And the Hippos were Boiled in their Tanks

Which has very little directly to do with this hard-boiled memoir-cum-fictionalized account of the early beats hanging around New York, drinking Pernod, eating steak, making out with girls, and trying to ship out to France as the Allies try and break out of Cherbourg, all while their pal (who went on to be a well-liked newsman), breaks the skull and kills his infatuated homosexual non-lover.  There is a lot of shifting around from bar to bar and bedsit to bedsit, Burroughs and Kerouac get to write a chapter each in turn, and there's an afterword by Burroughs' room mate and executer, which has its own interest (plus he edited the thing).  Good bits include the use of 'fink', the quasi-existential, exterior life feel of the prose, and the fact it ain't too long.  It also ends, and maybe even works up to, a not bad joke about politicians.