In an earlier post we spoke about a Chicago Reader article Yours Jimmy:

Written 60 years ago and rediscovered on eBay, a young gay man’s personal letters become fodder for a new opera..and includes letters from Anais….

After we wrote about the opera (which is being done here in Chicago on November 8, 9th and 10th and which we will write more about in a later blog nearer the date) —

— we received this nice email from David Kodeski about the two letters from Nin that were in the suitcase.

Hi Moira –

Yes, absolutely- feel free to share the letters. I got to sit down with Judith Malina in March and she told me that Anaïs and Jimmy were quite close – and I would bet that Anaïs’ mothering instinct was in full force when she was writing those two letters to Jimmy in the late forties – she seemed unhappy that he was in the Marines. That it wasn’t a good place for him-

Their relationship continued for years and years as I understand it.

Anything that any of the Nin scholars can uncover regarding Jimmy would be terrific – he was apparently one of those people who really promoted others – who essentially became an artist by being the support of and doing promotion for artists … interesting guy that left this planet too early.

A brief but important audio interview with Barbara Kraft Kraft can be can be found in this short but significant piece on Kraft and her double whammy of friendships with two literary lion (& lioness!) lovers! from Which Way LA!

Kraft’s most recent book is Anaïs Nin: The Last Days, available from Amazon and published by Sky Blue Press.

For the record, despite the unattractive nature of URL’s (and you thought that they were mountains in the steppes of central Asia!) here is the actual URL for the Which Way LA piece, for posterity and to always be able to easily click on it.

http://curious.kcrw.com/2012/03/anais-nin-and-henry-miller-at-the-end

Thanks again to Steven Reigns, who produced the celebration of Anais@105 at the Hammer Museum for sending this on.

Thanks to Steven Reigns for sending on these charming shots from The Beginners. What a keen eye!

Here they are in sequence. Paradise!

“I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.”
― Jorge Luis Borges