Lists | [no subject] : MIDDLE-LIT : May 2007

May 13, 2007
Adult Themes
By STEPHANIE ZACHAREK
Skip to next paragraph
SOME OF TIM?S STORIES

By S. E. Hinton.

151 pp. University of Oklahoma Press. $19.95.

Before ?Buffy the Vampire Slayer? and ?Veronica Mars? ? but not before 
?Rebel Without a Cause? and the Shangri-Las ? there was ?The Outsiders? 
(1967), a novel by S. E. Hinton that cut to the heart of teenage anxiety 
and confusion as no other book had. Written in language whose rhythms felt 
true to the way kids talked, from the point of view of Ponyboy Curtis, a 
bright, idealistic 14-year-old who veers dangerously close to ending up on 
the wrong side of the law, ?The Outsiders? had the vitality and the 
audacity of rock ?n? roll ? partly because Hinton was a teenager herself 
when she wrote it.

Inspired by the youth gang rivalries in her hometown, Tulsa, Okla., Hinton 
began writing ?The Outsiders? when she was 15; she received the publishing 
contract on the day of her high school graduation. Even though ?The 
Outsiders? represented the birth of a genre ? previously, books for 
teenagers had focused mostly on dating issues or the woes of parent-child 
relationships ? it was still, a year after its hardcover publication by 
Viking, just a paperback novel, the kind sold on squeaky drugstore racks. 
Just as it was set to go out of print, the paperback publisher, Dell, 
noticed an uptick in sales. Teachers had begun ordering multiples for 
their classrooms; they?d discovered that even teenagers who?d never 
finished a book in their lives would read ?The Outsiders.?

In the years since, Hinton, who still lives in Oklahoma, has written eight 
books, some for young adults, others for children or for grown-ups. The 
latest, ?Some of Tim?s Stories,? is a compact set of vignettes about a 
young bartender named Mike and his conflicted relationship with his 
cousin, Terry: the two are closer than brothers, until a cruel twist 
drives them apart.

In a series of interviews that make up the second half of the book, Hinton 
explains that the ?Tim? of the title is the writer of these stories. 
?Mike? is Tim?s thinly disguised alter ego, a guy who can?t stop punishing 
himself for the ways in which he might have failed his cousin. He loses 
the one woman he loves most, and he gets drunk more than he should. But he 
also enrolls, somewhat accidentally, in a fiction-writing class at his 
local community college, and writing becomes a way for him to cope with 
his fear and guilt.

Each of these stories is brief ? several are just three or four pages ? 
and Hinton trims her prose close to the bone. As Mike sits at his aunt?s 
kitchen table, eating a sandwich she?s prepared for him, Hinton, via Tim, 
takes one of his memories of growing up with Terry and carves it into a 
sharp, concise observation: ?You two eat like horses for such skinny boys. 
They had heard that all their lives. Then they hit 20 and filled out, like 
someone had colored in an outline, and people said no wonder you two ate 
so much.?

But brevity can work against a writer, too, and even though these stories 
are admirably direct, they also feel truncated and at times incomplete. 
Suddenly, the truth hits: What?s missing is the swaggering, dirty-dungaree 
dialogue of ?The Outsiders? and the rambling yet weirdly concise interior 
monologues of Ponyboy, its confused but eminently likable narrator.

There?s just no book like ?The Outsiders,? and even Hinton seems to know 
it. The interviews with the author included in the collection ? conducted 
by Teresa Miller, the founder and executive director of the Oklahoma 
Center for Poets and Writers and the editor of the University of 
Oklahoma?s ?Oklahoma Stories & Storytelling? series, of which this is the 
second volume ? throw off more sparks than the stories themselves. Hinton 
(whose full name is Susan Eloise; her publishers advised her at the 
beginning to use her initials, to prevent readers from prejudging a woman 
author writing from a guy?s point of view) says she believes Tim?s stories 
are the best writing she?s ever done. But she also seems to know she can?t 
recapture the raw, youthful energy of her first book: ?I don?t compete 
with ?The Outsiders.? It?s there; I?m proud of it, but I?m through with 
it, like I am with Tim?s stories.?

Could ?The Outsiders? ? or, for that matter, any of Hinton?s other novels 
for young adults, including ?That Was Then, This Is Now? (1971) and ?Tex? 
(1979) ? even be written today? Among the numerous idiotic pronouncements 
people make about the past, whether we?re talking 40, 60 or even hundreds 
of years ago, is ?Those were more innocent times.? Of course, any parent 
today will tell you that children are outgrowing childhood faster than 
ever, with toddlers requesting Bratz dolls and grade-schoolers taking 
weapons into class.

But part of what makes Hinton?s books wonderful is the fearlessness with 
which she addressed all the things young people weren?t, and still aren?t, 
supposed to do: drag racing, fighting with knives (or guns) and, to name 
perhaps the most current taboo, smoking. Hinton?s books, refreshingly 
nonjudgmental, weren?t social tracts or cautionary tales designed to ward 
her readers off the things that might have killed them (although they 
might ultimately have had that beneficial effect). In ?That Was Then, This 
Is Now,? the 16-year-old protagonist, Bryon, swings by the hospital room 
of a bandage-wrapped teenager who is in a great deal of pain after having 
been badly beaten. The kid begs Bryon for a smoke and Bryon obliges, 
holding a lit cigarette to the kid?s lips.

The world of Hinton?s young adult books isn?t simpler or more innocent 
than the one we live in now. Yes, kids, smoking is bad, very bad! And even 
secondhand smoke can kill you. But does it hurt to be reminded that there 
once was a time, so very long ago, when sharing a cigarette could be an 
act of compassion, not corruption? Hinton may never top ?The Outsiders.? 
But by telling it like it was, she left a record of the way things were ? 
a record that can?t be revised or erased, even after we?ve crushed that 
last Marlboro box and left it behind forever.

Stephanie Zacharek is a senior writer for Salon.

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company