Melville House Books

Lucien Carr, called by many, including Allen Ginsberg, a “catalyst” of the Beat generation, died on Friday of “complications from cancer treatment” at age 79. As a Reuters obituary by Randall Mikkelsen details, “Carr was a student at Columbia University in New York in 1944 when he introduced Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs, who formed the literary nucleus of the countercultural ‘beatnik’ movement of the 1950s.” Carr, however, did not follow their literary path, instead becoming a long-time writer and editor for UPI. It was from the UPI offices, in fact, that he was popularly thought to have stolen the Teletype roll upon which Jack Kerouac speed-wrote On The Road, although as Mikkelsen notes, one biographer has pointed out that the original manuscript is not a Teletype roll. In 1944 Carr, fending off a man who “had a romantic crush” on him, stabbed the man to death, and served two years on a manslaughter conviction (the article does not report it, but the conviction was later overturned and the charges dropped). ” The conviction cast a pall over the emerging beats who were striving for authenticity in the gritty urban streets of America, and probably kept Carr from playing a more public role for the rest of his life,” Mikkelsen writes. Carr leaves behind three children, including the writer Caleb Carr.

Dennis Johnson is the founder of MobyLives, and the co-founder and co-publisher of Melville House.