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They Shoot Horses, Don't They?

3.85 of 5 stars 3.85 · rating details · 1,825 ratings · 127 reviews

The marathon dance craze flourished during the 1930s, but the underside was a competition and violence unknown to most ballrooms--a dark side that Horace McCoy's classic American novel powerfully captures. "Were it not in its physical details so carefully documented, it would be lurid beyond itself."--Nation

Paperback, 122 pages

Published June 1st 1995 by Serpent's Tail (first published 1935)

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Jan 14, 2012 Dan Schwent rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: crime-and-mystery, 2012

Robert and Gloria enter a marathon dance contest with $1000 as the top prize. Too bad Gloria thinks about death more than winning...

Horace McCoy is bleak enough to be one of Jim Thompson's drinking buddies. This tale is really slim but also kind of exhausting. McCoy's depiction of a dance contest that lasts over a month is hellish and he paints a depressing picture of life during the Great Depression. See what I did there?

It's a pretty powerful story. You know how it ends in the first few pages...more

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Aug 21, 2012 Emily May rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Emily May by: 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die

Shelves: 1001-read, 2012, boring

There's only one horse in this book and the poor thing only gets half a page of story in which it also unfortunately gets shot - personally, I think this is the one moving bit of the novel and perhaps They Shoot Horses, Don't They? would have been so much better if there were actually more horses in it. Or, you know, it just hadn't been written at all.

What this book is really about is existentialism. Not horses. I won't lie to you, I've spent the last couple of years going by the wikipedia defin...more There's only one horse in this book and the poor thing only gets half a page of story in which it also unfortunately gets shot - personally, I think this is the one moving bit of the novel and perhaps They Shoot Horses, Don't They? would have been so much better if there were actually more horses in it. Or, you know, it just hadn't been written at all.

What this book is really about is existentialism. Not horses. I won't lie to you, I've spent the last couple of years going by the wikipedia definition of existentialism, I'm not an expert on it, I don't claim to understand it in any depth... but I think I know enough to say that even big existentialist fans might struggle to find something fabulous in They Shoot Horses, Don't They?. I could be wrong, I mean, somebody obviously loved it for it to make it onto the 1001 list. However, I'd say approximately 20 pages (at a stretch) of this 128 page novel are dedicated to the exploration of existentialism, and the rest is about a dance competition and those involved in said dance competition.

Existentialist thinkers are known for being angsty, and they are also known for believing that pretty much everyone else is deeply submerged in their own personal angst that comes with realising your own freedom to act and your responsibilities in life. Existentialism is largely about self-awareness and it is said to threaten someone's personal harmony when they "find themselves" and realise they are shit or they are unable to achieve what they see as their ultimate goal of being (e.g. being a singer). So, great.

The way this applies in They Shoot Horses, Don't They? is that we are immediately taken to the present where the narrator is on trial for the murder of his dance partner - Gloria - and then we travel into the past so we can see why he shot her. And he shot her because she asked him to. Gloria hates herself, her life, the world, everything, and she decides she is better off dead. I quite agree. Who needs to listen to the crap spewed by annoying nihilists who don't even have any real problems? Not for me, thank you.

My lack of sympathy for Gloria aside, this whole existentialist philosophy thing is still only a small portion of the novel. It is mainly about the dance marathon competition and the petty arguments that happen behind the scenes, I suppose this is meant to form a platform on which Gloria can whine about life but it's just insanely boring. I obviously made a mistake choosing to get some of the shorter novels on the 1001 list out of the way, so far they've all been really disappointing.(less)

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May 19, 2012 Michael rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: noir, pulp, crime, 1001-books-to-read-before-you-die, 1930s

I don't think I could spoil this book, because it spells it out from the very start; and I've heard it was made into a spectacular movie. This is an existential noir (I know, weird combination?) novella about two people looking for stardom in the great depression. In the hope of being discovered and the need for money they join a dance marathon. While Robert remains hopefully, Gloria sinks into a depression and loses all hope and eventually asked Robert to kill her. Because They Shoot Horses, Do...more

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Apr 17, 2008 Andy rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: moden American classics

Shelves: pulp-fiction, 20th-century-blues

Instead of "American Idol", in the 1930's Hollywood wannabees were humiliated by making them dance endlessly in public.

