I Should Have Stayed Home by Horace McCoy

First published in 1938; published digitally by Open Road Media on January 15, 2013

Like many transplants to Hollywood, Ralph Carston craves fame and fortune and is just waiting for the miracle that will make it happen. His only friend in town is a sparkplug named Mona who starts out the novel by getting sent to jail for mouthing off to a judge. The momentary notoriety she earns from that episode leads to an invitation to a benefit for the Scottsboro boys hosted by a wealthy socialite. Although the hostess is a cougar with designs on Carston's chiseled body, she also has connections that could help him. Should Carston become her boy toy if that's his only chance at finding the break he needs?

At least by modern standards, Carston is an unusual protagonist. He's naïve, innocent, and polite. He's from Georgia, not well educated, and holds firm to racist beliefs. With his thick southern accent, he has no chance to become a movie star, despite his good looks, but he's ashamed to return to his home town without succeeding in his chosen profession -- particularly after the letters he wrote to his mother, bragging about his success, appeared in the local newspaper.

As he demonstrated in They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, Horace McCoy had a realistic (perhaps realistically jaded) view of Hollywood as the land of opportunity. As Mona points out in the novel's most dramatic moment, for every girl who leaves her job as a waitress to become a star, there are hundreds who ruin their lives chasing an impossible dream. Carston's attempt to bridge the enormous divide between the haves and the have-nots teaches him the difference between dreams and reality. Mona's participation in an effort to organize extras who are seeking better working conditions adds another dimension to the class division that supplies the novel's framework.

McCoy's hapless characters exemplify the mix of futility and misplaced optimism that prevailed during the era in which he wrote. All they want is a break, a chance to live the glamorous lives they read about in magazines. Yet for all but a few, the easy life is an illusion, well beyond their reach. Using stark, economical prose, McCoy captured those for whom luck is always bad, those who, desperate to climb the social or economic ladder, are exploited by the fortunate few they seek to emulate. He wrote about people who took chances with their lives, who didn't want to join their small town peers who "were doing the same old thing in the same old way and would go on doing it forever," but he avoided the fairytale endings that cheer people in hard times. His novels are grounded in harsh realism. I Should Have Stayed Home isn't his best work, but as an honest portrait of disappointed lives, it is true to the model he followed.

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They Shoot Horses, Don't They? by Horace McCoy

First published in 1935 

When Robert Syverten's defense lawyer tells the judge that Robert did Gloria Beatty a favor by killing her, you know things aren't going well for Robert. As he waits for sentence to be pronounced, he remembers the circumstances that brought him into the criminal justice system. Robert and Gloria met as unemployed Hollywood extras. They decided they might get noticed (and maybe win some cash) by dancing in a marathon. As they dance and interact with the other dancers, many of whom have their own unfortunate stories, Gloria repeatedly tells Robert that she wishes she were dead. She gets her wish.

The dance marathon gives Horace McCoy the chance to examine lives in microcosm under unusual and stressful circumstances. They are often the desperate lives of people struggling to survive in 1935. The contestants submit to grueling, constant exercise in exchange for free food and the slim chance of winning a prize. Their tragic lives are inevitably touched by violence, robbing them of the small hopes to which they cling. Despair overwhelms the world that McCoy creates. Oddly enough, however, it is Robert who stands as a temporary counterweight to the story's pervasive gloom. Robert is convinced that every tomorrow carries the chance of finding the big break that will rescue him from a luckless existence -- until he finds himself in court, running out of tomorrows.

They Shoot Horses, Don't They? tells a story that is simple but unforgettable. Moments of comedy -- or at least irony -- temper the bleak atmosphere that surrounds the characters, particularly when McCoy lampoons self-appointed guardians of morality. Yet at its heart, the novel makes a convincing argument that (at least for some people) life is not worth living. By restricting his focus to a small group of depression-era drifters who are confined to a building on a creaking pier, deprived of sunlight, tormented by the sound of ocean waves, walking or running in endless circles, McCoy epitomizes the pointlessness and futility of life. This sort of raw existentialism won't please readers who search for happy endings and stories of affirmation, but it serves to remind those of us who have lived fortunate lives that we should remember the troubled individuals who endure the daily grind of life in isolation and darkness, who really do believe (as does Gloria) that they would be better off dead.

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Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye by Horace McCoy

First published in 1948; digital edition published by Open Road Media on April 17, 2012

Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye begins with an escape from a chain gang and ends with an escape of a different sort. Ralph Cotter's violent departure from the chain gang is orchestrated by a "dame" named Holiday. Freed from his chains, Cotter quickly pulls off a robbery but, thanks to an untrustworthy accomplice and a dishonest cop, ends up penniless. It doesn't take him long to invent a new scheme to take opportunistic advantage of his desperate situation, although his plan doesn't feature the "rich rounded satisfactory nuances" that he prefers. Soon enough Cotter is in a position to take on the whole town without worrying about the police.

One of the characters aptly describes Cotter as "cocky." He's also intelligent, violent, and aloof. In his self-analysis, he is brutally honest. With others, he's merely brutal, although he exudes charm when the situation calls for social grace. Although Cotter is a tough guy killer with a James Cagney attitude, Horace McCoy imbued him with additional dimensions that set Cotter apart from other noir characters of his era. Cotter has a Phi Beta Kappa key, a degree, a "passion for the minor snobberies of life," and -- he explains with some pride -- an impressive "collection of psychoses." Included among the latter are an inferiority complex (when he moves among the elite) combined with a vast sense of superiority (when he moves among the criminal cohorts he regards as "mere passers of food"). At the same time he's capable of sentimental feelings -- not for people, necessarily, but for the cherry phosphate he orders at a soda fountain.

Among the peculiar characters Cotter encounters are a physician who is also a Zen master (he has forsaken the healing of bodies in favor of healing minds), a shady lawyer, a nervous hood named Jinx, and a well-connected, liberated woman named Margaret Dobson who, like Holiday, might be more than he can handle. In sharp, penetrating, insightful paragraphs, McCoy gives life to the novel's characters.

The story follows a course that takes more turns than the Tour de France, but the plot isn't complex. Rather, it follows an aimless life as Cotter reacts to the changing and seemingly arbitrary circumstances that confront him. The novel is as much a psychological profile of Cotter as it is a crime story. Cotter expects the worst from people -- betrayal is the aspect of human nature he always anticipates and he stands ready to betray in return. He regards women with a mixture of awe, jealousy, and contempt. His response to the two women in his life is complicated and contradictory. Much to his displeasure, it is his involvement with women rather than crime that determines his path. Through it all, he remains true to his nature. McCoy makes it clear that Cotter had no choice but to be the man he has become.

McCoy tells the story in mesmerizing prose ("the room was bitter with the feculence of imprisoned air that had been exhausted by a thousand usings"). While steeped in the language of its time ("this babe's full of vinegar"), the narrative incorporates enough literary references to make English majors gleeful. There is a certain poetic justice in the novel's final moments, the kind of irony that the educated Cotter is well-positioned to appreciate.

The story works just as well now as it did when it was first published in 1948. In fact, it may have been ahead of its time. Most modern readers will probably be more accepting of Cotter's social commentary than readers of an earlier generation would have been.

Readers who only desire to read about morally stalwart, likeable heroes should stay away from Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye. On the other hand, noir fans who appreciate complicated characters, strong writing, and unorthodox plotting will find much to admire in this nearly forgotten treasure.

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