The Outsiders

This year marks the fortieth anniversary of the publication of S.E. Hinton's novel The Outsiders, a landmark in the history of what is known as "young adult fiction." I read the book when I was probably about ten or so, a copy ordered from the Scholastic Book Club no doubt (it used to be a big occasion for me when we get those order forms in school, and I would order some books and then receive a package some weeks later). I remember liking it a lot at the time, but sometimes things that I become reacquainted with lose their aura with the cynicism of age. However, reading this again, close to thirty-five years later, was a rewarding experience.

Hinton was a teenage girl when she wrote this book (she used her initials because the publishers did not want boy readers to know she was a woman). It tells the story of aimless youth in mid-sixties' Tulsa, Oklahoma, from the viewpoint of Ponyboy Curtis, a fourteen-year-old "greaser." Greasers come from the wrong side of the tracks. They wear their hair long and greasy, tend to carry knives and get in trouble with the law, and prefer Elvis to the Beatles. They are in constant conflict with the "Socs" (short for society or social), who are affluent and drive Mustangs and wear Madras shirts. Ponyboy lives with his two brothers: Soda, who is a few years older but has dropped out of school and works in a gas station, and 2o-year-old Darry, who is in the parental role since their parents were killed in a car wreck. The Curtis boys hang with a group of guys, most notably Dally, who is a hood, and Johnny, Ponyboy's meek friend who is even more skittish after getting viciously beaten by some Socs.

During the course of the story, there will be tragedy in pointless Greaser vs. Soc wars, and Ponyboy will meet a girl Soc, Cherry Valance, and will learn that people are the same all over. If this sounds a little like West Side Story I imagine Hinton was influenced some by that, but The Outsiders exists almost entirely on its own. Hinton was from Tulsa (and still lives there, I believe) and was writing about people she knew. What was shocking at the time is that it was the first book for adolescents that dealt with frankly with troubling issues. These boys smoke, drink, and break the law with impunity. Some of them are indifferent about school, and most have almost a complete lack of parenting. There is also the subtlest hint of a teen pregnancy. For this reason the book has been banned by many school library systems. Characters who are "bad boys" usually come to bad ends, but these characters are not vilified, nor are they particularly heroic, they are treated objectively as victims of an endless spiral. As Ponyboy mentions several times, if people are going to treat him like a hood, he might as well be one.

The language of the book is very interesting. Yes, it has characters smoking and getting into knife fights, but there is no profanity, so it's amusing for tough-guys to say things like, "Blast it!" At times Hinton writes that they do swear, we just don't know what the words are. The writing is very simple and concise, as it should be for adolescents, which only makes her descriptions of shocking subjects come across even more brutally.

In conjunction with reading the book I rented the film that was made of it, by Francis Coppola in 1983. It's most notable now for having several performers who would go on to be famous: Patrick Swayze, Rob Lowe, Tom Cruise, Diane Lane, Leif Garrett, Matt Dillon, Ralph Macchio (who is particularly chilling as the beaten-down Johnny) and Emilio Estevez (even Coppola's daughter Sofia turns up in a cameo). The film is lit in very nostalgic golden hues, and sticks extremely close to the novel.

I have twin nephews that just turned thirteen and I wonder if they've read this book. If not, I just may get it for one of them for Christmas. I think it's an important book for kids that age, even if it is a little dated (the first line of the book makes reference to Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke, who would have been a hero to disaffected youth of the sixties--now he's a salad-dressing salesman).