Still fresh today as the day it was written, "They Shoot Horses" is a bizarre existential horror story about people who have shit canned their pride thinking there's a pot of gold at the end of their self-inflicted degradation.

(The only person to attain stardom from the marathons was June Havoc, who was Gypsy Rose Lee's sister, so she would have made it, anyway.)

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Sep 18, 2010 Brixton rated it 1 of 5 stars

Recommended to Brixton by: Gerald Prokop

Shelves: external-hard-drives, masking-tape, bulk-toilet-paper

Supports the general rule-of-thumb: if the film is great, the book is probably half-assed (eg, The Godfather). Totally fails to depict the chaos and utter cruelty of the Depression-era dance marathon phenomenon, which so strikingly in the film serves as the fishbowl we can peer into and observe how nasty and mean seamonkeys-- or: people-- can be to each other, and how pointless and unrewarded everyone's efforts and lives really are.

The most irritating element of the book's story is that Gloria h...more Supports the general rule-of-thumb: if the film is great, the book is probably half-assed (eg, The Godfather). Totally fails to depict the chaos and utter cruelty of the Depression-era dance marathon phenomenon, which so strikingly in the film serves as the fishbowl we can peer into and observe how nasty and mean seamonkeys-- or: people-- can be to each other, and how pointless and unrewarded everyone's efforts and lives really are.

The most irritating element of the book's story is that Gloria has to die because she's a negative "bitch", a woman who "fails" to be womanly, who won't withstand the marathon of life-- and for her its a lifetime of sexual abuse-- with feminine pleasantry. She's lost (or never had) the energy to check her attitude or watch her language. She's described as looking old(er than she is), and not pretty. She's not into having babies, and she doesn't want to get married. A nice older lady just comes out toward the end and says it: "She's cruel and she's dangerous." Here Robert "does the world a favour" by ridding it of a bitter, ugly woman, whom he likens to a broken animal who can no longer serve the needs of men. In the film, it is the world that is wrong-- it is Gloria who says (thus shifting our sympathy to her), well if you're going to treat me like an animal, show me the mercy which would be given one. The more I think about this book-- which almost suggests that Gloria's unattractive appearance and attitude is a greater "crime" than her murder-- the more it pisses me off. So shoot me. This only earned from me a second star because it can be read in a couple hours; as someone with an intimidating number of books on my at-home to-read shelf (and an apparently uncommon inability to stomach being exposed to dialogue like "Goddam bastard women" or scenes of men shamelessly slapping women around), I appreciated its brevity.

The Midnight Classics edition looks like a Scholastic book for eighth-graders. Big, entirely bolded font, each chapter beginning with an entire page devoted to the (partial) opening sentence, which gets bigger, and BIGGER and BIGGER as the chapters progress, and-- get this-- every instance of the word "fuck" is represented by em-dashes (we know when someone says "fucking" because then we get double-em-dashes!). Once a character even just says this: " — ." Silly.

For packing so much hating on women into so few pages, perhaps instead of this lengthy review I should have said only, "— you, Horace McCoy."

~One Week Later~
The person who recommended this to me (and who really liked it himself) asked what I thought the author was trying to say with this book. Although I was tempted to brush the question off with the standard, "We don't have access to authorial intent blahblah", I suggested instead that this story seems to be nothing more than an elaborate way of saying "Women are destroyers of the Dreams of Men." I offered as evidence the attention given to Robert's dream of becoming a film director, and his snipey remarks during his own trial that this dream will never come true NOW, now that this stupid Gloria made him kill her, GEESH! (and having made a post-marathon appointment with a producer he was so close, d'oh!) Additionally, there are the women from the Morals Society who want the marathon shut down by the authorities for being exploitive and fostering of bad behaviour-- even after a random shoot-out, the guy who put the marathon on cites not innocent victims of stray bullets but harassment by the ladies from the Morals Society as why he finally has to pack it in. To show in contrast how things go when men get to make their own decisions for themselves, after a man goes nuts and starts punching his wife in the face up and down the dance floor (because she admitted she cheated on him once), the man asks the marathon organisers if he'll be kicked out of the competition. No, he can stay, the organisers tell him. "You mean I'm not going to be punished?" he asks. "No, you won't be punished," they repeat. And the men all pat each other on the shoulders and continue on as they like. No, they'd never punish their own, not for something like beating a slutty wife. *smiles, cigars*

