THE OUTSIDERS

• by S.E. Hinton
• [rated by pbs viewers as #32]
• 180 pages

Holy crap, batman. I just read me a masterpiece.

In the many books before this, I had sometimes opened this one up. But I think the reason I put it back was the reason it was great.

You were about to walk into a book and a story that would not let you look away,

I can go on, but not before mentioning something that utterly shocked me throughout the whole experience…

S.E. Hinton wrote this at 16 fucking years old! To read this and to know that it was written by a 16-year old just never computes. As I type this, my mouth is still hanging openl

She achieves a maturity in her writing at that age, that most writers never get close to. She writes an enormous story as simply as possible, narrated by an innocent kid, Ponyboy, who is part of a greaser gang. They fight, they survive and only during this story do they start to ask the deeper questions.

I constantly saw this book as a companion piece to “To Kill A Mockingbird” and yes, it is that good. Ponyboy, like Scout, narrates this shocking tale about love and hate, perspective and isolation, uselessness and forgiveness, all with a honest, innocent, quasi-journalistic feel, as much so as one could attribute to someone that age. There is love, dignity, deep sweetness and a yearning ache that will stay with me long after this.

And she is writing inside the minds of boys and men at that age! Great honk! What I didn’t know about guys at that point, was…everything!

The Outsiders is a marvel. There is a short introduction from Hinton in which she thanks Coppola for asking her a million questions when he was making the movie of this and his dogged determination that it be right in her eyes. I thought that was a nice tribute. But I see now that he knew that any part of this story that didn’t jibe with her

vision would be the worse for it!

At 16, I think I was writing poetry about why some guy I liked didn’t even know I was alive in a lousy stab at iambic pentameter.

Not Hinton. If she was standing here, I would tell her I thank her, like millions of readers before me, for doing her part to save the world. This cautionary tale isn’t for the faint of heart, but every heart could use it.