In November, two great Beat writers will be reunited beyond the grave. Grove Press will soon release a previously-unpublished collaboration between William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, a hardboiled tale told in alternating chapters by the two novelists.
According to the book’s materials, And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks was conceived after one of Burroughs’ friends murdered another man with a Boy Scout knife. The two writers decided to create “a fictionalization of the events of the summer of 1944, a crime novel in the style of Dashiell Hammett or James M. Cain.”
For readers too excited to wait, Harper’s magazine gave us a taste of the manuscript in the November issue. Here’s a juicy memory of the West Village:
“People in bars are always claiming to be boxers, hoping thereby to ward off attack, like a black snake will vibrate its tail in leaves and try to impersonate a rattlesnake … I began to get a familiar feeling to me from my bartending days of being the only sane man in a nuthouse.”