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Ve Hipopotamlar Tanklarında Haşlandılar (2008)

by Jack Kerouac(Favorite Author)

3.7 of 5 Votes: 1

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English

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Fiction

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review 1: This novel was not only an unique time piece but an amazing and concise retelling of the event that brought (ironically) life into the Beats. Many had criticized that the writing isn't neat, but I found it perfect, Mr.Kerouac and Mr.Burroughs way into words breathed reality into the pages of this book, taking me into the story and not letting me go until I finished it. Maybe if they had used a different style while writing it, the magic of the 40's would've disappeared making the story flat and lifeless. Both of their narrative voices and characters got me hooked and wanting more for days. Burroughs sarcastic and satirical voice had me laughing constantly in public and Kerouac novelistic approach put the cherry on top, filling in all the gaps. Another great thing was their... more subtle way of foreshadowing the end. It is a perfect literary work for all those Beat lovers who still can get enough of this generation. A great and quick read to take you back in time and into the crib of the Beats.
review 2: “And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks” is a fictionalized account of a notorious and then-famous murder among a small group of people of the Bohemian-cum-Beat Generation, spiritual heirs of the so-called Lost Generation of a few decades earlier. Later, many of them would become famous, the rest famous by association, but at the time they were nothing but a group of assorted nuts and fruits, idling away their days by drinking every sort of alcoholic drink known to man, writing mooncalf poetry read only by each other, getting high on morphine and marijuana, and trying to get into each other’s pants. The novel is based on true events and real people, and two of the people are the collaborative authors, Jack Kerouac (“Mike Ryko”) and William S Burroughs (“Will Dennison”). Ah, yes, we’re familiar with the names, even if we’re a little vague about what they did to become famous. Whatever they did to become familiar names, it certainly was not the writing of this book, which was written in the late 40s—at first, it was unpublished because no one wanted it, then was unpublished because those involved had moved on with their lives, wanted nothing more of the notoriety they once courted, and were promised the book would not be published in their lifetimes. And then the last of them died in 2005, and those who cannot let sleeping dogs lie had the green light.The names of the collaborative authors are now very famous, even to those who have never read Kerouac’s “On the Road” or “The Subterraneans”, or Burroughs’ “Naked Lunch” or “Nova Express.” Like the voices of other generations, people whose writing was dependent upon the spiraling lives they led, both writers have devolved from names made famous by their writings to “famous names” made infamous by their lives, from writing legends to legends writing. But at the time of the novel, they were just desperate nobodies. “And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks” was not even written for the audience that would come to embrace them, but more for the people who reached for the lurid and sensational genre pulps of the time, less for Truman Capote (who was a copy boy they knew and would later himself become famous for fictionalized crime) and more for the grey timid bank clerk who hid his pulp magazines from respectable friends and dreamed in shades of noir.Burroughs and Kerouac alternate telling the story chapter by chapter, but now and then taking two chapters in a row. Each chapter is titled with the character narrating it in the first person; until you get settled in your mind which character is which, you can always looks to the top of the right-hand page and see the writer’s real name. But it won’t take you long to sort out who’s who. It didn’t take me long to see Mike Ryko as a young, dark, compact, two-fisted puncher and drinker, always trying to ship out to foreign ports, never quite making it, and getting through life with the panache of a clumsy grifter; Will Dennison quickly settled himself into my mind as an older, greyer, more cynical sort, cunning, secretive, duplicitous, barely tolerant of the people he needed to surround himself with, well-connected with the sleazier elements of New York’s underworld, and not overly concerned with problems that were not his own. Since the narrative is alternating, we get an evolving view of the two authors from each other’s point of view, and parallel descriptions of the other desperate characters involved, often resulting in conflicting views, which the reader must either accept or reconcile, then move on.Readers of crime fiction looking for hot-lead action, machine-gun dialogue and third-degree interrogations down at the station house will be disappointed, for the action is measured, the dialogue often banal, when present at all, and the police are never on stage. Readers of the true crime accounts that have become so popular in recent years will also be disappointed, for there are no Dragnet-like setups, no forensics and no criminal profiling. Even the murder takes place off stage, an as-told-to by Mike Ryko and a dismissive aside by the more practical Will Dennison. But, for all that, the novel is a fascinating one, well written, engrossing and absorbing, and though you may not come to like or care for any of the people involved, you will still want to watch them live out their lives for the same reason there is always a crowd in the zoo, at the reptile house, when it’s feeding time.Following the novel, there is an afterword by James Grauerholz, telling the story behind the writing of the novel, the process of editing it, the travails of publishing. He also puts real names to the fictional characters, relates the actual facts of the murder, tells how it affected their lives at the time, and how they recovered (or not) from the event. He thinks he is giving us true facts, the real lowdown, telling us what really happened in a fictional town called New York City back in the waning years of the Second World War, but I am not so sure. Grauerholz wasn't there, and I’m not sure I would accept the words of Kerouac or Burroughs about anything. No, I think the only voices worth listening to in this case are those of Mike Ryko and Will Dennison. After all, every reader and writer of fiction knows the adage that is certainly as old as the first story-teller: “The story I am telling you is true, whether it happened or not.” less

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