Source of book: Audiobook from the library
This is one of the books I loosely classify as “books I probably should have read in high school.” As I have mentioned, I was a weird kid growing up, and not primarily because our family eventually got into a fundamentalist cult. Long before that, I was a bookish kid, having learned to read at age 4 and reading voraciously thereafter. My parents encouraged our reading, and the library was one of our regular destinations.
I also had a love for old things, not least of which was old music. And by “old” I don’t mean classic rock (that came later) but Bach and Vivaldi and Mozart and Beethoven. Hey, it wasn’t my parents’ idea for me to take up violin, like it was for many of my musical peers. That was me - I loved the music and especially the violin. Still do.
Along with this came a love of old books. The great classics from the Victorian Era, and before. I spent much of my high school years reading Dickens and Sir Walter Scott and Mark Twain Richard Henry Dana Jr. and Jane Austen. So, let’s just say I didn’t get much YA read at the time.
Other factors were the curriculum we used, which, while solid in many ways - I learned a lot about everything from Gilgamesh to Dickinson - had very little in the way of 20th Century literature. Obviously, one of the things I have done with my time over the 13 years of this blog has been to fill in some gaps.
The “books I should have read in high school” list includes books that public school kids read for school, such as The Great Gatsby, but also books like The Outsiders, which were aimed at high schoolers and had an impact on the culture.
To me, the most astonishing thing about The Outsiders is that the author started the book at age 15, wrote most of it at age 16, and got published by 18. I mean, I read literature at that age. She freaking wrote it.
Another fascinating thing about the author is that even in 1967, she chose to use her initials rather than the obviously feminine Susan Eloise so that reviewers would take the book seriously rather than dismiss her as a little girl writer. Sigh. Not sure the disrespect for female authors and “female” fiction has faded much over a half century later.
The book is all about “greasers,” a derogatory term used for working-class teens and young adults in the 1950s. The setting is Tulsa, Oklahoma, although this is never stated - Hinton writes about her own town. Because of this setting, the greaser kids are not the most typical. In the eastern United States, greasers tended to be Italian and other southern European ethnicities, while in the West, they were as likely to be Chicano. In the Tulsa of the book, they seem to be more generic working class kids, with names that don’t sound any more ethnically homogenous than those of the upper class “socs.” (That is short for “socials” and pronounced “sew-shez.” Or, because I heard it on audiobook, it sounded a bit like my favorite baseball player as a kid, Mike Scioscia…)
In the book, the greasers and the socs are enemies, kind of like street gangs, but not really organized. The conflicts are more like bullying by the socs and retaliation by the greasers, and an occasional official fist fight. Not quite to the Westside Story level, let alone Crips and Bloods and MS13.
The central character is 14-year-old Ponyboy Curtis, a sensitive and bookish greaser drawn into the world he wants no part of when he and his quiet friend Johnny are repeatedly beat up by older and more numerous socs.
There are several big events in the book. Johnny kills a soc who tries to drown Ponyboy, so they go into hiding for a while. Then they save some kids from a burning abandoned church, but Johnny is fatally injured. There is a big fight, and some small moments of connection between Ponyboy and a couple of socs who are equally uncomfortable with the fighting. It’s definitely YA, but not bad for the genre. And really impressive coming from a teenager - it obviously doesn’t have the psychological depth of a pantheon author in his or her prime, but it isn’t as low on nuance most of the dreck that sells well to teens. (And let’s be honest, the writing is more consistent than that of J.K. Rowling - Hinton never stoops to “pretty” as the main descriptor for a female character.)
I should mention the 1983 movie made out of the book by Francis Ford Coppola, which featured an incredible group of young actors who would go on to have illustrious careers. I haven’t seen the movie, but, well, that’s pretty typical. I have always been more of a reader than a movie watcher.
The book gives an interesting snapshot of a particular time and place, a particular subculture, and concerns that are to a degree of those particulars. But there is also a universal human truth in the book. There have always been the haves and have nots in every culture, and the very fact of inequality corrodes the spirits of both groups. Bullies have always existed, and are too rarely stopped - particularly if their parents have money. But also, there have always been the gentle souls, the ones who seek to understand, to transcend conflict, to be kind even in situations that breed brutality and hardness. I have always identified with those characters. I was once a small, scrawny kid, hopelessly nerdy, and just wanting to exist in peace with those around me.
As Ponyboy and Johnny understand, the best world is one in which no one is an outsider.
The audiobook was read by Spike McClure - the same as A Separate Peace, another classic YA I listened to recently. He’s okay, and in this one, I think he did a better job of separating the voices.
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