They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (Midnight Classics) (original 1935; edition 1995)

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 [b:They Shoot Horses, Don't They?|152052|They Shoot Horses, Don't They?|Horace McCoy|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1327931127s/152052.jpg|1869042] 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 [b:They Shoot Horses, Don't They?|152052|They Shoot Horses, Don't They?|Horace McCoy|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1327931127s/152052.jpg|1869042]. 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 [b:They Shoot Horses, Don't They?|152052|They Shoot Horses, Don't They?|Horace McCoy|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1327931127s/152052.jpg|1869042] 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. ( )

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. ( )

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, Don't They? ( )

Marathon dancing and Nihilism, this is a novella that packs a punch. A young man recounts how he ended up in court and each chapter is framed with a snippet of the judges sentence. Short and shocking at first then gradually layering on detail as we hurtle towards the fatalistic ending. The setting is fascinating within itself, a surreal never-ending endurance dance off, full of rivalries and dubious showmanship. Couples are offered money to marry, fights start over cheating, collapses and prudish protesters abound.

A page turning story that offers so much but in the end fails slightly because of the nihilistic doom laden simplicity. A personal taste sure, but also affects Gloria's fatalistic character. There is no substance behind her, no reasons given, Her character and Robert's response just feels stupid, a let down to the richness that came before.

Still I do recommended it. It’s a fantastic, rich novella for all that. ( )

"If this myth is tragic, that is because its hero is conscious. Where would his torture be, indeed, if at every step the hope of succeeding upheld him? The workman of today works everyday in his life at the same tasks, and his fate is no less absurd. But it is tragic only at the rare moments when it becomes conscious. Sisyphus, proletarian of the gods, powerless and rebellious, knows the whole extent of his wretched condition: it is what he thinks of during his descent. The lucidity that was to constitute his torture at the same time crowns his victory. There is no fate that can not be surmounted by scorn." Albert Camus, [The Myth of Sisyphus]

When Camus published The Myth of Sisyphus in 1942, it was at the height of the fad of existentialism. He was addressing the question: "If life is absurd, is suicide rational?" Horace McCoy's pulp novella [They Shoot Horses, Don't They?] is an example of existential nihilism that preceded Camus' essay by six years. He answers the first part of Camus' question: Life is absurd. In the last line of the novella he proposes his answer to the second part of the question: "They shoot horses, don't they."

I'm not into nihilism, so I give the novel three stars. It was made into a movie in 1969 starring Michael Sarrazin as Robert and Jane Fonda as Gloria. The movie pleased critics, but it was a loser and it didn't follow the plot very well. Nor did it make the point (if you'd call it a point) that the book had made. I don't think the producer understood the book. The book also pleased many critics, but had a mixed reception overall.

But if you're into this kind of literature, Horace McCoy did a good job of it. ( )