Posted on 02/20/2018 6:18:46 PM PST by OKSooner
(From Amazon, edited) Susan Eloise Hinton's career as an author began while she was still a student at Will Rogers High School in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Disturbed by the divisions among her schoolmates into two groups--the Greasers and the Socs--Hinton wrote The Outsiders, an honest, sometimes shocking novel told from the point of view of a 14-year-old Greaser named Ponyboy Curtis.
Since her narrator was male, it was decided that Hinton use only her first initials so as not to put off boys who would not normally read books written by women.
The Outsiders was published during Hinton's freshman year at the University of Tulsa. Today, with more than eight million copies in print, the book is the best-selling young adult novel of all time, and one of the most hauntingly powerful views into the thoughts and feelings of teenagers.
The book was also made into a film, directed by Francis Ford Coppola.
Once published, The Outsiders gave her a lot of publicity and fame, and also a lot of pressure. S.E. Hinton was becoming known as "The Voice of the Youth" among other titles.
This kind of pressure and publicity resulted in a three year long writer's block. Her boyfriend (and now, her husband), who had gotten sick of her being depressed all the time, eventually broke this block.
He made her write two pages a day if she wanted to go anywhere. This eventually led to That Was Then, This Is Now. In the years since, Ms. Hinton has married and now has a teenaged son, Nick.
She continues to write, with such smash successes as That Was Then, This Is Now, Rumble Fish and Tex, almost as well known as The Outsiders.
She still lives in Tulsa with her husband and son. -clip-
(Excerpt) Read more at vanityespeciallynow.com ...
Not sure why I started thinking about it again... The protagonist is a boy named Bryon, who is in the "greaser" crowd in his school, that is to say he's not one of the cool kids.
A friend of his, an older guy in his 20's who was a bartender IIRC, and had helped him out of a jam one night, is murdered.
When he gets back to school, one of the socs (short for socialites, rhymes with gauche, obviously the cool kids) is all of a sudden interested in him and acts like a friend to him - for the cold-blooded purpose of getting all the information and then jumping out in front of the story like he's Quinn The Eskimo or something.
Of course this is set back in the days before CNN.
Happy reading!!
Ping.
Good book. Terrible movie.
L
This book was required reading in my son’s 8th grade English class two years ago. He hates to read but begrudgingly admitted he liked the book.
Read both of these books back in 8th grade. Can 8th graders read now?
About 20 years ago there was a TV show with Pony Boy and his older Brothers who were greasers. The socs were all white and the greasers were Latino. And Pony Boy grew up to be a writer. I guess it was supposed to be in California.
I’m happy to hear of this Oklahoma writer. How young she was to write such a smash hit, today! Thank you very much.
Your comment are about “That was THEN and This is NOW”, or about her first book, “The Outsiders”?
Good author. And the movie was definitely very good. Unusually good for Hollywood. We have it and plan to watch it again tonight
Mary Shelley was 20 when Fronkensteen was published. The novel is 200 this year!
I read That Was Then, This is Now in jr. high or high school. I don’t remember much about it but at the time I thought it was a really good, absorbing story.
YES, but “That Was Then, This is NOW”. :) ha.
It is more a rarity that really young writers are so accomplished in modern times, given the condition of education and its demise over time. Hinton was gifted. I had not heard of her, until tonight.
If you haven’t, you should at least see the Outsiders movie. Staple of my youth. C. Thomas Howell, Ralph Macchio, and a bunch of other big stars of the ‘80s.
Excellent book!
Stay gold, Ponyboy.
Let’s see how close I can get from memory;
Nature’s first green is gold
Her hardest hue to hold
Her early leaf’s a flower
But only so an hour
Then leaf subsides to leaf
So Eden sank to grief
So dawn goes down to day
Nothing gold can stay
Wow. Looks like I got it. Hadn’t thought of that in 30 years. :)
I should poke around and find the book, The Outsiders. I will check the net for the movie version of the story. Thanks for the review.
We also read the book in I believe 6th grade, and went to see the movie. It produced my first crush, Dallas Winston. I remember berating myself back then for not being into the more wholesome Ponyboy or Johnny lol. As a woman of some years now of course I see all the charm in the older brother, played by the late Patrick Swayze.
I was 10 at the time and knocked for a loop by Diane Lane. :)
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