Overview

What is it like to live with a wildly creative poet if you are a writer yourself? 1983. A lecture at the Jung Institute Zurich. ""Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath-they were examples of the anima female. Marilyn Monroe too,"" the famed Jungian analyst/author Marion Woodman was saying. Listening to her, I knew: A Lecture upon the Shadow is about the anima female! She read the manuscript, very moved, confirming it was written unconsciously. I might have to wait ten years for everybody to understand it, she predicted. That's more than FORTY years ago! Will people understand it now? Be helped? Are there any other ""anima females"" out there, acting as muses? A Lecture upon the Shadow is a zany look at a dysfunctional, intoxicated writer couple who use creativity in their relationship at an explosive level. Marion Woodman calls this ""the anima female,"" that is, a situation where the female links into the creative unconscious of the male, making their tie absorbing. Unavoidable. A fueling station. Told a lot through conversation, it is based in a true story that illuminates the familiar predicament of ""can't live with you/can't live without you."" However, Merry Loup and Knut Karel spin a fascinating narrative. Join them in their travels and bohemian lifestyle, mostly in Morocco.

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Reviews

""This book knocked the Bukowski I was reading straight out of my hands. It pulled me. Dragged me. Brought me in. I followed without hesitation. I laughed loud, then caught that cold little echo in the spine because I know that voice. We all know that voice. ""Younger readers are going to feel this one like a mirror of recognition. The book never retreats. It kicks forward, barefoot, through broken glass, still cracking jokes. It is funny in the only way that counts. Not decoration. Not relief. The laugh hits first; then the truth lands just behind it, sharp enough to leave a mark. Some pages tickle. Some bite. You finish the book feeling seen, steadied, and slightly more dangerous than when you began.""-Daniel O' Bailey, Gen-Z musician ""A LECTURE UPON THE SHADOW rips the fairytale of marriage apart and burns it entire on a Moroccan blue bone fire. A journey through hell. Beyond Goethe, beyond the French existentialists, through and beyond Jungian depth psychology, beyond the novel, beyond autobiography, beyond creative non-fiction, A LECTURE UPON THE SHADOW is a completely new eloquently painful way of telling a self-actualization story. Margaret Ann Harrell has rendered an excruciating masterpiece. It's brilliant. And there's no other book like this one, anywhere, ever.""-Ron Whitehead, US Lifetime National Beat Poet Laureate What if Alice had fallen in love with the Hatter? What if Wendy had been Peter's child bride? What if the fairy tales were true, but the endings were shuffled like a deck of mismatched cards?-Chris Dean, Indiana Beat Poet Laureate on beginning A Lecture upon the Shadow A LECTURE UPON THE SHADOW is about finding yourself inside someone else's interior castle. It describes animal movements over stone as one foot faithfully follows the other OUT. It is for anyone with the teeth to embrace the soft horror of love. Margaret Ann Harrell's writing exists in the liquid, violet place just below reason. With spiritual authority, it arrests your analytic mind and pockets romantic delusion. It is memory with a beating heart. It is very true. The real beauty of SHADOW is the quality of aliveness it carries. It has no pretense or analysis and is written exactly how these things are experienced . . . It is like watching a slice of cake be digested in a barometric Buddha chamber. It makes no sense until it does . . . The author is a kerosene lantern in a dark wood.-Emma Louise Rodgers, PhD, Psychological Science

Author Information

Three-time MacDowell fellow Margaret A Harrell-author, editor-is noted for her photography of images hiding in clouds, exhibited in Europe and the USA. Margaret is also a book editor and an advanced meditation teacher in the DaBen/Orin light body/luminous body school. Her twenty-eight books include the coffee table collectible The Hell's Angels Letters-in conjunction with Ron Whitehead (Norfolk Press), the Keep This Quiet! I-IV memoir series, Particle Pinata Poems, Cloud Conversations, and a host of others. In December 2025 she brought out for the first time in the United States Love in Transition: Voyage of Ulysses-Letters to Penelope (Norfolk Press), first published in Romania in 1996.Harrell copy-edited/assistant-edited Hunter S. Thompson's first book, Hell's Angels. Since returning to the United States to live in 2001, she has been a mentor to those wanting to maximize their potential. Before that, she lived in Morocco, Switzerland (studying at the C. G. Jung Institute), and Belgium. She has an MA in contemporary British and American Literature from Columbia University and a BA in history (with Honors and Distinction) from Duke. A sought-after speaker, Harrell is currently in charge of several panels for the 2026 GonzoFest (honoring Hunter S. Thompson) in New York City.

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