Horace McCoy

For They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?

Horace McCoy was born near Nashville, Tennessee, in 1897. At the age of twelve he started work as a newsboy, and later served eighteen months in France in the U.S. Air Service, where he was wounded.
During his lifetime he travelled all over the States as salesman and taxi-driver, and his varied career also included reporting and sports editing, acting as a bodyguard to a politician and bouncer dance contest,
doubling for a wrestler, and finally writing for films and magazines. A founder of the celebrated Dallas Little Theatre, his other novels include No Pockets in a Shroud (1937) (available in Penguins), I Should Have Stayed Home (1938), and Kiss tomorrow Goodbye (1948). He died in 1955.