Don Schneider
08-26-2017, 04:54 PM
(This forum has a page devoted to The Beat Generation)
I was going to write a speculative psychological profile of David Kammerer and his relationship with Lucien Carr (late father of Caleb Carr (The Alienist)) based upon two people I have known who seem to closely resemble (in more ways than one) these two men in their relationship with each other, but now after reading this from *The Guardian’s* obituary of Carr, it made me think twice. Who knows what to believe?
Does anyone have any information concerning the obit’s claim “that there is persuasive evidence that Kammerer was not gay.” One thing that I am certain of in my mind (again based upon my experiences with the two aforementioned men I referred to) is that Carr was not aboI was going to write a speculative psychological profile of David Kammerer and his relationship with Lucien Carr based upon two people I have known who seem to closely resemble (in more ways than one) these two men in their relationship with each other, but now after reading this from *The Guardian’s* obituary of Carr, it made me think twice. Who knows what to believe?
Does anyone have any information concerning the obit’s claim “that there is persuasive evidence that Kammerer was not gay.” One thing that I am certain of in my mind was that Carr was not above using Kammerer to his advantage and was not quite the victim of Kammerer’s gratuitous stalking that he would later claim to have been the case.
From The Guardian:
"Central to Carr's defence was that he was not gay, and that Kammerer, an obsessive stalker, threatened sexual violence. Once the story of a predatory homosexual was presented in court, Carr became a victim and the murder was framed as an honour killing. There was no one in court to question the story or offer a different version of the relationship.
"Much of the story, however, is doubtful; perhaps now, with Carr's death, it may be possible to disentangle some of the strands of insinuation, legal spin and lies. There is no independent proof that Kammerer was a predatory stalker; there is only Carr's word for the pursuit from St Louis to New York; there is persuasive evidence that Kammerer was not gay. Carr enjoyed his ability to manipulate the older man, and got him to write essays for his classes at New York's Columbia University. A friend remembers Kammerer slamming the door of his apartment in Carr's face, and telling him to get lost.
"There is much evidence to suggest that Carr had been a troubled and unstable young man. While at the University of Chicago, he attempted to commit suicide with his head in an unlit gas oven, and told a psychiatrist that it had been a performance, a work of art. In New York, Carr gave Ginsberg, who had been raised respectably in New Jersey, where his father was a teacher, a new language of eroticism and danger. Ginsberg carefully wrote in his journal the key terms of the 'Carr language': fruit, phallus, clitoris, cacoethes, faeces, foetus, womb, Rimbaud."
I was going to write a speculative psychological profile of David Kammerer and his relationship with Lucien Carr (late father of Caleb Carr (The Alienist)) based upon two people I have known who seem to closely resemble (in more ways than one) these two men in their relationship with each other, but now after reading this from *The Guardian’s* obituary of Carr, it made me think twice. Who knows what to believe?
Does anyone have any information concerning the obit’s claim “that there is persuasive evidence that Kammerer was not gay.” One thing that I am certain of in my mind (again based upon my experiences with the two aforementioned men I referred to) is that Carr was not aboI was going to write a speculative psychological profile of David Kammerer and his relationship with Lucien Carr based upon two people I have known who seem to closely resemble (in more ways than one) these two men in their relationship with each other, but now after reading this from *The Guardian’s* obituary of Carr, it made me think twice. Who knows what to believe?
Does anyone have any information concerning the obit’s claim “that there is persuasive evidence that Kammerer was not gay.” One thing that I am certain of in my mind was that Carr was not above using Kammerer to his advantage and was not quite the victim of Kammerer’s gratuitous stalking that he would later claim to have been the case.
From The Guardian:
"Central to Carr's defence was that he was not gay, and that Kammerer, an obsessive stalker, threatened sexual violence. Once the story of a predatory homosexual was presented in court, Carr became a victim and the murder was framed as an honour killing. There was no one in court to question the story or offer a different version of the relationship.
"Much of the story, however, is doubtful; perhaps now, with Carr's death, it may be possible to disentangle some of the strands of insinuation, legal spin and lies. There is no independent proof that Kammerer was a predatory stalker; there is only Carr's word for the pursuit from St Louis to New York; there is persuasive evidence that Kammerer was not gay. Carr enjoyed his ability to manipulate the older man, and got him to write essays for his classes at New York's Columbia University. A friend remembers Kammerer slamming the door of his apartment in Carr's face, and telling him to get lost.
"There is much evidence to suggest that Carr had been a troubled and unstable young man. While at the University of Chicago, he attempted to commit suicide with his head in an unlit gas oven, and told a psychiatrist that it had been a performance, a work of art. In New York, Carr gave Ginsberg, who had been raised respectably in New Jersey, where his father was a teacher, a new language of eroticism and danger. Ginsberg carefully wrote in his journal the key terms of the 'Carr language': fruit, phallus, clitoris, cacoethes, faeces, foetus, womb, Rimbaud."