Beat Scene is a UK print magazine. It’s well respected and I was lucky enough to get interviewed in it for Keep This Quiet! and reviewed in it for Keep THIS Quiet Too! Beat Scene represents all things beat.

KEEP THIS QUIET TOO!

More Adventures with Hunter S. Thompson,

Milton Klonsky, Jan Mensaert

by Margaret Harrell (Saeculum University Press)

Following on from the whirlwind that was volume one, Margaret Harrell returns with more adventures involving three particular men in her life, Milton Klonsky, Jan Mensaert and Hunter S. Thompson. She was a top editor in her time – she worked on Thompson’s Hell’s Angels book – and this provided the door through which she stepped into the lives of this trio. Or should that be the other way around? Whatever, it provides for a riveting read as we are taken inside inner sanctums to see what really happens. It is chaotic, shambolic, impulsive, complete and utter madness at times here. Klonsky is the steadiest, a kind of mentor – father figure to Harrell. Mensaert is mercurial, frustrating and often suicidal and then she marries him. Thompson, perhaps the one writer with the biggest profile in American letters, is, well, Hunter S. Thompson as only he was. Mad as a box of mad things, living for the moment, furiously living and she is drawn to his flame.

A passionately written memoir that doesn’t sit around being fit and proper and straight laced. If I can use a well worn phrase here, ‘it lifts the lid on so many things.’ Margaret Harrell seems to be a daring individual, do it first and think about it later. It brings her much joy but no small amount of heartache. As a key to the lives of these three writers it is idiosyncratic and in age where blandness is the norm it is a pleasure to go on her journey and find out a little about what made these men tick and what drove her to them.

ISBN 9780983704539

Paperback at $17.95

Saeculum University Press

Eric Jacobs