Customer Reviews

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

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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.

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.

When all is said and done, it's McCoy's HORSES that, for me, so beautifully reflects the darkest side of the Depression days in the U.S., even more so than Steinbeck's wonderful GRAPES OF WRATH. McCoy gets to the very core of human desperation and misery, a cutthroat atmosphere where people will resort to ANYTHING just to survive. The dance marathon itself becomes an odd microcosm of society, totally self-contained, as if the world outside of its doors does not exist. I have not seen the film because I am afraid it will undermine the strong visions the book created in my mind, particularly the "derby" sections, where one person is playing the horse and the other the jockey, racing around the center ring in the dance floor. That is one of the most surreal visions any novel has ever planted in my brain and McCoy conveys the action and drama of these "races" so phenomenally well. In light of such strange imagery, to call this a "crime novel" is to rob it of its broader vision, its existential outlook on the modern social order and its warped priorities. More to the point, there's little to no crime here. Someone gets shot. That's the extent of it. There's no investigation, no suspense. So I suspect crime aficionados might be bored out of their skull with this one. I have the hardback first-edition, published by Simon & Schuster back when it was a fledgling company, and its too bad no one will give this its clothbound due and elevate it above the status of the "penny pocketbook". They did include it with Library of America's Crime Noir set but again, that forces it within a certain genre to which it does not belong. Although McCoy's success in the US was marginal at best, the French existentialists loved this novel and McCoy was hailed as a genius there and in other parts of Europe as well. At least he got some degree of recognition during his own lifetime.

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+

"They Shoot Horses, Don't They" is a unique piece of literature. It's a condensed (< 100 pages) novel driven by terse, uncompromising dialogue; it reads like a play or screenplay. But it is a blistering account of low lifes who hope to win a rather seedy and cruel dance marathon. Horace McCoy gives the reader glimpses of wasted lives and useless dreams. It's a depressing yet rewarding reading experience.

The film version, starring Jane Fonda, of this novel does not accurately portray the bleakness of the setting and the desperation of the characters. Horace McCoy gives the reader no sunshine or hope. But such was life for millions during the Depression.

Bottom line: a condensed masterpiece that packs a punch.

They Shoot Horses depicts the suffering and misery of depression era America. The plot centers around a dance marathon in which a variety of pathetic contestants enter in hopes of taking away the cash prize.
Needless to say, they take nothing away. The marathon takes away their dignity and self-respect; leaving each contestant exposed by the torment that life has heaped upon each individual.
They Shoot Horses is an excellent text for the study of character development. The major and minor characters are all equally important. No one is superior. All are equal in the misery of life. How one handles the misery determines their future.
Some will say Horses ends on a tragic note. I disagree. Animals are shot to be put out of their misery. Are we not the higher form of animal existence? I applaud Gloria's strenghth and Robert's compassion.

And I thought the movie was brutal.

Remember when sitcoms like "Golden Girls" or "Happy Days" had episodes about dance marathons, and how funny it was to see the characters gradually become more and more tired? You'll never think of a dance marathon the same way again after you read this novel which is about the marathon's during the Depression.

"They Shoot Horses" is such a short novel that I read almost the entire novella commuting to and from work, but such an intense read that it's haunted me since. McCoy's narrative slices through the day to day horror of life during the Depression, and what people did to try and make it. The reason so many took part in such a godawful sport as a dance marathon? It wasn't just the prize money; it's because it's free food and a place to stay for an indefinite amount of time.

McCoy's world isn't necessarily a microcosm, but the narrative reveals a cynicism about the age: every character in this narrative is variously revealed to be lying or hiding something, whether it's the truth of a sexual dalliance, a murder or their age. Even the seemingly sweet old lady who comes to watch her "favorite couple" ends up having an agenda of her own.

I couldn't help but hear Jane Fonda's voice whenever Gloria spoke,the Gloria of the novel is darker than anything we see on film. Gloria is an unforgettable, angry, unhappy character for whom redemption is just a concept; Gloria, more than anybody, sees through the lies (even though she tells a few of her own), and because she sees everything too clearly, and has no fantasies or dreams, she is not able to be a part of the world. Gloria's final release is a relief, not just for her but for the reader.

An excellent, eye-opening read.

If you're interested in knowing what it was like back in those days this will certainly transport you back in time. As well-made as the movie version was, the book is better--as it usually is (no Hollywood actors to tamper with your own ideas and images created by the author's words, etc.).
The French were right: this is a good one. Existential? Yeah, it fits the label.
I like McCoy and am presently reading I SHOULD HAVE STAYED HOME. Am on page 37 so far and it seems to be as well written as THEY SHOOT HORSES...

Does not immediately strike you as a story worth telling - the marathon dance is the background and the cause for a woman's decent into depression and madness. The story is told in the voice of her dance partner - a straightforward man who takes it all with a grain of salt, until it is too late. Powerful, a quick read, this story stays with you for a long long time...

Noir and nihilism are hardly strangers in fiction, but the existential despair of Horace McCoy's novel is in a class all its own. The entire work is stripped down to the barest essentials--its prose, its dialogue, its structure so threadbare that, even among classics of Depression-era minimalism, it stands out for the utter hopelessness of the characters, competitors in a winner-take-all dance marathon. It didn't find much of an audience when it was first published in 1935; its uncompromising bleakness was something many readers of the time must have been looking to escape from.

But, of course, "They Shoot Horses" is not just about a dance competition or even about poverty during the Depression. It's really about life--or, more to the point (so to speak), life's ultimate pointlessness. You begin with youthful exuberance, hope, and innocence; you work and struggle most of the time, with intermittent breaks; you suffer frequent setbacks and occasional victories; you wither with exhaustion and have little to show for your labors; and then, inexorably, you die. And the novel is about the laboring masses, abused and mocked by out-of-reach patrons, who dangle carrots in front of the contestants as if they were horses on a track. ("The big break is always coming tomorrow," complains Gloria.)

In such a world, motivation might seem irrelevant, but the book's one fault is the artifice used to sketch the supporting characters and to provide the occasional plot twist. I suppose McCoy's point is that everyone's misery is indistinguishably meaningless, that everybody's actions are equally absurd, but it's often hard to differentiate the down-on-their-luck couples who spend their weeks in this beachside dancehall and the underworld figures who menacingly work behind the scenes.

Most readers came to the book via the 1969 Sydney Pollack movie, but if you haven't seen the film, it's a faithful adaptation featuring, I think, Jane Fonda's most powerful performance. Some fans of the book might find its portrayal of events slightly watered down, but were it much gloomier it would probably be unwatchable. Regardless, both the book and the movie will likely haunt you long after you've finished them.