And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks

infobox Book |
name = And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks
title_orig =
translator =


image_caption =
author = Jack Kerouac &
William S. Burroughs
illustrator =
cover_artist =
country = United States
language = English
series =
genre = Mystery
publisher = Penguin Classics
release_date = November 2008 (announced)
english_release_date =
media_type = Manuscript
pages =
isbn =
preceded_by =
followed_by =

"And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks" is a soon to be published manuscript written in 1945 by Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs, several years before the two Beat Generation founders achieved notoriety with "On the Road" and "Junkie", respectively.

Intended to be a mystery novel, Burroughs later (in an interview featured in the 1986 documentary "What Happened to Kerouac?") dismissed it as "not a distinguished work." Kerouac and Burroughs were unable to get the book published.

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. After Carr turned himself in to the police, 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 title itself comes from a news broadcast heard by Burroughs, covering a fire at the St Louis Zoo, and in which the announcer broke into hysterics on reading the line.

Excerpts from "And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks" were published for the first time in "" which was released after Burroughs' death.

In March 2008, Penguin Books announced that it will be publishing the manuscript in November 2008. [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/03/02/wkerouac102.xml]

ources

* [http://www.wam.umd.edu/~molouns/amst450/cu/hangouts.html Website with quote from Beat Generation in New York] describing the incident that inspired the novel.