''And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks'' is a novel by Jack Kerouac and
William S. Burroughs
William Seward Burroughs II (; February 5, 1914 – August 2, 1997) was an American writer and visual artist, widely considered a primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodern author who influenced popular cultur ...
. It was written in 1945, a full decade before the two authors became famous as leading figures of the Beat Generation, and remained unpublished in complete form until 2008.
Creation
The book consists of alternating chapters by each author writing as a different character. Burroughs (as William Lee, the pseudonym he would later use for his first published book, '' Junkie'') writes the character "Will Dennison" while Kerouac (as "John Kerouac"), takes on the character of "Mike Ryko".
According to the book '' The Beat Generation in New York'' by Bill Morgan, the novel was based upon the killing of David Kammerer who was obsessed with
Lucien Carr
Lucien Carr (March 1, 1925 – January 28, 2005) was a key member of the original New York City circle of the Beat Generation in the 1940s; later he worked for many years as an editor for United Press International.
Early life
Carr was born in Ne ...
. Carr stabbed Kammerer to death in a drunken fight, in self-defense by some accounts, then dumped Kammerer's body into the
Hudson River
The Hudson River is a river that flows from north to south primarily through eastern New York. It originates in the Adirondack Mountains of Upstate New York and flows southward through the Hudson Valley to the New York Harbor between N ...
. Carr later confessed the crime, first to Burroughs, then to Kerouac, neither of whom reported it to the police. When Carr eventually turned himself in, Burroughs and Kerouac were arrested as accessories after the fact. Kerouac served some jail time because his father refused to bail him out but Burroughs was bailed out by his family. (Kerouac married Edie Parker while in jail, and she then paid his bail.)
Title
The book's title allegedly comes from a news broadcast, heard by Burroughs, about a fire at a circus during which the announcer broke into hysterics on reading the line.
In a 1967 interview for ''
The Paris Review
''The Paris Review'' is a quarterly English-language literary magazine established in Paris in 1953 by Harold L. Humes, Peter Matthiessen, and George Plimpton. In its first five years, ''The Paris Review'' published works by Jack Kerouac, Phil ...
'', Kerouac agreed with the basis of the story but claimed the fire was at the London Zoo.
However, in his afterword to the 2008 publication, James Grauerholz indicated that the origin of the title is unconfirmed and may have been related to a zoo incident in
Egypt
Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Medit ...
, or possibly even a fire that occurred at a circus.
Characters
Kerouac often based his fictional characters on friends and family.Sandison, David. ''Jack Kerouac: An Illustrated Biography.'' Chicago: Chicago Review Press. 1999
Publication and reception
In later years, Burroughs did not consider ''And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks'' worth retrieving from obscurity. In the 1986 documentary '' What Happened to Kerouac?'' he dismissed it as "not a distinguished work."
According to
James Grauerholz
James Grauerholz (born December 14, 1953) is a writer and editor. He is the bibliographer and literary executor of the estate of William S. Burroughs.
Life and career
Grauerholz was born in Coffeyville, Kansas and attended the University of K ...
, numerous attempts were made by Kerouac and others to get the book published, until Burroughs brought a lawsuit over the use of quotations from the manuscript that appeared in '' New York'' magazine in 1976; the suit, which was settled in the 1980s, established the ownership of the work. When Burroughs died in 1997, Grauerholz became the executor of his estate, with responsibility for the disposition of his unpublished works. He had befriended Lucien Carr and agreed not to publish the manuscript in Carr's lifetime, although an excerpt from the book was included in the 1997 Burroughs omnibus ''Word Virus'', published by Grove after the writer's death (but approved by Burroughs before he died). Carr's death in 2005 made way for the complete book to be published at last.
Penguin Books
Penguin Books is a British publishing house. It was co-founded in 1935 by Allen Lane with his brothers Richard and John, as a line of the publishers The Bodley Head, only becoming a separate company the following year.Grove Press.
Ian Pindar, writing for ''
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
'', agreed with Burroughs' assessment about the book but claimed "Neither Burroughs nor Kerouac is at his best here, but Hippos has value as a testament to their latent talent."
''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
'', in a review panning the novel, called the book "flimsy" "repetitious" and "flat-footed". The review claimed "The best thing about this collaboration between Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs is its gruesomely comic title".
A positive review in ''
The Independent
''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publish ...
'' stated that the "novel has limited claims to the literary high ground, but is an enjoyable read".
Although not based upon the novel, the 2013 film release '' Kill Your Darlings'' re-creates the events leading up to the murder that inspired the book.