OBIT: Lucien Carr

Message Bookmarked

Bookmark Removed

I had no idea he was Caleb Carr's father.

Former UPI Editor Carr, Key to Beat Generation, Dies at 79

WASHINGTON (AP) Lucien Carr, a journalist and a member of the inner circle of literature's Beat Generation, died Friday. He was 79.

Carr was undergoing treatment for cancer and collapsed at his home in Washington, said a friend, Jon Frandsen.

From the 1950s Carr was a prominent editor with United Press International, overseeing its national report in New York and later in Washington until he retired.

"He pushed hard to be fast and extra hard to be accurate," said Frandsen, who worked with Carr, "and he pushed hard to be graceful and powerful to get the point across."

A native of St. Louis, Carr was attending Columbia University in New York City in 1943 when he introduced classmate Allen Ginsberg to a friend, William S. Burroughs. Later, Carr brought together Ginsberg and Burroughs with another Columbia student, Jack Kerouac.

The three writers were to form the core of the Beat Generation. Their carefree attitudes toward life and a liberal social awareness helped create a postwar alternative culture. The novels of Kerouac ("On the Road") and Burroughs ("Naked Lunch") and the poetry of Ginsberg ("Howl") were among its literary mileposts.

Carr himself was not a contributor to the movement as a writer but was important to its development, said Dennis McNally, a friend of Carr's and a Kerouac biographer.

"His influence on Kerouac and on Ginsberg was really quite considerable," McNally said. "He was their intellectual peer and stimulated them creatively."

In 1944, Carr stabbed to death a friend, David Kammerer, while fending off an unwanted homosexual advance and then dumped the body in the Hudson River. Kerouac and Ginsberg helped persuade Carr to turn himself in, and he later spent two years in prison. He remained close to Kerouac and Ginsberg throughout their lives.

Survivors include three sons - Simon, Ethan, and Caleb Carr, the author of "The Alienist," "The Angel of Darkness" and other novels.

― Huk-L, Tuesday, 1 February 2005 18:45 (twenty years ago)

Obeatuary

― Michael White (Hereward), Tuesday, 1 February 2005 18:52 (twenty years ago)

oh yeah, i read about that in the sunday paper. too bad. does anybody know if he ever wrote stuff? y'know, since nothing was ever published?

― hstencil (hstencil), Tuesday, 1 February 2005 18:54 (twenty years ago)

More detailed write-up from the Washington Post:

Newsman Lucien Carr Dies at 79

By Martin Weil
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, January 29, 2005; Page B05

Lucien Carr, 79, who was a friend of the Beat Generation writers since their college days and who spent decades as a mainstay of one of the major news wire services, died Jan. 28 at George Washington University Hospital.

Mr. Carr, who lived in Washington and was retired after 47 years at United Press International, had cancer, according to his longtime companion, Kathleen Silvassy.

Accounts of the founding of the Beat Generation often credit Mr. Carr with bringing together such celebrated figures of the movement as Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac.

Kerouac and Ginsberg, like Mr. Carr, were students at Columbia University in the 1940s, and Mr. Carr knew Burroughs from their prep school days in St. Louis.

Kerouac is said to have typed the manuscript of his landmark novel "On the Road" on a scroll of teletype paper provided by Mr. Carr.

"He and Jack were extremely close," said Jon Frandsen, a former top editor at UPI.

The Beats, who seemed to exist on the edge of propriety in their search for experience, won renown for their willingness to defy convention in pursuit of literary truth.

Mr. Carr's days as the colleague of these freewheeling figures might seem at odds with his image later in life at UPI as, in Silvassy's words, "a newsman's newsman."

But if the goal of the Beats was discovering or portraying truth through fiction or poetry, Mr. Carr's long career in news was, as his son Simon described it in an interview, also devoted to truth.

His work at UPI, where he became assistant managing editor for national news, "had a very abstract but conceivably attainable goal of telling the truth," Simon Carr said.

As an editor and manager in an organization providing news to millions, Mr. Carr, in the words of his son, was "very no-nonsense." He enjoyed the often colorful and idiosyncratic people who worked for him, but he insisted that they abandon what he saw as fluff and foolishness and "get to the essence of the story."

Said Frandsen: "He really believed that journalists were about the business of finding out the truth as best as they could."

Mr. Carr was born in New York and raised in St. Louis. Before entering Columbia, he was educated at private schools that included Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass.

He is said to appear under fictitious names in works by Kerouac and some of the others.

In 1944, according to published accounts, Mr. Carr, in his late teens, fatally stabbed a man who reportedly was making an unwanted advance. He was imprisoned for two years but, according to his son Simon, eventually received a pardon.

Silvassy said Mr. Carr started at what was then United Press as a copyboy in 1946 or 1947, rose through the ranks and transferred to Washington in 1983. She said he was particularly excited and enthralled by the moon landings and "was up day and night" supervising coverage. He retired in 1993.

According to his son, he was married three times. His other children are Ethan Carr of Amherst, Mass., and Caleb Carr of Cherry Plain, N.Y.

Mr. Carr's last years were "devoted to his family," including his five grandchildren by whom he was "much loved," his son said.

― Huk-L, Tuesday, 1 February 2005 18:58 (twenty years ago)

Wow, this is fascinating and strange. Wouldn't mind hearing more about it. And I didn't realize the Caleb Carr connection as well (The Alienist is one of my favorite recent novels -- and also one of the most poorly understood, I think).

