Foreword
Keep This Quiet Too! More Adventures with Hunter S. Thompson, Milton Klonsky, Jan Mensaert by Margaret A. Harrell races along, a fast-paced trans-Atlantic crisscrossing of Belgium to Morocco to Egypt to Switzerland, on the one side, New York City to Aspen, writers’ retreats to lucid dream lab on the other side, interspersing stops in Harrell’s native North Carolina.
This book is a masterwork memoir of four writers’ lives—the author’s as well as the title characters’. It is a literary study of the interplay of conscious and unconscious action—the external romantic escapades, and the symbology and synchrony of the dreamlife of the woman who matched wits against three who emerged into prominence.
A Jung Institute alum, Margaret Harrell produces a study of her historic marriage to Belgian poet Jan Mensaert, tempered by two others: Hunter S. Thompson, creator of Gonzo Journalism, and her mentor, New York poet Milton Klonsky.
All three figures supply the medium of her psychological evolution. She measures and tests herself amongst them, giving as good as she gets. She in turn becomes their medium for communications to us: she helps to set their record straight.
The book is by turns pure riveting storytelling of larger-than-life public figures and effortless theory exemplified: Jung’s “Confrontation with the Unconscious” as Harrell’s personal confrontation with the unconscious.
Assuredly entertaining, assuredly eye-opening, the story bounds along, shockwave after shockwave—integrating real-life dream-life characters in a compelling personal narrative.
For the Hunter Thompson followers, this is your story. For the literary icons, Klonsky and Mensaert, this is also their story. And for the novice to all three, Harrell gives a good ride.
Mary Paul Thomas
