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

No art is perfect. But short works have a better shot than most - they can be precise and sharp and focused in ways that longer, more diffuse ones can't be.

So I won't claim Horace McCoy's short 1935 novel They Shoot Horses, Don't They? is perfect. But it's damn close: precisely constructed to telegraph its noir doom-laden atmosphere, intensely focused on two main characters and their troubles, tautly told to both stretch and collapse time.

One thing the best books can do is explain exactly what they're going to do - signpost the ending on the very first page, from the very first words - and then roll it out inexorably, showing what they told they would.

McCoy does that here: before chapter 1 even starts, there's a half-title - in a style, and following a narrative, that continues throughout the book - in the voice of a judge pronouncing sentence. And the reader quickly realizes what that sentence is, and who is receiving it.

They Shoot Horses is the story of Robert Syverten and Gloria Beatty. They're Hollywood wannabees in the depths of the Depression, who met randomly on a street, both looking for extra work. Gloria wants to be an actress; Robert thinks he could be a director, and is moderately realistic about how he could do that. Robert is our first-person narrator. Gloria is...well, he calls her his best friend very early on. She's definitely not "his girl," though they might have a sexual relationship - this is a 1930s book, so it's quietly coded in a way that would have been clearer to a contemporary audience, but not entirely clear, to foil potential censors.

But they're not in love. They're not planning a life together. They want the same sort of things and are in the same sort of life and they can support each other, so they do.

They've only known each other for a short time, though. Only a few days.

Gloria has heard about a dance marathon contest, on a pier at Santa Monica. Participants get fed while the contest runs, and get beds to sleep in for their few breaks, plus at least some medical attention. The winning couple gets a thousand dollars. There's even a possibility of being "discovered" and getting Hollywood work; the marathons are high-profile and attract big audiences, including celebrities. They could do a lot worse. They pretty much are already doing a lot worse.

So Gloria convinces Robert to join the contest with her.

It's a grinding, horrible thing - "dance" only by courtesy. The couples need to keep moving, on the dance floor, swaying or walking, for one hour fifty minutes of every two. And it's endless. Gloria and Robert were one of a hundred and forty-four couples that started.

Halfway through the first page of chapter four, McCoy drops this: "The first week was the hardest." By chapter nine, there are twenty-six couples left, after 752 hours elapsed.  (That would be thirty-one days.) Conversation among the couples has been whether this one will run 2500 hours - apparently two thousand hours is pretty common.

Some of the couples do this regularly, traveling around the country, "dancing" for months at a time in one place. Again, this is the Depression: it could be a lot worse.

The whole point is that people can't take it, of course. They collapse, drop out. You can't have an elimination competition without eliminating people.

But they're not dropping out fast enough, and the audiences aren't large enough. So the promoters decide to speed it up, with a "derby" every evening - during prime attendance hours - with the couples more-or-less running laps around the floor, and the slowest couple eliminated each night. (That's what helped them get down to twenty-six couples as quickly as hour 752.)

And Gloria keeps saying she wants to die. It's her one consistent topic of conversation. Her parents are dead; the uncle she lived with either tried to abuse her or actually did; she's tried suicide at least once. The uncle's probably not the only one who abused her, either. She's been kicked around, and is tired of it: she just wants it all to stop, but can't do it herself.

This is a noir. I shouldn't have to explain any further.

There are some other characters I haven't mentioned, some additional complications. There's an older lady who is Gloria and Robert's biggest fan, there's a visit from the busybodies of the local Morals League, there's sexual intrigue among the couples, there's even one participant nabbed for a murder a few years back. But it's mostly about the stress of the marathon on Robert and Gloria, as they each crack in their own ways. Robert want to get outside again, to see sunlight more than just one short hour of the day. And Gloria wants - well, Gloria wants to die.

The only bright spot there is that, if you're a character in a noir and you want to die, you'll actually get your wish.

(I read this in the Library of America volume Crime Novels: American Noir of the 1930s and 40s, which also includes five similar novels by Cain, Woolrich, and others. I recommend it.)