And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks

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in 1945, a full decade before the two authors became famous as leading figures of the Beat Generation, and remained unpublished in complete form until 2008.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. 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.) 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.