Extracts: From The Journal of Claude Fredericks
EXTRACTS Podcast: Conversations on Claude
Lunch with Anaïs Nin: Claude’s Journal Comes Alive
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Lunch with Anaïs Nin: Claude’s Journal Comes Alive

A vivid 1946 journal entry captures Claude Fredericks’ transformative lunch with Anaïs Nin—and their deep, surprising conversation on love, desire, and writing.

In this episode of Extracts, I read a powerful passage from Claude’s journal—his vivid account of a Friday lunch on June 7, 1946, with Anaïs Nin, followed by an afternoon working together at the Gemor Press, then located at 17 East 13th Street in Greenwich Village. Their conversation ranges from love and journals to psychoanalysis and tenderness. It’s one of the most revealing and electric entries in the entire archive.

And then walking to work we both spoke of our journals and adventures with them, mine in Mexico, hers in France—of the burden we both feel, the fear of their destruction, of others seeing them, the burden of writing them and copying them, etc., etc. Their necessity and evil. We have so very much in common, and we seemed to take a deep mutual pleasure in being together.. . .

This episode accompanies my Substack post this week, Claude Fredericks & Anaïs Nin: A Diary of Tenderness and Turmoil. Read the full piece—and access never-before-seen manuscript pages—by subscribing below.

Anaïs Nin at the Gemor Press, Greenwich Village, circa 1947. © Anaïs Nin Trust
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