S e hinton s second novelty
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Why ‘The Outsiders’ Still Matters
When S.E. Hinton published The Outsiders in 1967, a novel she began writing at age 15 and sold at 17, the idea of a teenager writing fiction for her peers was a novelty. Most of the literature handed down for high school students to read had, in Hinton’s uppskattning, nothing to do with the lived experiences of teenagers in her hometown of Tulsa, Oklahoma. “The authors of books for teen-agers are still 15 years behind the times,” she wrote in an op-ed for The New York Times. “In the fiction they write, romance is still the most popular theme, with a horse-and-the-girl-who-loved-it coming in a close second.”
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Hinton’s novel, which describes in sandig detail the ongoing gang warfare between the lower-class Greasers and the well-to-do Socials, didn’t have much to do with romance or horses, unless you count her protagonist, the 14-year-old Greaser Ponyboy Curtis. But it was a
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Even though I don’t live in NYC, I recently discovered that a great lineup of authors make a stop in the nearby Princeton area before traveling up to the city. Last Tuesday, I checked out the list of authors events at the Princeton Barnes and Noble just in time to find out that S. E. Hinton, author of The Outsiders and That Was Then . . . This Is Now, among other popular young adult books, was making an appearance that night!
Before you ask, she is not writing a sequel to The Outsiders. A lot of people hinted, asked, and even pleaded that she answer their burning questions by writing a sequel, but she was very clear: no and never. In fact, she said that after her career of young adult books and even a few children’s picture books, she’s thinking about writing her next book for adults. “Adults are the characters I’m most interested in now,” she said, with a shrug.
My favorite thing that S. E. Hinton shared with the crowd was about how she
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Back in the day, there probably wasn’t a teenager alive who hadn’t read The Outsiders, S.E. Hinton’s first novel. Written when Hinton was just sixteen and published around the time she graduated from high school, The Outsiders tells the story of the Curtis brothers Darry, Soda, and Ponyboy. It’s considered the seminal young adult novel and remains a classroom favourite almost 50 years after its publication.
I read it as a teenager, of course. Then I read Hinton’s second novel, That Was Then, This is Now and I remember that it had a profound impact on me. So, when it came time to choose the novel I wanted to begin my first ever Young Adult Literature class with, I chose Hinton’s second book – mostly because I knew that although many students would be familiar with The Outsiders, they might not know this book. Plus, it gave me an excuse to read it 40 odd years later after my first go-around.
That Was The, This is Now treads familia