Rory Feehan lives in Ireland and runs the Totally Gonzo website, one of the very best Hunter Thompson sites. He pointed out that Keep This Quiet will be published during the big publicity focus on the new Johnny Depp movie, The Rum Diary, based on a novel by Hunter. That will go into theaters at the end of September. I read the original manuscript back in the time of the publication of Hell’s Angels. The manuscript, of course, remained unpublished for decades – and was not in its final form when I read it. In fact, I liked the handwritten corrections he’d inserted very much. Rory is a PhD candidate, with a dissertation on Hunter and a chapter on Hell’s Angels. So that’s quite synchronistic timing. I hope that Keep This Quiet has found its little niche and support system, with these accidental time markers and connections swirling.
From Keep This Quiet:
“By March 23, exploring changing agents to Lynn Nesbit, Hunter asked me to mail back his manuscript The Rum Diary. I’d made photocopies for him. Lynn had told him he was “screwed worse than I thought—yeah, even worse than that—so I’d feel better if I had all existing copies of the RD here. The game is going to get very ugly pretty soon. Thanks. Hunter.'”
A few pages later, in another letter:
“The thing about your sending the RD back was phoney, and it very nearly cost me that copy of the MS. It arrived today in shreds and tatters. As a matter of fact, the other two copies were torn up, too, when they arrived. There must be special MS envelopes for this sort of thing. Send me one and I’ll return the RD.”
And so it goes.
