NEW YORK (AP) 鈥 Caleb Carr, the scarred and gifted son of founding Beat Lucien Carr who endured a traumatizing childhood and became a bestselling novelist, accomplished military historian and late-life memoirist of his devoted cat, Masha, has died at 68.
Carr died of cancer Thursday, according to an announcement from his publisher, Little, Brown and Company.
鈥淐aleb lived his writing life valiantly, with works of politics, history and sociology, but most astonishingly for this historian, with wildly entertaining works of fiction,鈥 Carr's editor, Joshua Kendall, said in a statement.
A native of Manhattan, Caleb Carr was born into literary and cultural history. Lucien Carr, along with Columbia University classmates Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, helped launch the Beat movement, an early and prominent force in the post-World War II era for improvisation and non-conformity 鈥 on and off the page. Kerouac, Ginsberg and such fellow Beats as William Burroughs and Herbert Huncke were frequent visitors to the Carr apartment, where Caleb Carr remembered gatherings that were enriching, bewildering and, at times, terrifying.
鈥淜erouac was a very nice man. Allen (Ginsberg) could be a very nice guy,鈥 Carr told Salon in 1997. 鈥淏ut they weren鈥檛 children people.鈥
Lucien Carr would prove his son鈥檚 greatest nightmare. The elder Carr had been imprisoned in the 1940s for manslaughter over the death of onetime friend David Kammerer, who clashed with him and was later found in the Hudson River. Caleb Carr, born more than a decade later to Lucien Carr and Francesca von Hartz, feared he would be the next victim. With a 鈥済leeful鈥 spirit, his father would slap Caleb across the back of his head and regularly knock him down flights of stairs, while trying to blame Caleb for the falls.
Caleb Carr thought of his parents as 鈥渢he mostly drunken architects鈥 of his household, and they divorced when he was young. His mother, after turning down Kerouac鈥檚 proposal, married writer John Speicher, the father of three girls. Carr and his two brothers referred to their new, blended family as 鈥淭he Dark Brady Bunch.鈥
Out of his suffering, Caleb Carr learned to despise violence, fear insanity and probe the origins of cruelty. In his best-known book, 鈥淭he Alienist,鈥 John Schuyler Moore is a New York Times police reporter in 1890s Manhattan who helps investigative a series of vicious murders of adolescent boys. Carr would call the novel as much a 鈥渨hydunit鈥 as 鈥渨hodunit,鈥 and wove in references to the emerging 19th century discipline of psychology as Moore and his friend Dr. Laszlo Kreizler track down not just the killer鈥檚 identity, but what drove him to his crimes.
鈥淭he Alienist,鈥 published in 1994 and the kind of carefully researched, old-fashioned page-turner the Beats had rebelled against, combined fictional characters such as Moore with historical figures ranging from financial tycoon J. P. Morgan to restaurateur Charlie Delmonico. Carr also featured the city鈥檚 police commissioner at the time, Theodore Roosevelt, with whom the author felt a surprising kinship.
鈥淧ersonally and psychologically, I had always found TR one of the most compelling figures in U.S. history,鈥 Carr told Strand Magazine in 2018.
鈥淟ater I realized that some of this had to do with the fact that, as a young man stricken by physical ailments and the fears they inspire, he was brought through his darkest times by his father, a deeply compassionate and caring man. This is often key to great men with noble hearts: an overtly caring father. Having had the reverse 鈥 a father who was the chief cause of my childhood fears and ailments 鈥 I was drawn to what was, for me, an exotic upbringing.鈥
鈥淭he Alienist鈥 sold millions of copies, inspired the bestselling sequel 鈥淎ngel of Darkness鈥 and was adapted into a TNT miniseries that starred Daniel Br眉hl, Luke Evans and Dakota Fanning. Carr was so successful a novelist that his background as a military historian became obscured, or even trivialized. He taught military history at Bard College, was a contributing editor to the Quarterly Journal of Military History and had a close relationship with the scholar James Chace, with whom he wrote 鈥淎merica Invulnerable: The Quest for Absolute Security from 1812 to Star Wars.鈥
Carr had written for years about possible terrorism against the U.S. and published a book-length study a few months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. In 鈥淭he Lessons of Terror,鈥 he contended that military campaigns against civilian populations inevitably failed and drew upon lessons dating back to ancient Rome. 鈥淭he Lessons of Terror鈥 sold well, but some critics thought he was not up to the job.
New York Times critic Michiko Kakutani wrote that Carr 鈥渉as little credibility as military historian or political analyst,鈥 and suggested he stick to thrillers, while Salon鈥檚 Laura Miller called some of his contentions 鈥渟lippery and elusive as a handful of live minnows.鈥 Enraged, Carr answered with an all-caps letter to the editor of Salon, in which he suggested that Miller and Kakutani should lay off military history and instead 鈥渃hatter about bad women鈥檚 fiction.鈥
“Several reviews have made claims concerning my credibility that are, quite simply, libelous, and will be dealt with soon,” he later posted on , on which he gave his book a 5-star rating.
Carr鈥檚 other books included the Sherlock Holmes novel 鈥淭he Italian Secretary,鈥 the historical study 鈥淭he Devil Soldier鈥 and a 2024 memoir that stood as his literary farewell, 鈥淢y Beloved Monster: Masha, the Half-Wild Rescue Cat Who Rescued Me.鈥
From childhood, Carr was so repulsed by human behavior that he found himself identifying with cats 鈥 and becoming convinced he used to be one. Carr lived alone 鈥 or at least lived with no other people 鈥 for much of his adult life, spending his later years in a massive stone house in upstate New York made possible by royalties from 鈥淭he Alienist鈥 and other books, a 1,400-acre property set in the foothills of Misery Mountain.
In 鈥淢y Beloved Monster,鈥 he called his own story one of 鈥渁buse, mistrust, and then the search for just one creature on Earth鈥 on whom he could rely. In 2005, his quest would take him to the Rutland County Humane Society in Vermont, where he noticed a gold and white kitten with outsized, deep amber eyes, a Siberian who mewed 鈥渃onversationally鈥 when Carr approached her cage.
鈥淚 answered her with, with both sounds and words, and more importantly held my hand up so that we could get my scent, pleased when she inspected the hand with her nose and found it satisfactory,鈥 he wrote. 鈥淭hen I slowly closed my eyes and reopened them several times: the 鈥榮low blink鈥 that cats can take as a sign of friendship. She seemed receptive, taking the time to confirm with a similar blink. Finally, she imitated the move of my hand by holding up her rather enormous paws to mine, as if we鈥檇 known each other quite a long time: an intimate gesture.鈥
Carr and Masha would share a home for the next 17 years, attuned to each other's moods and even taste in music, until Masha鈥檚 death. 鈥淢y Beloved Monster鈥 was a kind of dual elegy. As Masha鈥檚 health began to decline, Carr had his own troubles, including neuropathy and pancreatitis, illnesses he believed brought on from his childhood abuse. Watching Masha die, and laid inside a makeshift coffin, was like saying goodbye to his 鈥渙ther self.鈥
鈥淪ome people say that grief is healing; I鈥檝e never found it so. It is scarring, and scarring 鈥 is not healing. I have never had someone who was my daily reality for so many years as Masha cut out of my life, my world, and my soul; how can it heal?鈥 Carr wrote.
鈥淪ince falling onto this Earth, it seems, I have proved as difficult for my fellow human beings, past the easy points of social convention and amusement, as they have often proved for me. But from Masha, no such questions. I was enough; not just enough, but enough that I warranted defending.鈥
