A Christmas Bonanza Gift appeared first on Margaret A. Harrell.

Limited Edition of 125 The Hell’s Angels Letters: Hunter S. Thomson, Margaret Harrell and the Making of an American Classic

The month of July in the Canessa Gallery, San Francisco

MAIN EVENTS—Pacific Coast Time:

Friday evening, July 16—7 p.m. A 20-minute Zoom talk by Tim Denevi discussing Hunter’s development and growth as a writer during the time he wrote the Hell’s Angels article and the book. Followed by 15–30 minutes of Live Q & A from Margaret Harrell and Ron Whitehead.

Saturday afternoon, July 17—2:30. A Live performance in Canessa Gallery. Journalist David Streitfeld will interview Margaret A. Harrell, author of The Hell’s Angels Letters, for roughly a couple of hours, including Q & A and then book signing. A spontaneous interview by a master interviewer who interviewed Hunter multiple times—no prepackaged answers. Everything improvised and spontaneous.

Saturday evening—7 to 8 p.m.: “Live Gonzo Art with Illustrator Grant Goodwine”

Saturday evening—8 p.m. )Live): “The State of Gonzo Address 2021: Hunter S. Thompson Crazy Wisdom Visionary.” A 20-minute talk by Ron Whitehead, followed by a 20-minute talk by John Brick, PhD candidate,  on his research for his Marquette dissertation, Gonzo Eternal, ending with a 15-30-min. Q & A.

Sunday, July 18: 2 p.m.

Topic: a panel consisting of William McKeen and Dr. Rory Patrick Fehan (on Zoom) and (in the Canessa Gallery Live) David Streitfeld and Peter Richardson will discuss “Hell’s Angels as a bridge to Hunter becoming the Gonzo figure in Fear and Loathing.” This is the fiftieth anniversary year of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1971).

Moderators: Margaret A. Harrell and Ron Whitehead.

Short Bios:

Grant Goodwine is a Louisville-Based Illustrator who has long been affiliated with the GONZO movement, including helping illustrate The Hell’s Angels Letters and annual posters for Gonzofest and even for Churchill Downs to help celebrate Hunter’s “The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved.” Grant puts in his effort to help conserve Hunter’s Legacy along with hopes of keeping Gonzo going.

Margaret A. Harrell is a three-time MacDowell Colony fellow, who was Hunter’s copy editor and Jim Silberman’s assistant editor on Hell’s Angels at Random House, as well as working on many successful books there. With degrees from Duke University and Columbia University, she studied three years at the C. G. Jung Institute Zurich. She has lived in the U.S., Morocco, Switzerland, and Belgium and has fourteen published books, including the Keep This Quiet! memoir series and The Hell’s Angels Letters. Multifaceted, she is an author, editor, advanced meditation (light body) teacher and experimental cloud photographer.

Ron Whitehead, poet, writer, editor, publisher, professor, scholar, activist, is the author of 24 books and 34 albums. Ron has produced thousands of events and festivals, including 24 & 48 & 72 & 90 hour non-stop music & poetry Insomniacthons, in Europe and the USA. He has presented thousands of readings, talks, and performances around the world. He has edited and published hundreds of titles. The recipient of many awards, his work has been translated into 20 languages. In 2018 Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer presented Ron with a Lifetime Achievement for Work in The Arts Award. In 2019 Ron was named Kentucky’s Beat Poet Laureate and was also the first U.S. citizen to be named UNESCO’s Tartu City of Literature Writer-in-Residence.. He is co-founder and Chief of Poetics for Gonzofest Louisville. Outlaw Poet: The Legend of Ron Whitehead documentary will be released by Storm Generation Films/Dark Star TV in 2021.

David Streitfeld is the editor of Hunter S. Thompson: The Last Interview and Other Conversations (Melville House, 2018). The Last Interview series, which he edits, includes such authors as Gabriel García Márquez, Philip K. Dick and J. D. Salinger. He is a reporter for the New York Times, where in 2013 he was part of the team awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting. He has won various other prizes for his journal­ism. In the past he worked for the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post.

