I was introduced to Ponyboy when I was in my early teens, like most people who know him. I immediately liked him and his extended group of greaser friends and family created by S.E. Hinton. I went on to meet Rusty-James, the Motorcycle Boy, Bryon and Mark. My teenage brain was a little taken aback when I found out the S.E. part of the author’s name stood for Susan Eloise. A young woman was creating these cool characters, almost all young males. It didn’t bother me or make me stop reading. When I hit my later teens and had moved on to Hemingway and Fitzgerald and the crew, I found I couldn’t resist rereading some of her books even into my twenty’s. Maybe the main reason I reread them is because the characters are so likable, which made me care about them and what happened to them. The books are mainly about relationships, and how they change. Four of her books were made into movies, two directed by Francis Ford Coppola and three featuring Matt Dillon. It is hard to adapt a well loved book into a movie that fans like, and while the movies were not awful they also did not come very close to how I imagined the characters to look, to talk, even to move. That is my fault, not mistakes by the actors or directors. I have not read Hinton’s later books, so I have no opinion on those, but I would recommend you introduce a teenager you know to at least the first three she wrote, The Outsiders, That Was Then, This Is Now and Rumble Fish. And if you haven’t read them yourself, well, there’s still time.
Off The Back Porch 