I wanted to post a thread on this hours ago, but refrained because it hadn’t gotten out into the media yet. But now it’s out there, so I don’t think it’s a problem.
A woman I work with was the live-in companion of Lucien Carr for many years, and he died Friday morning while fighting a second bout of cancer. Talk about your interesting lives: The man introduced Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsburg and William S. Burroughs to eachother, he provided the roll of paper upon which Kerouac wrote “On The Road,” he killed his gay former Scoutmaster, who had basically been stalking him, and ended up getting his 20 year sentence reduced to two years, after which he went on to be a successful journalist. His son, Caleb, wrote the successful book, “The Alienist.”
My biggest regret is that it would have been so easy for me to have met Lucien in the more than three years I’ve lived in Washington, but never did. I also never got to set up that meeting between him and my friend who worships the Beat Generation writers.
I’m pretty sure all the figures from that movement have passed on now, which is really too bad. 