And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks

by Sean McGahey

And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks is an unpublished manuscript written in 1945 by Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs, several years before the two Beat Generation founders achieved notoriety with On the Road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 the film What Happened to Kerouac?) dismissed it as “not a distinguished work.” Kerouac and Burroughs were unable to get the book published and only fragments exist today, some of which were published in the Burroughs compilation Word Virus.  According to the book The Beat Generation in New York by Bill Morgan, the novel was based upon a real-life incident in which a man named David Kammerer became obsessed with another man named Lucien Carr. Carr stabbed Kammerer to death in a drunken fight and later confessed the crime to Burroughs and Kerouac, who did not immediately report it to the police; both writers were arrested for this, with Kerouac serving some jail time as a result (Burroughs being bailed out by a family member). 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 Word Virus: A William S. Burroughs Reader which was published after Burroughs’ death. 

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