Customer Reviews

I Should Have Stayed Home (Midnight Classics)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Horace McCoy is simply one of the finest stylists to have operated in the noir form. He was a conflicted fellow who felt he ought to be a variation on Fitzgerald but who was actually blessed with a fine talent for something very different from his hero. This conflict tortured him(and led to a couple of bland but very successful mainstream novels) but resulted in three of the great books of noir---I Should Have Stayed Home, They Shoot Horses, Don;'t They? and Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye. He was a true poet of the grim reality and horribly neglected .

I have no idea what "Simpleminded and Obvious" is talking about. This was a truly enjoyable book - I read it in one sitting, and didn't want it to end. The style is sharp, perceptive, and seemingly effortless. I also found the storyline remarkably contemporary.

After his huge editorial problems following the writing of his powerful "No Pockets in the Shroud", McCoy comes back to the Hollywood circle and builds a solid story starring a twin brother of Robert "They shoot Horses..." Syverten, Ralph Carston, a more muscled character - as McCoy himself was - but as naive as him, who came from his Southern home to become an actor - as McCoy himself did. He shares a small bungalow with a young pretty girl, Mona Matthews. This time they try to get in movies attending not marathon contests, but luxurious cocktails. But his accent doesn't give Ralph the opportunity to break in movies. He meets a rich old woman who falls in love with him but doesn't do anything for him to succeed as an actor. Naive and stubborn at the same time, he keeps wandering in Hollywood as Mona leaves the city after showing too much in the studios and wasting all of her chances to succeed.

McCoy's painting of Hollywood in the 30's is still valid. It's not as sober and successful as "They shoot Horses..." but it's still very realistic, contemporary and well-described, with a real dramatic intensity. It's a novel which reflects not only what McCoy saw in Hollywood (where he worked as a screenwriter from 1933 to the end of his life), but also his own disillusions: he came to Hollywood in 1931 to work as an actor and a screenwriter but failed as an actor, because of his accent.

Begun with "They shoot Horses, don't they?", McCoy's Hollywood "dilogy" ends with this short book where the writer invests himself mainly in Johnny Hill, an attractive, realistic character able (like Mike Dolan did in "No Pockets in a Shroud") to anticipate World War II.

With 'I Should Have Stayed Home' Horace McCoy repeats his successful formula of writing a brief novel about 1930s down-and-outs, in their own language. This time McCoy tackles Hollywood and the hopeless dreamers wishing to escape reality (ie, poverty) and become stars. Yes, this sort of stuff has been written about before. But unexpectedly, the main character here is a young man being abused for his looks and innocence.

Although entirely readable and enjoyable, 'I Should Have Stayed Home' doesn't really break new ground. Its pathos doesn't come close to McCoy's better works (eg, 'They Shoot Horses...'). Folks new to the works of McCoy might be disappointed.

Bottom line: nice time capsule of the "other side" of 1930s Hollywood. I just wish McCoy would have "twisted the knife" a little harder at the film establishment.

McCoy's book tells a very familiar story (I imagine it was already a pretty well worn tale even when this was first published): small town person travels to big city to make it big; small town person becomes corrupted by the amoral city; small town person survives (or doesn't) and lessons are learned. It's a fun read, especially if you enjoy the hard boiled lit of this era. The big fault is that it just hasn't aged well. Parts of it are very funny when they shouldn't be at all. Compare that to something like Hammett's The Thin Man, which holds up all these years later and is still funny when it's supposed to be.

I Should Have Stayed Home is a novella that attempts to be an expose of what really happens to all the youngsters who flocked to Hollywood in the 1930's with stars in their eyes. It has drunken parties, nude swimmers, a suicide, and interracial sexual relationships. Nothing out of the ordinary there in contemporary noir, but pretty racy stuff for it's time.

The story revolves around Ralph Carson, an aspiring actor whose thick southern accent renders him unable to be cast in anything. Only after his (Platonic) roommate, Mona Matthews, curses a judge in court who is sentencing a friend does Ralph get any attention from the Hollywood establishment. Of course, it is from a rich nymphomaniac, who promises Ralph much and delivers only to satisfy herself. This gives McCoy free reign to critique the parties, the private lives of the wealthy, and all the hangers on who know that Hollywood is completely phoney, but still work to make the "star making machinery" roll along.

I thought the scenes of Ralph alone with his wealthy paramour foreshadowed the movie Sunset Boulevard in many eerie ways. The writing is crisp and flows quickly. McCoy certainly knows his way around a typewriter and a plot. If you're interested in a well drawn sketch of Hollywood in the Depression, this is a good book to pick up.

Horace McCoy's book arrived in good shape on time. Good service from the seller. Great reading from McCoy.

There's no rule that states that each novel must be an original unto itself. Originality is a rare commodity, and rehashing an old theme can sometimes lead to a new insight.

Not here.

I SHOULD HAVE STAYED HOME may have caused a stir when it was originally published, but it has not aged well. What seemed ground-breaking now seems routine and trite. Certainly, the travails of young hopefuls caught in the web of moral uncertainty that is Hollywood is nothing new.

But while HOME may have been the among the first of many, it is too simple-minded to stand the test of time. At most, it is precocious in its innocence. The characters, who are idealistic to a fault, are annoying at best, and never elicit any sympathy for their troubles. If anything, any character who comes across as this stupid makes the reader yearn for more problems, so that the characters will really know what it's like to suffer. The whinings of a young man who can't be a star does not make for entertaining reading.

This isn't as good as Nat West's Hollywood tale entitled Day of the Locust, but then nothing is. Nat West was in a different league as a writer, much higher on the scale, etc., but that shouldn't keep you from enjoying McCoy's take on LA LA.
I'm a McCoy fan from way back, and what's sad is there you are wanting him to be as good as West or Hemingway or Hammet, et al, as a writer, and there is just no way. Don't get me wrong, McCoy does the best that he can with the gifts that he had...and one simply has to settle for it. What may have hurt him as a writer early on is the fact he wrote for the pulps...but then again so did Raymond Chandler and he didn't end up anything less than a first rate type of novelist--even though he worked in the private ... genre.

Bottom line: Enjoy McCoy for what he has to offer--and what he's got to offer isn't all that bad either. An easy read and a cautionary tale: It's okay to have dreams, but don't throw your life away chasing after something that isn't likely to happen. And yet, we can relate: who hasn't got a dream or two they would like to see happen? It's part of being human. Horace McCoy never made it as an actor in real life, the reason he came out to Hollywood in the first place, but he did end up working on over one hundred B-flicks as a screenwriter. With that many credits to his name one imagines the man was able to make a decent living, that's a lot better than the thousands of other lost dreamers roaming the streets of The Glitter Factory. Four stars is a fair appraisal. We remain a McCoy fan.