William McKeen is a professor and the Chairman of the De­partment of Journalism at Boston University; he is the author or editor of thirteen successful books, including Outlaw Jour­nalist, Mile Marker Zero, and Everybody Had an Ocean. McK­een teaches courses on journalism history, literary journalism and rock n’ roll and American culture and previously taught at Western Kentucky University, the University of Oklahoma, and the University of Florida, where he chaired the depart­ment of journalism.

Rory Patrick Feehan, PhD, is a Hunter S. Thompson Schol­ar and the founder of Totallygonzo.org. He graduated with a doctorate in English Language & Literature from the Uni­versity of Limerick in 2018. He has spoken at the Louisville Gonzofest and at the Speed Art Museum, Louisville, on the opening night of their exhibit Gonzo: The Illustrated Guide to Hunter S. Thompson. A regular contributor to Beatdom, he has also recently contributed a piece on Thompson to the ency­clopedia American Political Humor: Masters of Satire and Their Impact on U.S. Policy and Culture.

Tim Denevi is the author of Freak Kingdom: Hunter S. Thompson’s Manic Ten-Year Crusade Against American Fascism (PublicAffairs, 2018) and Hyper: A Personal History of ADHD (Simon & Schuster, 2014). His essays on politics, sport, and religion have recently appeared in The Paris Review, New York Magazine, Salon, The Normal School, and Literary Hub. He received his MFA in nonfiction from the University of Iowa, and he’s been awarded fellowships by the MacDowell Colony and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Tim is an assistant professor at George Mason University and lives near Washington, DC.

John F. Brick is a Ph.D. candidate in English at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He specializes in American literary journalism of the 1960s and ’70s with a particular focus on Hunter S. Thompson and Gonzo journalism, and among his long-term career goals is to see the burgeoning niche of Thompson studies coalesce around centralized, comprehensive archives.  To that end, his work involves locating and cataloging—occasionally from unusual places—material by and about Thompson heretofore unknown to literary scholarship.  Alongside his dissertation, Gonzo Eternal, Brick is also presently compiling a thorough annotated variorum of Thompson’s seminal Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (but don’t tell his dissertation director about that).

Playing on the Big Canessa Screen – during the month of July

 1. Wonderland Book Club panel on The Hell’s Angels Letters

Alice Osborn, moderator https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVJbHG03dOg

2. Margaret A. Harrell – filmed live by film maker Nick Storm, Gonzo Fest 2014, Carmichael’s Bookstore, Louisville KY. DVD (Mailed Fed Ex)

3. Rory Feehan’s 25-minute video of his extensive HST collection, with him narrating
4. A 9-min. video by Tim Ferris, awarded science writer and also former Rolling Stone science writer at the time of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter’s friend. Exquisite remembrance.

5. Video of the events themselves as they are finished

ARTIFACTS for the Walls

The post LAUNCH Details – July 16-18 – The Hells Angels LIMITED EDITION – San Francisco and streaming appeared first on Margaret A. Harrell.

which recently celebrated its 50th birthday, is hosting the Launch of the hard cover deluxe edition of The Hell’s Angels Letters: Hunter S. Thompson, Margaret Harrell and the Making of an American Classic all during the month of July! Coming soon! If you are in San Francisco, drop by and see the exhibit. The live events I will participate in, and Ron Whitehead and Grant Goodwine will occur during the week of July 15 – 19, with a grand crescendo, I expect, on July 18, Hunter’s birthday. We just picked up the plan from 2020 and moved it – expanded – to 2021. More details as they open up. If you want an invitation, please let us know, as room is limited. If you have any Hunter Thompson memorabilia you want us to exhibit on the walls, let us know. I will pass that to the curator of the exhibit, Charles Cunningham, man of many hats (he is also the publisher, with a strong artistic bent). If you happen to have anything you want to let us exhibit on loan or anything we can include in the hard cover that is rare HST memorabilia, we will be ecstatic.

The post Hunter Thompson at Canessa Gallery San Francisco July 2021 appeared first on Margaret A. Harrell.