And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks

The legendary novel whose true events inspired the film KILL YOUR DARLINGS

In the summer of 1944, a shocking murder rocked the fledgling Beats. William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, both still unknown, we inspired by the crime to collaborate on a novel, a hard-boiled tale of bohemian New York during World War II, full of drugs and art, obsession and brutality, with scenes and characters drawn from their own lives. Finally published after more than sixty years, this is a captivating read, and incomparable literary artifact, and a window into the lives and art of two of the twentieth century’s most influential writers.

Lucien Carr, college roommate of Allen Ginsberg and friend of both William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, killed David Kammerer in 1944. Ginsberg began and then abandoned a novel based on the incident; Burroughs and Kerouac collaborated and completed this one, which has remained unpublished until now. Writing alternating chapters from alternating points of view, the eventual Beat icons adopted a hard-boiled voice without adopting the conventions of a crime novel. Where most crime novels start with a murder, Hippos leads up to it, and the only tension is generated by the reader’s knowledge of what happened in real life. But if it isn’t successful as a crime novel, it’s fascinating for the glimpses it provides into the authors’ lifestyles (the aimless partying is more On the Road than The Big Sleep) and its indications of the writing styles they would later develop. Interestingly, while references to Rimbaud suggest a parallel to the poet’s volatile love affair with Verlaine, the portrayal of Carr, aka “Phillip Tourian,” is not romanticized—in fact, he would have been a great character for Hammett, Cain, or Chandler to work with. --Keir Graff