And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks

Written collaboratively in 1945 by the two men who were to help shape an entire generation And the Hippos were boiled in Their Tanks was the novel that preceded the popular perception (and publication) of Beat literature. I would argue that the event that this novel was based on was the catalyst for the nascent rebelliousness fuelled by discontent within post-war America. David Kammerer’s death at the hands of Lucien Carr and the decision of Kerouac and Burroughs’ to immortalise it as a work of fiction was the point that ‘Beat’ stepped out of philosophising and onto the page.

The genius of this novel is not in the quality of the writing; it must be admitted that the strength of the prose in this book is found wanting when compared to the authors’ subsequent writings. An example of this is the passage in which Burroughs (or Dennison as he is characterised in the novel) injects himself with morphine and the way that he describes this: “I held the spoon over the alcohol lamp until the tablets were completely dissolved. I let the solution cool, then sucked it up into the hypodermic, fitted on the needle, and started looking for a high vein on my arm. After a while I found one and the needle slid in, the blood came up, and I let it suck back in. almost immediately, a feeling of complete relaxation spread over me.” This writing is, although descriptive, distinctly devoid of the linguistic prowess that distinguishes his later novel Junky: “Morphine hits the backs of the legs first, then the back of the neck, a spreading wave of relaxation slackening the muscles away from the bones so that you seem to float without outlines, like lying in warm salt water. As this relaxing wave spread through my tissues, I experienced a strong feeling of fear.” The depiction of morphine’s effect on a user are far more vivid in the latter quotation and this I feel is characteristic of Burroughs’ growth as writer and, as an addict of ‘junk’. The second quotation is representative of the first time one uses morphine and offers a reader a more accurate and balanced description of the opiate. It could be argued that this higher quality of writing with its powerful use language (‘float without outlines’) is simply because Junky is about that drug and the other is not, but I feel that it is a direct result of his growing absorption in heroin between the writing of And the Hippos were Boiled in Their Tanks and Junky. This novel was written before his experimentation with the ‘Cut-up’ technique that he was to eventually pioneer and become renowned for. It was also penned before Kerouac went ‘on the road’ (as it were) and before his nomadic lifestyle became directly manifested in his writing in the style that he called ‘spontaneous prose’. Kerouac’s writing in this novel is far more formal in style and lacks that impulsive disregard for grammatical and punctuational perfection that makes his writing so inflammatory and powerful. His later works were far more innovative in terms of writing technique and his stylistic prose that exploded onto the page in frenzied creative sessions is missing here. “I was walking along with a bunch of shipmates and we all went down to the waterfront and found a shack and started fooling around. Two of the guys went inside the shack and then one of them poked his head out of a hole in the roof and started singing. Some of the guys were pushing against the shack to see if it would move. It did. While the two seamen were still in the shack, we pushed it over the side right into the water. It’s a wonder they didn’t drown. Maybe they were too drunk to drown.” In this passage Ryko discusses a particularly drunken shore leave and yet it is told in a well-written and concise manner, without the breathless intensity that was to become so significant in his later novels: “Out of the bar were pouring interesting people, the night making a great impression on me, some kind of Truman-Capote-haired dark Marlon Brando with a beautiful thin birl or girl in boy slacks with stars in her eyes and hips that seemed so soft when she put her hands in her slacks I could see the change- and dark thin slackpant legs dropping to little feet, and that face, and with them a guy with another beautiful doll, the guy’s name Rob and he’s some kind of adventurous Israeli soldier with a British accent whom I suppose you might find in some Riviera bar at 5.a.m. drinking everything in sight…” This passage comes from The Subterraneans and shows the way that Kerouac would grow into a manic style of writing, far more vivid and visceral in describing a few characters than in depicting a mad, drunken scenario when using his personal type of prose.

    The context surrounding this novel is highly relevant, (as is the case of all of both Kerouac and Burroughs’ writings) as the story is more witness account than fictional narrative. I feel that this book is not so much about the murder of Kammerer as a field journal from two perspectives, based on the burgeoning ‘Beat’ lifestyle. The writers focus heavily on their day to day lives, expounding on the seemingly mundane events, continuously building to the somewhat anti-climactic murder. The novel gives a reader a highly descriptive insight into the way that the ‘Beat’ generation lived before they were thrust into the media spotlight with the publications of On the Road and Junky- we see the literary and philosophical debate; the drinking; the promiscuity and the narcotics. We see Kerouac’s desire to travel and also a hint of the Sal Paradise in him- the follower rather than the protagonist. We see the way that he is lead around; it is Phil who asks him to ship out. We are also offered a tantalising hint as to the general motif of the rest of his novels- at the end of his book he declares his desire to ‘travel far’ and see the ‘scrub pines of North Carolina’. In Burroughs’ we see the dark and seedy side of his personality; the addiction that was to consume him for the rest of his life and also his affinity for weapons and violence, coupled with his underworld connections- one acquaintance asks to borrow his ‘sap’, this being the same character who asks to commit arson for money.

The genius in this novel is the way that the authors build up to the culmination of the story, the apparently bland events that amass until the climax- a climax that the reader is robbed of. We never witness the tragedy. The murder is outside of the reader’s field of vision; though it is described to us, it comes as a first person relaying of a first person telling of it. The viscera is secondary. The story is all in the build up; as the pages turn we can see Phil growing further exasperated with the amorous approaches of Al and yet we do see a curios reciprocal pattern in Tourian in a strange, incestuous, filial vein (Al admits to Dennison that Phil kissed him). At the end of chapter 6 (One of Ryko’s) we are with Mike, Phil and Al who asks Phil: “You haven’t got a ship have you?” to which he replies “Not yet” before expounding on their plan to jump ship in France and hike to Paris. Al questions him: “Do you think it’s safe?” whereupon Phil responds: We’re not worried about that.” This response, I feel characterises the brusqueness of Phil towards Al but also depicts a bravado in him, as if he is keen to impress the ambiguously sexual, paternal figure of Al, despite his already bloomed infatuation with the young man.

This novel, published in 2008 after the death of Lucien Carr (he asked for it never to be published in his lifetime) is a highly important literary artefact. It was hidden under the floorboards of Jack Kerouac’s mother’s home and he referred to it several times as a good work that he was proud of, and he strived to get it published. But without the innovations of the burgeoning writers- he had not yet pioneered spontaneous prose and Burroughs’ was a decade away from the ‘cut-up’ technique, their formal style and controversial subject matter was not appealing to publishers. Burroughs’ was later quoted saying “It wasn’t very good.” However, I feel, that if one looks at the novel as pre-emptory to the later happenings within ‘Beat’ literature, that this novel is both, relevant, entertaining, interesting and thoroughly worth reading.

Luke Fairweather