So — this, I'm changing my review to 1-star. It's already September and I haven't hated a book yet this year. It can't get worse than this.(less)

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Jun 13, 2012 Algernon rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2012

[7/10] A rare case of the film being much better than the book that inspired it. A devastating story of the cynical manipulation of people who have run out of options for financial gain. More than the prize money promised to the winner of the dance contest (and 1000 dollars seem like a paltry sum even for 1930) , I found it disturbing that couples entered this circus in order to have something to eat every day. I liked another reviewer observation that this book is not so different from the humi...more

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Dec 05, 2011 Mark Desrosiers rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

Wow, talk about your serial misapprehensions. First dismissed by American critics as grim dime-novel trash, then adopted by the French as a founding example of their cross-eyed tedious existentialism, this novel begs to be read -- especially in 2012 -- for what it is: a story about the exploitation by racketeers of a collapsing, desperate society, and how nihilism is the only logical response to it. The marathon dance here is an attempt at money-making voyeurism, complete with corporate sponsors...more

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Nov 29, 2008 Debbi rated it 5 of 5 stars

Sydney Pollack and friends turned it into one heck of a great movie, but THEY SHOOT HORSES, DON'T THEY? started out as a book--I'd call it a novella, though one blurb on the back described it as a "short novel"--not sure what the difference is or if there is a difference, but I can tell you the book is excellent.

THEY SHOOT HORSES is written in what could best be described as lean prose. Total economy of description, with an emphasis on dialogue and the thoughts of the main character, Robert Syve...more

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Apr 29, 2013 Texbritreader rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: novel, modern-classics

It's not hard to see why this lean, 1935 novel by the hard knock writer Horace McCoy was such a favorite of the French existentialists; with this tale of personal destruction McCoy simultaneously exposes much about the reality of life in the USA during the Great Depression and life now, from the tawdry facade of glamour that was (and is) Hollywood, to the predatory nature of advertising and the heartlessness of spectators who seek to be entertained by the degradation or suffering of others, McCo...more It's not hard to see why this lean, 1935 novel by the hard knock writer Horace McCoy was such a favorite of the French existentialists; with this tale of personal destruction McCoy simultaneously exposes much about the reality of life in the USA during the Great Depression and life now, from the tawdry facade of glamour that was (and is) Hollywood, to the predatory nature of advertising and the heartlessness of spectators who seek to be entertained by the degradation or suffering of others, McCoy exposes brutality beneath the veneer of civilization.

In one unrelenting and seamless rush the author delivers the remembrance of Robert Syverten, standing before the judge as he pronounces Robert's fate in the murder of his friend, Gloria Beatty. These two luckless individuals, refugees from the Depression-era South adrift in Hollywood, meet by accident and form a partnership of mutual benefit as participants in a grueling dance marathon, where they will find food and a roof and get a chance at a thousand dollar prize. The twosome is one of pure happenstance but the naive and optimistic Robert soon feels protective of his newfound companion, Gloria, a disillusioned and bitter woman whose life is a mere burden to her.

As the story unfolds we learn something of Gloria's background, a Texas orphan raised by a lecherous uncle, she drifts through a series of petty crimes and abusive relationships before trying her luck as an actress. Robert's Arkansas background is likewise poor but far less poisonous and he believes with a tender kind of hubris that he will be a Hollywood director someday.

The dingy dance hall at end of the pier devoid of almost all sunlight and beaten at constantly by the waves of the ocean below mirrors the lives of the human beings it contains. The dance marathon is peopled with others of life's losers: opportunistic promoters, murderers on the lam, fallen women and hustlers on the make. Everyone vying for one more chance, not at the brass ring but simply to hang on.

