He was arguably the best breaking-news editor of his generation. He had incredibly sharp instincts about the real news angle of any story. He was a writer's editor as well and made substantial improvements to a story without changing the writer's voice or tampering with the style. Rather, he would get the writer to make the changes the story needed and then he would organize the rewritten prose logically so that it really flowed.
Lucien Carr was one of several fascinating real-life characters, like Neal Cassady, Carl Solomon, and Herbert Huncke, who became legendary through their association with the Beat writers. Lucien holds a special position here: he introduced Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs to each other.
