The four-page working draft typescript by Jack Kerouac, representing Chapter 8 of the collaborative novel And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks, co-authored with William S. Burroughs during the winter of 1944–45. This draft is one of Kerouac's fifteen alternating chapters, written from the first-person perspective of his self-insert character, Mike Ryko, a rugged merchant seaman drifting through wartime New York. The novel, inspired by the real-life murder of David Kammerer by Lucien Carr—a tragedy that would galvanize the Beat Generation—was never published in the authors' lifetimes and achieved legendary status among collectors and scholars long before its eventual release in 2008. This working draft offers an unprecedented glimpse into Kerouac's early creative process, preceding his major Beat-era publications—On the Road (1957) and The Dharma Bums (1958)—by more than a decade, and stands as one of the few surviving manuscript fragments from this pivotal collaboration.
The typescript consists of four leaves of cream-colored bond paper, measuring 8½ x 11 inches, typewritten on recto only, with text density consistent with Kerouac's mid-1940s manual typewriter. The draft bears extensive holograph annotations in pencil, predominantly in Kerouac's distinctive slanted cursive hand, including marginal notes such as "June light. Clean. The air before the fall," "Flat. Dead flat. The sound of a door closing," and "Everything is a transaction. Even love. Especially love." The document also contains a struck-through line of text with an interlinear correction—"desperate people. he uses them like tools"—demonstrating Kerouac's active editorial process and challenging the myth of his spontaneous, unrevised composition. In one instance, a secondary hand (possibly that of Burroughs or another member of the Beat circle) adds the annotation "Rimbaud would have laughed too. He hated the bourgeois. So does Phil. So do I." The typescript exhibits minor edge wear and a single diagonal crease consistent with folding for storage, but remains in excellent condition overall, with text fully legible and annotations clearly preserved.
This draft typescript carries a distinguished and thoroughly documented provenance, tracing from Kerouac's personal papers through the Kerouac estate to the East Northport Public Library, where it was housed in the library's special collections from 1986 until its deaccession and sale via sealed-bid auction on April 8, 2002. The sale was authorized by a unanimous vote of the library's Board of Trustees, with proceeds designated for facility renovation. The item has since been held in private ownership and maintained in archival storage under climate-controlled conditions. Authenticity has been confirmed through handwriting analysis, typographical analysis, and comparison with authenticated Kerouac materials held at the Berg Collection of the New York Public Library and other institutional archives. This represents a rare opportunity to acquire an authentic working draft from Kerouac's earliest period—a tangible artifact from the very genesis of the Beat literary movement and an essential addition to any serious collection of twentieth-century American literary manuscripts.