Poor hippos

I wonder if Aliya and I will finally hit the big time once we've played our part in a real crime and then co-written a fictionalised account of it.

I know there are plenty of co-authored novels out and about, but I was interested to learn--browsing the shelves on Charing Cross Road and surreptitiously sneaking copies of Light Reading onto premium shelves--of And The Hippos Were Boiled In Their Tanks, a book written by Jack Kerouac and William S Burroughs before they hit the big time. It's a fictitionalised account of a murder investigation they were both involved with. It's written as a twin-narrative, the same structure Aliya and I have used for all our pieces together (I guess the easiest form in some ways for writing a piece together, but it's also easy for the two segments to clash).

I'm sure if Aliya and I were ever to do the same, it would more likely be about our parts in an incident where someone was found to be riding a bicycle after dark without a light on.

I've not read any Burroughs, I don't think, and I read On the Road when I was seventeen. It's fair to say I didn't get it. And am in no hurry to revisit.

Also, speaking of being let down by a book, I finally finally finished One Hundred Years of Solitude. Found myself quietly disappointed. I grant the book contains great writing, both structurally and in the prose, and I don't regret reading it, but the book had been so built-up in my mind, I guess it suffered from over-hype and had far too much to live up to. The ending in particular, after the commitment required on the reader's part, left me feeling rather let down.

Still, I've heard accounts of others crying because it had ended, so it's all subjective, huh? As for the hippos, you're welcome to them.