By Mark Howell

 

Kill Your Darlings,” the movie featured at Tropic Cinema that stars Daniel (Harry Potter) Radcliffe, tells the true-life story of Lucien Carr, one of the most dashing of the original Beats and a lifelong friend of Jack Kerouac, Allan Ginsberg and William Burroughs.

 

 

Carr’s mother, who divorced his father, was Marion Howland Gratz from a socially prominent family in St. Louis. But it was in New York City, specifically at Columbia University where the founding Beat trio was enrolled, that Carr began his fateful fame.

 

 

It was at then that an ultimate Keys connection stepped in. Among the young women who ran with these nonconforming young men was Marion Robinson, who’d spend her later years at Key West by the Sea and tell us quite a bit about those early years, especially regarding Carr.

 

 

It was at Columbia that Carr was stalked by an older man named David Kammerer whom he’d be accused of murdering, which is at the heart of the movie.

 

 

After serving two years in prison, Carr straightened out his life, asked Ginsberg to remove him from the dedication page to “Howl” and went on to become a 40-year editor at United Press. He married Francesca Hartz and they had three children, one of who, Caleb, wrote a hit novel, “The Alienist.” Carr died in 2005.

 

 

We asked Marion to explain those wild guys from Columbia in the early post-war years. “They missed the war,” she told us. “So they were lost. They had great talent but they didn’t know how to live among others.

 

 

“Theirs was a tragic group but a glorious one.”

 

 

 

The original artwork of “Saying Grace,” a Norman Rockwell cover for the Saturday Evening Post featuring a young girl in prayer at the Thanksgiving table, which earned the artist just handful of dollars 50 or so years ago, is anticipated to fetch $15 million at a Sotheby’s auction this month.

 

 

 

After earning between $300 million and $400, boxing’s youngest heavyweight champion in  history, Mike Tyson, declared bankruptcy with $23 million in debt and $17 million in back taxes.

 

 

Shown proof that he’d been paid $12 million for his fight against Michael Spinks in 1988, Tyson could not recall either that he’d ever been paid or “what I did with money.”

 

 

 

We mourn the passing of Joel Blair, who died at the age of 79 on Dec. 3. For many years Joel served as art critic for Solares Hill. An observer of impeccable taste and skill, he also wrote book reviews, particularly relating to history, and contributed opinion pieces powerfully critical of today’s separation between rich and poor in America.

 

 

We recall the afternoon teatimes we’d spend at his home on Elizabeth Street that he remodeled with his late partner Peter Moulton. These have become sad days for Solares Hill readers.

 

 

 

The Internet Society has inducted 33 people into its first-ever Hall of Fame. They include hypertext visionaries Tim Berners Lee and Robert Caillau, open-source software pioneer Mitchell Baker, network guru Steve Crocker, CP/IP inventor Vint Cerf and former U.S. Vice president Al Gore who, yes, really did sponsor legislation that helped commercialize the Internet.

 

 

 

A third of all divorces in the United States contained the word “Facebook,” reports Divorce Online.

 

 

The most common reasons cited were inappropriate messages to members of the opposite sex, separated spouses posting nasty comments about each other and Facebook friends reporting spouse’s behavior.

 

 

 

Owls are the only birds that can see the color blue.

 

 

 

Quote for the Week:

 

 

“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye.”

 

 

Antoine de Saint-Exupery

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