Caleb Carr (
August 2, 1955-), US military historian and author
Caleb Carr is the son of
Lucien Carr, a
UPI editor, and
Francesca von Hartz, a social worker. His older brother Simon is an abstract painter and his younger brother Ethan is a
landscape architect. His father was a key figure in the early days of the
Beat Generation movement. He introduced
Jack Kerouac,
William S. Burroughs, and
Allen Ginsberg to one another at
Columbia University. He also served 2 years in prison for killing a male stalker in
1944. Kerouac and Burroughs helped him hide evidence, but he later turned himself in.
Growing up among the Beats was a disorienting experience.
“What's extremely romantic for adults may be disruptive and frightening for children.” Yet that experience has had, amazingly, no influence upon his work. His heavily researched books have little to do with the spontaneous prose of his father’s friends. The only thing that could be construed as remotely Beat about Carr is his long, straight hair.
"I became a writer despite them, basically. It never occurred to me that they would be brought up in the story of my success. And, to a certain extent, it infuriates me that they are."
Even without the influence of the Beats, he had a troublesome childhood. His parents divorced when he was eight and his mother married
John Speicher, a journalist with a penchant for the drink and three daughters. Thus what Carr would call
“the dark Brady Bunch” was formed. He became a mischevious youth who was overly fond of using
firecrackers, prompting the
Friends Seminary high school to label him
“socially undesirable” on his
transcripts. Imagine that - being called “socially undesriable” on your
permanent record, and by the
Quakers no less! So he went to
Kenyon College in
Ohio with
“a bunch of beer-drinking morons” and left after two years.
Despite his mother’s disapproval, his love for
military history had formed early, possibly from the war movies he loved to watch. From Ohio, he moved back to
New York and worked for his mentor
James Chace at the prestigeous journal
Foreign Affairs. My source material doesn’t specify how a “socially undesriable” youth got such a primo position, but it didn’t last long. A
letter to the editor criticizing
Henry Kissinger was published in the
New York Times and he was in the outs with the staff of FA. He completed his BA at
New York University and wrote his first novel, the autobigraphical
Casing the Promised Land (
1980), which made no impression.
He spent much of the 1980s
“bumming around”, joining a band and a theater group, working in a bookstore, etc. He was also writing:
op-ed pieces for the
Times, articles for MHQ (
The Quarterly Journal of Military History), and screenplays for a few forgettable movies. His second book,
American Invulnerable:The Quest for Absolute Security from 1812 to Star Wars, was cowritten with Chase. It was a history of US
national security and got mixed reviews.
His first book to receive widespread critical acclaim was
The Devil Soldier (
1991), a biography of
Frederick Townsend Ward, an American
mercenary in
China. The meticulous research critics praised he applied next to the novel that made him famous,
The Alienist (
1994). In fact, at first he pitched his novel as another work of historical non-fiction, complete with a doctored photo of
Theodore Roosevelt in his proposal. When he revealed the truth, his furious editor soon became intrigued. The story is this: it is
1896 and then NYC police commissioner Roosevelt is faced with a
serial killer and fictional
psychologist Dr.
Laszlo Kreizler heads the investigation. Kreizler is the titular “alienist” - a scientist who studies the minds of those alienated from society. Real people like Roosevelt and
Jacob Riis mingle with fictional against a heavily researched and historically accurate background. The novel spent six months on the bestseller list. The sequel,
The Angel of Darkness (
1997), was inspired by the work of
Wilkie Collins. It featured many of the same characters, but a different
narrator.
His next novel,
Killing Time (
2000), was
science fiction, set in a
dystopian
2023, but it was still a murder mystery and written much like his previous novels. He has become a contributing editor of MHQ and worked for the
Modern Library on the boards that chose those top 100 lists. Eventually, a second sequel to The Alienist will be published, but the movie version seems to have died in development.
He has been in the news recently for his latest nonfiction work,
The Lessons of History (
2002). It is a timely book, discussing
terrorism throughout history. But critics derided his arguments as simplistic and contradictory. Angered, Carr struck back, giving himself 5 stars on an
Amazon.com review and writing a nasty and bizarre letter to
Salon reviewer
Laura Miller, calling her a “bitchy wise-ass” and “REASON NO. 8 MILLION WHY THE SOUL OF NEW YORK CITY IS DYING” (caps are his). The funniest line was his comment that she was a member of “the club that meets at Michiko's to watch '
Sex in the City' and spout a lot of nonsense about things they don't know,” Michiko being
New York Times reviewer
Michiko Kakutani. Amazon removed his self-review and he wrote another letter to Salon apologizing for using “the 'b----' word.”
Sources:
Gale Contemporary Authors Online database
Wilson Biographies Plus database
http://www.salon.com/books/letters/2002/02/08/welfare/index.html