McCoy's world bears some similarity to the noir of writers like Raymond Chandler and James M. Cain, to whom apparently McCoy was frequently compared much to his own chagrin. But I think the French writers and critics had this one right; McCoy's point of view and the entire feel of this work is best described as existentialist.

The broken, desperate, acid tongued and suicidal Gloria is not the wounded bird of more sentimental fiction, but rather a prickly, profoundly damaged soul who has gone too far to be saved and will inevitably draw anyone too close down with her as she chooses to sink, willingly almost gleefully, under the pressure of her unwanted life. A smile frozen on her dead face as Robert begins his reflections.

The gullible Robert distracted more by daily life and still hoping for a happy future seems at first to lack the intellectual perception or emotional engagement to be drawn under by the manipulative maelstrom of Gloria's dark desire for death but in the end he is undone by the need to be free of the gloom Gloria inspires and his own compassion for her. Shooting Gloria because she asks him to; so she can be out of her misery. As he says to the policeman at the denouement: "They shoot horses, don't they?" (less)

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Dec 05, 2012 Christopher Fulbright rated it 4 of 5 stars

I'd heard so much about this book that when it was released in eBook I immediately downloaded and read it. I liked it, but had a bit of a mixed reaction because I just couldn't reconcile my personal opinion of the book with all the fanfare it's received in noir circles. One thing I can definitely see is how it would have made a real impact when it was originally published in 1935 -- it must have been a real gut-puncher back then.

On one hand, the prose is fantastic, early-style noir. The situatio...more

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Nov 14, 2012 Sam Quixote rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Gloria is a burned out wannabe actress in 1930s Hollywood who, after failing to win a dance marathon (dancing for literally weeks on end) asks her dance partner Robert to shoot her in the head – which he does. This isn’t a spoiler as it’s the framing device of the novel with Robert telling the reader at the start of the book as he stands in the dock being sentenced by the judge of how he came to meet Gloria and of their time in the hellish carnival atmosphere of the dance marathon.

Dance maratho...more Gloria is a burned out wannabe actress in 1930s Hollywood who, after failing to win a dance marathon (dancing for literally weeks on end) asks her dance partner Robert to shoot her in the head – which he does. This isn’t a spoiler as it’s the framing device of the novel with Robert telling the reader at the start of the book as he stands in the dock being sentenced by the judge of how he came to meet Gloria and of their time in the hellish carnival atmosphere of the dance marathon.

Dance marathons were popular forms of entertainment in 1920s and 30s America where couples, often strangers to one another, desperate for cash and food because of the Great Depression (they were given regular meals and a roof over their heads while they were in the competition) would enter. The rules were they had to keep moving (not necessarily dancing, just moving) for 1 hour 50 minutes and then allowed a 10 minute break. Often the couples would take turns sleeping on one another as the sheer exhaustion welled up over the oftentimes weeks-long endurance contest.

Strangely, this book reminded me of “The Hunger Games”: the dance marathon is a sadistic endurance test watched by crowds of people starved for entertainment and lucky couples are sponsored by companies and given food and clothes as a result. It’s kind of a lo-fi “Hunger Games” except the dance marathons were real.

Horace McCoy uses the dance marathon as a pessimistic metaphor for life, resembling the kind of miserable existence most people experienced in Depression-era America shuffling through life barely surviving, utterly fatigued, and watched by indifferent strangers until they collapsed, unable to go on with no reward for their effort. This bleak outlook and sensational ending made McCoy a popular writer among the existentialist crowd with Satre and Beauvoir praising McCoy’s novel as “the first existentialist American novel”.

The one complaint I would have is the arbitrary ending. After getting to know the narrator over the course of this short novel, it seemed to me that he was a decent sort, optimistic and cheerful – to have him suddenly shoot Gloria just to “put her out of her misery” seemed out of character. He compares her to a horse with a broken leg which is just weird. It didn’t detract from my enjoyment of the novel, it just felt a bit contrived and forced rather than convincing and natural.