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Tuesday, 1 February 2005 19:16 (twenty years ago)

Does anybody else wonder whether 'unwanted' or 'homosexual' are superfluous there? Surely David is a man's name and I imagine it is rare to stab someone for making wanted advances.

― Michael White (Hereward), Tuesday, 1 February 2005 19:18 (twenty years ago)

It is, now that you mention it, an interesting word choice.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Tuesday, 1 February 2005 19:21 (twenty years ago)

Kerouac's account of this is detailed in Vanity of Duluoz.

― Huk-L, Tuesday, 1 February 2005 19:37 (twenty years ago)

And Carr is who Sal Paradise visits at the end of On The Road, I believe.

― Huk-L, Tuesday, 1 February 2005 19:38 (twenty years ago)

CArr stabbed and buried David somewhere in central park, he got a reduced sentence(2 years) using a homosexual panic defense, kerouac and ws burroughs covered it up.

its in vanity of duluz and town and city (ie kerouacs first and last novels) and i think that someone else wrote about it (ginshberg in his letters and essays--but that doesnt count cause ginsberg wrote everything)

xpost to huck

― anthony, Tuesday, 1 February 2005 19:46 (twenty years ago)

Have you read Town and City, anth?
It's one of the few I haven't read (I went through an embarrasing Kerouac-idolization phase in my late teens) and would be interested to hear/read your thoughts on it.

― Huk-L, Tuesday, 1 February 2005 19:49 (twenty years ago)

Two years for a homicide? Nowadays they'd give you triple-time for a hate crime...

― andy--, Tuesday, 1 February 2005 19:50 (twenty years ago)

i went thru the same embarrassing beat idolazation thing, though i went in for ginsberg (as would seem obv.) anyways, town and city was the one i had not read (and the one i didnt think came in cheap penguins) is it even still avaialble--i thot he pulled it

― anthony, Tuesday, 1 February 2005 20:02 (twenty years ago)

Wow. As I recall, Carr alleged that Kammerer had stalked him for years. I've always assumed that Carr and Kammerer did have something going on. Carr was supposed to be a real hottie. Jack was certainly in love with him. Kerouac was briefly implicated as well, and spent a night or two in jail. I once looked it up in the NYT (during my own Kerouac phase). I remember the article saying something like "also arrested was John Kerouac, a Columbia student."

― Paul Ess (Paul Ess), Tuesday, 1 February 2005 20:05 (twenty years ago)

Yup, still in print. Though it's supposed to be before his stylistic breakthrough. God, it's amazing how much new Kerouac product has been released since I stopped fixating.

http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/item.asp?Item=978015690790&Catalog=Books&N=35&Lang=en&Section=books&zxac=1

― Huk-L, Tuesday, 1 February 2005 20:09 (twenty years ago)

i was under the impression that the two year stalk was something that was invented in order to make the murder case stick--and anyways how does that differ with how ginsberg treated cassady for example.

― anthony, Tuesday, 1 February 2005 20:11 (twenty years ago)

excuse me for chiming in. just stumbled across this thread.

the town and the city is great. it was kerouac's first novel, published quite a while before anything else. not "spontaneous prose," but a great history of a new england family. a more traditional "love poem" to america than his later books.

carr did not bury kammerer in central park, he dumped the body in either the hudson or the east river.

kammerer was actually carr's boy scout troop leader when carr was a young'un. i believe he had had a crush on carr for quite some time, carr didn't know what to do about it, then finally snapped... and stabbed him.

i believe also that jack was forced to marry his first wife while he was in jail for his connection to the killing. the woman was pregnant and the judge wouldn't have that so he ordered them married, with a guard as a witness.

― the dharma bum, Tuesday, 1 February 2005 20:19 (twenty years ago)

I, too, had that embarrassing Kerouac fixation in 12th grade, but it inspired me to go on a three week trip to Mexico when I was just 17, much to my father's horror. I probably would have gone otherwise.

Aften not looking at one of his books for many years, I read Big Sur a few months ago and was struck at what a bleak, depressing book it is... I really enjoyed it but it was certainly no "love poem" but filled with self-loathing and graphic details of an older man's alcohol problems. Pretty heavy stuff.

― andy --, Tuesday, 1 February 2005 20:46 (twenty years ago)

WOULDN'T, that is.

― andy --, Tuesday, 1 February 2005 20:47 (twenty years ago)

Part of the appeal of the Beats, and Keroac specifically, I think, is that any 17 yr-old can read them and reasonably believe that they too can accomplish this.

― Huk-L, Tuesday, 1 February 2005 20:50 (twenty years ago)

yeah, big sur not so much. I guess I was referring to the books he wrote at his peak, On the Road, Dharma Bums, Desolation Angels, etc, before the fame that those books brought down on him led him to alcoholism, which led him to write books like big sur.

Huk-L
interesting point. there aren't many writers today that can actually instill dreams for a "life less ordinary" in too many people...

― the dharma bum, Tuesday, 1 February 2005 23:03 (twenty years ago)

I really like Big Sur. It might be my favorite Kerouac book.

― shookout (shookout), Tuesday, 1 February 2005 23:05 (twenty years ago)

I don't really know much about Carr. I believe he was interviewed in the Burroughs: The Movie documentary that I have on VHS.
Burroughs was the one I obsessed over, btw. I've only read On the Road by JK and Howl and Kaddish by the Ginz. Maybe I'll pick up Dharma Bums sometime.

― Dr. Z Indahouse (AaronHz), Tuesday, 1 February 2005 23:13 (twenty years ago)

You must be logged in to post. Please either login here, or if you are not registered, you may register here.