And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks
First US edition
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| Author |
Jack Kerouac & William S. Burroughs |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Mystery |
| Publisher |
Grove Press (US) Penguin Classics (UK) |
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Publication date
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November 1, 2008 (US) |
| Media type | Hardcover |
And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks is a novel by Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs. It was written in 1945, a full decade before the two authors became famous as leading figures of the Beat Generation, and remained unpublished until 2008.
Written in the form of a mystery novel, 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. Carr stabbed Kammerer to death in a drunken fight, in self-defense by some accounts, then dumped Kammerer's body into the Hudson River. 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.)
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, very likely the Hartford Circus Fire, which took place on July 6, 1944.
That was [from] a radio broadcast that came over when we were writing the book. There had been a circus fire and I remember this phrase came through on the radio: 'And the hippos were boiled in their tanks!' So we used that as the title.
In a 1967 interview for The Paris Review, 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, or possibly even a fire that occurred at a circus.
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Wikipedia