For such a short novel, McCoy manages to cover a lot of ground, detailing the dance marathon craze along with shades of existentialism, the exploitation of women, the effects of the Depression, and the desperate culture of Hollywood. “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?” is a morbidly fascinating glimpse into a forgotten cultural event from America’s past written in a taut noir style mixed in with a dark and entrancing murder story with a twist. It’s brilliant and is as interesting to read today as it must have been back in the 30s. Definitely worth looking into for fans of unusual fiction. (less)

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Nov 03, 2012 Robert Carraher rated it 5 of 5 stars

Horace McCoy’s, along with James M. Cain and a few other authors of the ‘20s, ‘30s & ‘40s, was labeled early on as a hardboiled authors, in the same vein as Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett and others. But, in retrospect, most of his novels didn’t fit the classic description of hardboiled. First, they weren’t detectives. Secondly, the main protagonists were not mainly dealing with solving a mystery and often the main characters were flawed, and if not totally beyond redemption, at least of...more

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Jul 21, 2012 Tom rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: crime-noir

Misery in motion, motion without meaning, meaningless murder: it all adds up to mighty bleak vision of life. More dystopian novel, Hollywood style, than crime noir -- you learn the who and what on pg 1, but not the why -- but then the "classic" noir works, at least those collected in Library of America Crime Novels, Vol 1, where I read this, seem at most equal parts mystery and madness. In that sense, McCoy resembles West in The Day of the Locust, though Horses precedes Locusts by four years (an...more

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Jun 06, 2012 Lori L (She Treads Softly) rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Many people are probably familiar with the Academy Award-nominated movie based on Horace McCoy's novel, They Shoot Horses, Don't They? Those who are not familiar with either should do themselves a favor and read the book. Toward that end, Open Road Media has reissued an e-edition of McCoy's novel.

They Shoot Horses, Don't They? follows Robert Syverten and Gloria Beatty as they compete in a marathon dance competition held at a ballroom over looking the Pacific on the Santa Monica Pier. While they...more Many people are probably familiar with the Academy Award-nominated movie based on Horace McCoy's novel, They Shoot Horses, Don't They? Those who are not familiar with either should do themselves a favor and read the book. Toward that end, Open Road Media has reissued an e-edition of McCoy's novel.

They Shoot Horses, Don't They? follows Robert Syverten and Gloria Beatty as they compete in a marathon dance competition held at a ballroom over looking the Pacific on the Santa Monica Pier. While they entered as a couple, they are not a couple in the sense of committed partners. They are just a couple of down-and-out young people who want to make it in the movie industry but so far have only achieved rejections. After meeting they decide to enter the marathon dance competition as partners.

Helping create a real sense of foreboding is the fact that we know, right from the opening, that Robert kills Gloria. He confesses that he killed her. At the beginning of each chapter is a short excerpt from the judge sentencing Robert for the murder of Gloria. But as the reader follows their relationship, we know that Gloria has a fatal outlook on life and often repeats that she wishes she were dead.

Since the novel was published in 1935, it really showcases a slice of American life from that time period. It captures the economic poverty experienced by citizens during the Great Depression. They entered the contest simply to enjoy the free food as much as they want to win the $1000 prize. Most people will understand the implications of the title of They Shoot Horses, Don't They? The desperation the contestants must feel to expose themselves to the brutal contests and excruciating physical pace required by the marathon are well portrayed.

This is not a long novel, but it is well worth your time, especially if you appreciate novels that capture a time period in history. Some books will always be considered classics for a good reason. They Shoot Horses, Don't They? is very highly recommended.

Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of Open Road and Netgalley for review purposes.
http://shetreadssoftly.blogspot.com/
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Apr 26, 2010 Frank rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: thrillers-and-other-pulp

Brilliant! The best of the American pulp fictions I've recently read. More an allegory than anything else, with the dance marathon as a weird rat race metaphor for all of society (a skewered send up of the old Elizabethan idea of the dance symbolizing the ultimate social order), cast in the gritty realistic hard-boiled style of 30s fiction. McCoy is the only writer of noir fiction I've encountered so far who has his characters swear realistically, rather than in typical Hollywood speak. Yes, the...more

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May 07, 2013 Mike McQuillian rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

I'm exhausted. I just blew through this thing in one sitting.

