They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (Midnight Classics) (Paperback)

~ (Author) "I stood up..." (more)
Key Phrases: marathon dance, floor judge, public wedding, Socks Donald, Vee Lovell, Kid Kamm (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

The depression of the 1930s led people to desperate measures to survive. The marathon dance craze, which flourished at that time, seemed a simple way for people to earn extra money - dancing the hours away for cash. But the underside of that craze was filled with a competition and violence unknown to most ballrooms. A lurid tale of dancing and desperation: Horace McCoy's classic American novel captures the dark side of the 1930s.

About the Author

Horace McCoy was born near Nashville, Tennessee in 1897. During his lifetime he travelled all over the US as a salesman and taxi-driver, and his varied career included reporting and sports editing, acting as bodyguard to a politician, doubling for a wrestler, and writing for films and magazines. A founder of the celebrated Dallas Little Theatre, his novels include I Should Have Stayed Home (1938), Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye (1948), and They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1935), which was made into a film. He died in 1955.

Product Details

• Paperback: 132 pages
• Publisher: Serpent's Tail (June 1, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 185242401X
• ISBN-13: 978-1852424015
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 4.9 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 0.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #326,044 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fresh, original, haunting, September 17, 1999

By A Customer

Although this book was written in the 1930s, it speaks to today's ennui and loss of meaning. It is still fresh and will stand the test of time, much like Nathaniel West's work. The story describes two drifting people who meet on the streets of Hollywood and find themselves in a crazy dance marathon contest. They initially wanted to meet Hollywood producers and stars through the marathon, but then just go on and on, hour after hour, day after day, dancing in perpetual motion, not knowing why they continue. Perhaps it's for the $1000 prize money, or perhaps it's just because they're in a rut, trying to escape their desparate, empty lives. The contest is just a crass racket the promoters have dreamed up to pull in cash, and the contestants are almost like animals in a great big cage who can't escape, while the audience comes night after night to gawk and laugh at them. The basic cruelty of the contest is driven home in scenes depicting nightly "derby races," where the exhausted contestants must race around a track for 15 minutes, with the last place couple being eliminated. Bodies fall, tempers flare, and fists fly while the audience gasps and thrills to the show. In the end, we discover an enormous existential void in our two contestants, which leads to the only logical conclusion. This book is packed with sexual tension as well and should give today's slick writers pause. There's nothing new under the sun, kids. Previous generations weren't as stupid as you might think. In fact, this very fine work outstrips 99% of today's novels in its subtlety and originality.

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Metaphor For The Failure of the American Dream, June 6, 2002

By	Gary F. Taylor "GFT" (Biloxi, MS USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Considered experimental when first published in 1935, Hoarce McCoy's THEY SHOOT HORSES, DON'T THEY is a series of extended flashbacks recalled by a prisoner as he stands before a judge pronouncing sentence upon him. But although the novel's structure drew considerable comment at the time, HORSES is best recalled for its vivid portrait of the depression-era fad for Marathon Dances and the gritty tone in which it sketches its desperate characters.

Written in the style of 1930s pulp fiction, the novel essentially presents both characters and Marathon Dance as a metaphor for a world in which those without money and social status struggle for survival with the only certainty in life being death itself--and whose struggle becomes a vicarious entertainment for the more secure. Although the novel is extremely short, it presents the reader with a powerful and very memorable series of images, most of which were well used by the famous 1960s Jane Fonda film version.

Powerful though it is, the novel does have some flaws, chief among them McCoy's failure to fully expand upon his metaphor of the Marathon Dance and his tendency to introduce additional ideas upon which he never really expands; the characters also read as rather flat. Even so, THEY SHOOT HORSES DON'T THEY's central concept and hard-edged prose is so impressive that the book possesses a compulsive readability; it is very much a book that you can't put down. Recommended.

16 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars tough, August 20, 2001

By	Orrin C. Judd "brothersjudddotcom" (Hanover, NH USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Though better known in it's somewhat milder film version, this is a brisk, brutal crime novel in which a Depression dance marathon becomes a metaphor for the harsh and unrelenting grind of real life. Couple #22, Robert Syverton and Gloria Beatty, have come to Hollywood to break into the movie business, but having had no luck, end up in a spectacle that's like something out of the Roman Coliseum.

By novel's end the couples have been dancing for almost 900 hours, with only a ten minute break every two hours. The 144 couples who started have dwindled down to twenty. Many dropped out early, but many more have been eliminated in the frantic derby races that were instituted to draw in crowds. When dancers merely pass out, which they frequently do, they are awakened with smelling salts or ice baths and pushed right back onto the floor. But times are so bad that Robert has actually put on five pounds during the ordeal--meals are supplied for free--and most of the other contestants have gained weight too.

He's content to keep going, hoping that he'll be "discovered" by one of the film world glitterati attending the marathon or that he can use the prize money to direct a picture of his own. But Gloria is completely fatalistic :

This whole business is a merry-go-round. When we get out of here we're right back where we started.

She tries convincing one of the other dancers, who is pregnant, to get an abortion, for the good of the baby, and she continually tells Robert that she wishes she were dead. Suffice it to say she gets her wish.

We tend to want to view our grandparents as having led sheltered lives, unaware of all the oh-so-tough realities that we face so honestly today. This almost sadistically frank pulp fiction from 1935 will cure anyone of the delusion that earlier generations didn't know the score. With murder, incest, abortion, and the like generously added to a plot about people entertaining themselves by watching the misery of others, it's like one of these eliminationist "reality" television shows (Survivor, Big Brother, etc.) as conceived by the creative team of Thomas Hobbes and Charles Darwin. These lives are indeed nasty, brutish, and short. It doesn't make for a pretty story, but you have to admire the zeal and energy with which Horace McCoy drives his point home.

GRADE : B+