The first novel of the Beat Generation.

"I had the impression that all over America, on street corners, in bars and restaurants, such stupid fights were happening. All over America, people were rubbing the parchments they had just pulled out of their pockets in the faces of others to prove that they had been somewhere or done something. And I thought that at some point all Americans would suddenly jump up and say: 'I don't take this bullshit!' and start pushing and cursing and fighting with anyone they found in front of them..."

The adventurer Ramsey Allen, mentor and friend of the much younger, handsome poet Philip Tourian, is barely surviving in a mixed "student" group of men and women where the two narrators of the book intersect: Will Dennison, a bartender deeply entrenched in the underworld, who works as a detective by day, and Mike Ryko, an alcoholic sailor. The steady friends and occasional girlfriends and acquaintances of this group sleep anywhere (and with anyone), eat anywhere, kill time anywhere, consume endless amounts of alcohol and drugs—all this amidst war, in 1944! The homosexual Allen exerts terrifying, constant pressure on the young Philip, to the point of becoming tragically comic and annoying for the entire group. Philip, wanting to escape Allen's overbearing protectiveness, desperately tries to sail to France with Mike but to no avail. In an unsuspecting moment, Philip fatally clashes with Allen...

This mythical novel, in which the most well-known characteristics of Beat literature are recorded for the first time, is a wild descent into the depths of the craziest obsessions, lust, drugs, alcohol, art, and relentless loneliness.

The book was published posthumously, just a few months ago.

We reiterate here that the book gathers all the characteristics of Beat "on the road" literature, even though it happens only in the streets and avenues of New York just before the end of the war. What are these characteristics: the incredible episodes that follow one another rapidly, the encounters with random people who pierce the plot like sudden flashes (or insights in the minds of the narrators/characters), the slow, seemingly meaningless, crazy/drunken conversations of the always idle group that enjoys surviving on the edge of things, the libertinism (drugs, alcohol, homosexual or even triangular relationships) naturally integrated into the normalcy of life, the extremes in words but often also in actions, the humor mixed with wisdom in endless conversations without beginning or end—in short, all the stylistic elements that permeate iconic Beat books like Kerouac's "On the Road" or Burroughs' "Junky."

The careful reader will be pleased to find that all these are clearly tested successfully for the first time in "The Hippos."

The reading of the book convinces that subsequently, through the common workshop of the Hippopotami and with the same materials, Kerouac will proceed by shaping with greater confidence his personal universe of "on the road" existential anguish, while Burroughs, with greater "madness," will accordingly define his own universe, where the often chilling, in its anthropological dimension, eternal game with death takes center stage.

This novel contains a clear irony: the audacious and subversive beat movement in literature is now recorded (and established) as a literary school with its influence on world literature being indisputable. It now belongs to the classic canon of the twentieth century. Therefore, this novel, which was written first, occupied its authors throughout their lives, and which we read last, winks slyly at the reader: it is the last and at the same time the first, the first trial and the final (posthumous) signature.