I'm not tired because it took a long time to read. At 120 quickly-paced pages, it didn't even take my whole evening.

It's the dread. I don't know if I've ever read a novel that built dread so quickly and effectively.

Robert wants to direct movies. But it's the Depression, and nobody's hiring. When he meets Gloria, a down-and-out actress, they decide to enter a marathon dance contest. They can live off the prize money for a little while.

B...more

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Dec 23, 2012 Joe rated it 3 of 5 stars

I'll be honest, I've never really thought about dance contests before. you know? Dance contests: Those quaint little things that happen only on sitcoms where the last couple dancing gets a prize?

Well, thanks to this book, I now know that dance contests were f*#king insane, at least in the '30's. This book follows a couple that enters one such contest. The young man is an aspiring actor; the woman an insane, suicidal mega-bummer. The rules of the contest: They must keep moving or they get elimina...more

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Feb 02, 2011 Jeffrey Moll rated it 5 of 5 stars

The marathon dance that was popular in the 30's was a way for many underprivileged people to make some extra cash. This novel explores the lives of Robert and Gloria meeting at the marathon and later deeply affecting each other’s lives. There is an exhaustive element to the novel as most of it is about the constant movement through dance, short breaks, and dancing again. Gloria is a depressed individual that doesn't seem to have a specific direction to where her life is going. She tells Robert,...more

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Apr 13, 2012 Kiwiflora rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is a remarkable book. First published in 1935, and apparently never out of print since, at just over 100 pages, this novel brims over with suspense, desperation, and tragedy. At the same time we are shown a darker side of the Hollywood dream that so desperately captures young people across America and the world. The reason perhaps for this book's durability and continued relevance? That young people still pursue the Hollywood fame dream with as much determination, stubbornness, and stupidit...more This is a remarkable book. First published in 1935, and apparently never out of print since, at just over 100 pages, this novel brims over with suspense, desperation, and tragedy. At the same time we are shown a darker side of the Hollywood dream that so desperately captures young people across America and the world. The reason perhaps for this book's durability and continued relevance? That young people still pursue the Hollywood fame dream with as much determination, stubbornness, and stupidity now as they did then. How all this can be conveyed in just over 100 pages is really quite amazing, and yet not a single word is wasted, and there is not a single word too many. Beautiful and mesmerizing writing that haunts us long after the finishing.

It is during the Depression, Los Angeles, mid 1930s. Robert, the narrator, is in the dock about to be sentenced for the murder of Gloria. Both are drifters from small towns, both are following the American Dream of money, fame and success by coming to Hollywood and making it big in pictures. Desperate times call for desperate measures. We know from the first page it ends in tragedy.

Robert recounts how he meets Gloria in the street and she talks him into entering a marathon dancing contest. These dancing contests were a major form of entertainment during the 1920s and, increasingly the Depression of the 1930s. For the participants, some of whom became very successful and followed the marathon circuit around the country, they were a major form of income as the prize money was quite sizeable for the time. For the desperates and wannabees, taking part, developing a gimmick, becoming a crowd favourite were crucial to be noticed by promoters, movie agents, producers who would go to the contests looking for talent. These marathon dance contests would go on for weeks - the contest Robert and Gloria enters is for 2500 hours. It is hardly surprising that you would go slightly mad taking part in such an event, and that is probably what happens to both Robert and Gloria as they fight with every ounce of their beings to stay in the contest. The cover epitomises perfectly the desperation of each couple as at all times the dancers have to be on their feet and moving.

