Horace McCoy

What writers inspire you?

um the you know going back what i call the proletariat um you know the populist writers like steinbeck and guys who were um um you know worked for newspapers and became writers like horace mccoy wrote they they shoot horses don't they and that looks like that yeah i love books that are written for uh about written for the people that they're about i love that and um and that's what i'm trying to do i mean it makes It makes me really happy to see like a regular guy on the subway and reading one of my books rather than, you know, I don't need a professor to tell me that, you know, what time it is.

I mean, that's who I'm trying to reach.

I'll tell you, I wanted to ask you that before I mentioned what your book reminds me of is Raymond Chandler.

and obviously sonny chiba made his whole career playing those characters so i i mean i agree i mean i think it's like a pervading genre and i think people like it because it has that very american quality of like individualism in the right way

yeah and i mean in the background too i mean there's also i mean i would say mid-century existentialism and american pulp fiction was a big influence on french existentialism because i mean camus was a big fan of James M. Cain, who wrote Postman Always Rings Twice, and Horace McCoy as well.

And those are both death row novels.

They're death row noir novels that he read.