HeyJaredExtracts: From The Journal of Claude Fredericks
Selections from one of the longest-running diaries in American letters—charting a life among 20th-century artists, writers, and thinkers.
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- 4
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- Sep 25, 2026
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- Jul 18, 2026
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Not Quite. Try Again. (opens the original)
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This is another little interlude in the Claude Journal sequence. I’d intended to get back to Claude in the early 1940s before September got away from me entirely. I still want to take you to Belfast, Maine, in the summer of 1943, where he spent several months living in a cabin by the sea and kept a wonderful journal. But I’ve spent most of this past week writing something else, so I’m going to take one more detour.IAt the end of June my position at GNAT-TV was eliminated. I’d been working there
Interregnum (opens the original)
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I hadn’t planned to publish anything again for another couple of weeks, when I’ll return to Claude and the journals. But I’ve had something on my mind since watching Hamnet last week—I hinted at it in a Note here the other day—and tonight I decided simply to follow the thought wherever it went and put it out into the world.<a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!3X18!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-pos
Exquisitely Flattered (opens the original)
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Hollis Hall, Harvard Yard. Sunday evening, May 10, 1942. Claude Fredericks was eighteen years old and getting ready to go out. He shaved, then, as he rather wonderfully records, ‘oiled, and powdered my face.’ He did this only rarely, he explains, but it made him look ‘quite handsome,’ particularly when he parted his hair toward the middle so that it stood up on either side ‘like horns.’ He calls it his ‘escape mask,’ then adds that there was another reason he seldom did it: ‘it causes pimples, h
To Know Again (opens the original)
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Before returning to Claude's journals at Harvard in the spring of 1942, I wanted to pause for a brief reflection.A few days ago, during a long conversation, a single word came up that I haven't been able to stop thinking about. The more I turned it over in my mind, the more it seemed to connect things that, until then, had felt entirely unrelated.The word was recognition.At first I thought about recognition in the ordinary sense: being seen for who we are, or recognizing someone we’ve met before
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