Even though this novel was written nearly 80 years ago it has as much relevance now as it did then. In the pursuit of money, fame and success people will always resort to desperate and dangerous methods. And at the same time there will be heartbreaking sadness and futility. Like one of Aesop's fables, such a strong message conveyed in so few words.(less)

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Aug 05, 2012 Adam rated it 2 of 5 stars

The movie, which was directed by Sydney Pollack and starred Jane Fonda, is one of the greatest of all time. Its thematic content is important and serious, and for the most part it's the same thematic content as this novel, but it is so much better than this novel simply because it is better crafted. American noir fiction counts among its ranks some of the finest prose stylists in American literature, but McCoy is not one of them. This slim book is often a painful slog because McCoy never manages...more

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May 23, 2012 Cynthia rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: books-read-in-2012

“…she died in agony, friendless, alone…”

Thus the book begins…It’s the 1930’s right outside Hollywood in Santa Monica California and yet another version of the marathon dance craze is being enacted. Two Hollywood hopefuls, Gloria and Robert, happen upon one another and decide to team up, after all there’s a $1,000 prize to the last couple standing. So begins this tortured story. It’s one of struggle reflective of the depression. The couples are required to stay in motion with a ten minute rest br...more

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Dec 09, 2011 Calyre rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 1001-books-to-read-before-you-die, american-literature, movies, read-in-2011

- Le couple 22 est pris de crampe, dit Rollo dans le micro. Tenez-vous prêts, les soigneurs...
- Détends ta jambe, fit Rollo.
Je donnai un coup de pied sur le plancher, mais la douleur s'accentua encore.
- Détends ta jambe, détends ta jambe!
- Espèce d'emmerdeur, dis-je, ma jambe me fait mal...

- Jamais encore rencontré quelqu'un d'aussi lugubre que toi, dis-je. Par moments, je me dis que tu serais beaucoup mieux morte.
- Je le sais, fit-elle.

Pedro était étendu à terre, tandis que Mack Aston lui tritu...more

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Jan 28, 2013 R. rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Houellebecq Girls

Shelves: 2013

Pretty sure this book is about nothing more or less than the torments of Hell.

I mean, at the end, the dance contest has churned on for 879 hours: 36+ days. How is that even possible? Buoyed only on icy baths, ham sandwiches, and 10 minute sleep breaks? I dunno. The damned probably do damned strange things to pass eternity.

And, maybe, just maybe, hand-in-hand with the idea that Hell-is-Dancing-Endlessly-without-Sleep, this nasty novel is a pinch prophetic of the chewup-spitout of today's Realit...more

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Sep 06, 2010 Sarah added it

The matter-of-fact writing can be reminiscent of the existentialists. To think, this was published before Camus's "The Stranger." The French intellectuals have long shown a hearty appreciation for noir.

Because the narrative is first-person, one is at the subject's mercy. The narrator of this story is mercifully to the point on details. (He has good taste in film, too.) The prose doesn't dawdle and the narrator isn't much for introspection, nor is this told in a confessional mode. There is no who...more

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Apr 25, 2013 Sam rated it 5 of 5 stars

One my all-timers, McCoy’s masterpiece follows the contestants of a seemingly unending dance marathon on the Santa Monica peer. Set against the Great Depression, the novel dissects the dancers—delusional Hollywood hopefuls & scam artists cheered along by bizarro fans & a huckster for a host—as they quickly descend into madness through sleep deprivation and physical deterioration. Gloria Beatty is a bona fide pessimist and watching her partner Robert Syverton try to combat and reject her...more

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Apr 12, 2009 Fred rated it 4 of 5 stars

The cover calls this "a lurid tale of dancing and desperation." How can you resist that?

It's hard to believe this was first published almost 75 years ago. The themes are all very contemporary, as is the bleak world-weariness of most of the characters.

One has to read between the lines a bit to get the full impact of some of the comments, but the meaning comes through well enough. I enjoyed the story structure, too, which has a very noir-ish reading of the narrator's verdict being read to him, int...more

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Dec 31, 2010 Kyle Pennekamp rated it 3 of 5 stars

A short, hard-boiled noir novella. Set across the span of a Hollywood dance marathon, punctuated by future flashes to the judge reading the sentence against the narrator for the murder of his dance partner. Ginny read it and said she thought it was about the slow mental degradation that the film industry can bring about... but I think it translates to any obsession, to any job, or pasttime, or unhealthy relationship that makes you feel as if you're on a never-ending treadmill. Its about the ethi...more

