Lucien Carr Dies; Introduced Beat Writers
Journalist and editor Lucien Carr, who first brought together the Beat Poets succumbed to cancer Friday at his home in Washington, D.C. he was 79, reports AP. As a student at Columbia University in the 1940s, he befriended and introduced the three poets and writers who ignited the beat poetry movement in America in the 1950s: Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsburg and William S. Burroughs.
Carr served two years in prison after stabbing a friend to death in 1944 while fending off "an unwanted homosexual advance." After he had dumped the body in the Hudson River, Kerouac and Ginsburg persuaded Carr to turn himself in. Carr went on to work as an editor for UPI.
He is survived by three sons, including Caleb Carr, author of The Alienist.