Lucien Carr - Settling Down

Settling Down

After his prison term, Carr went to work for United Press, which later became United Press International, where he was hired as a copy boy in 1946. He remained on good terms with his Beat friends, and served as best man when Kerouac impetuously married Joan Haverty in November 1950. Carr has sometimes been credited with providing Kerouac with a roll of teleprinter paper “pilfered” from the UP offices, on which Kerouac then wrote the entire first draft of On the Road in a 20-day marathon fueled by coffee, speed, and marijuana. The scroll was real, but Carr’s share of this first draft tale is probably a conflation of two different episodes; the 119-foot first roll, which Kerouac wrote in April 1951, was actually many different large sheets of paper trimmed down and taped together. After Kerouac finished that first version, he moved briefly into Carr's apartment on 21st Street, where he wrote a second draft in May on a roll of United Press teleprinter, and then transferred that work to individual pages for his publisher.

Carr remained a diligent and devoted employee of UP / UPI. In 1956, when Ginsberg’s “Howl” and Kerouac’s On The Road were about to be national sensations, Carr was promoted to night news editor.

Leaving behind his youthful exhibitionism, Carr came to cherish his privacy. In one well-noted gesture, Carr asked Ginsberg to remove his name from the dedication at the start of "Howl.” The poet agreed. Carr even became a voice of caution in Ginsberg’s life, warning him to “keep the hustlers and parasites at arm’s length.” For many years, Ginsberg would visit the UPI offices and press Carr to cover the various causes with which Ginsberg had allied himself. Carr continued to serve Kerouac as a drinking buddy, a reader and critic, reviewing early drafts of Kerouac's work and absorbing Kerouac's growing frustrations with the publishing world.

Carr married Francesca van Hartz and the couple had three children: Simon, Caleb and Ethan (in 1994, Caleb published The Alienist, a novel which became a best-seller and made the son the acclaimed author his father once meant to be).

“When I met him in the mid-50s,” wrote jazz musician David Amram, Carr “was so sophisticated and worldly and fun to be with that even while you always felt at home with him, you knew he was always one step ahead and expected you to follow.” According to Amram, Carr remained loyal to Kerouac to the end of the older man’s life, even as Kerouac descended into alienation and alcoholism.

Lucien Carr spent 47 years, his entire professional career, with UPI, and went on to head the general news desk until his retirement in 1993. If he was famous as a young man for his flamboyant style and outrageous vocabulary, he perfected an opposite style as an editor, and nurtured the skills of brevity in the generations of young journalists whom he mentored. He was known for his oft-repeated suggestion, “Why don’t you just start with the second paragraph?” One reporter quoted Carr as having two acceptable standards for a good lead: "Make me cry or make me horny."

Carr died at George Washington University Hospital in Washington, DC in January 2005 after a long battle with bone cancer.