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Dec 17, 2012 Rachel Feldman rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book chilled me and left me numb, they way intensely good books do. The book is about two unemployed wannabe actors in 1930s Santa Monica. The depression, jobs are scarce, so is dignity and pride. One way people tried to earn money, was to enter public dance marathons that went on and on for days with small breaks every few hours. Contestants dance until they are collapsed, got sick or crazy or both, all in front of an audience. Rob and Gloria enter together and last a long time, but know t...more

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Jun 23, 2011 Trudi rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: made-into-movie, classics, 2011-reads, not-for-me, hugely-disappointing

I know I must be missing something here, but I just don't get why this has endured as a profound piece of classic American literature. Apparently 1930s French Existentialists went gaga over it and Simone de Beauvoir named it as "the first existentialist novel to have appeared in America". So if you are a literary theorist, and get off on those labels and how they come to mean something to a certain group of people during a certain period of time, then you probably want to read this book and are...more I know I must be missing something here, but I just don't get why this has endured as a profound piece of classic American literature. Apparently 1930s French Existentialists went gaga over it and Simone de Beauvoir named it as "the first existentialist novel to have appeared in America". So if you are a literary theorist, and get off on those labels and how they come to mean something to a certain group of people during a certain period of time, then you probably want to read this book and are going to think it's pretty important.

As for myself, I was bored senseless. I didn't know what to expect going in (having never seen the movie), but somehow I had the words horror and dystopia clanging around in my head. I was neither horrified nor presented with a gripping dystopian landscape. The concept is appealing I give you that -- an idea redolent with potential: a marathon dance in the dirty '30s that exploits and capitalizes on participant despair and desperation. The dancers dance because they have no other options. Guess that’s what got the French Existentialists all worked up.

In the introduction to this 2010 edition Gloria Beatty is described as driving the story:

with a tremendous negative energy that wells up from her understanding that the world – her world, the world that plays out beneath the Hollywood sign – is one of amorality and illusion.

She is also described as a complete nihilist. ::yawn:: Nihilists piss me off. It’s too easy to hate everything and everyone and only see the hypocrisy and cruelty in the world.

So the themes are “big” in this book, I get it, and I get why certain people would be attracted to it and want to talk about these big themes (I went to grad school with some of you), but not I sir for this very simple reason; I hate “big” ideas (insert jazz hands here) that don’t come wrapped in a gripping story that’s going to smack me in the face and wake me up. Story. Comes. First. Always. You may be brilliant and have awesome insights into the human condition, but unless you can weave a tale that’s going to put me on my ass I don’t want to hear about it. And I’m not helping you along by faking it When Harry Met Sally Style pretending you wrote a great novel because I’m keen to wax poetic on how the world is shit and then we die.

I think what really pissed me off is this review on Amazon.ca which writes:

it's McCoy's Horses that…so beautifully reflects the darkest side of the Depression days in the U.S., even more so than Steinbeck's wonderful The 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.

Excuse me?! First of all, unlike Steinbeck, McCoy doesn’t come close to accomplishing any of that and second of all, comparing this short, painful, pretentious book to one of the greatest novels ever written is JUST SO WRONG. Epic delusions of grandeur my friend and They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? Epic fail.
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Jul 27, 2009 Adrienne Proctor rated it 4 of 5 stars

This book may make you want to shoot YOURSELF after you're done reading it, but it will definitely stick with you.

I read it in 2003 for an English class and I still think about it. Very good, very short, very powerful.... and interesting.

And the "protaganist" is such a sucker you want to smack him.

But you will definitely have an opinion about this book, and the characters. It's not something that you will just read and forget about. You will either love it or hate it. Or both. Probably a little...more

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About Horace McCoy

Horace Stanley McCoy (1897–1955) was an American novelist whose gritty, hardboiled novels documented the hardships Americans faced during the Depression and post-war periods. McCoy grew up in Tennessee and Texas; after serving in the air force during World War I, he worked as a journalist, film actor, and screenplay writer, and is author of five novels including They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (193...more

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Four Novels: They Shoot Horses, Don't They? / Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye / No Pockets in a Shroud / I Should Have Stayed Home

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