A couple of months ago, Deb posted about the openinig paragraphs. My contribution to that post was this opener:

“When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, I had only two things on my mind: Paul Newman and a ride home” - The Outsiders, SE Hinton


Apparently, it is the 40th anniversary of the publishing of this novel, and I read a very interesting article from the NY Times about the novel, its influences, and how it has become a teen standard.

Few books come steeped in an aura as rich as S. E. Hinton’s novel “The Outsiders,” which celebrates its 40th anniversary this year. At a time when the average young-adult novel was, in Hinton’s characterization, “Mary Jane went to the prom,” “The Outsiders” shocked readers with its frank depictions of adolescents smoking, drinking and “rumbling.” Although other pop culture offerings had dealt with these themes — most notably “Rebel Without a Cause” and “West Side Story” — their intended audience was adult. By contrast, “The Outsiders” was a story “for teenagers, about teenagers, written by a teenager.” Hinton’s candid, canny appraisal of the conflict between Socs, or Socials, and Greasers (for which one might substitute Jets and Sharks), published when she was 17, was an immediate hit and remains the best-selling young-adult novel of all time.

Long credited with changing the way Y.A. fiction is written, Hinton’s novel changed the way teenagers read as well, empowering a generation to demand stories that reflected their realities. In fact, in the novel, the need for a representative literature is a central aspect of 14-year-old Ponyboy Curtis’s existential crisis. The book’s famous statement of theme, “Stay gold,” is of course a reference to Robert Frost’s “Nothing Gold Can Stay,” and then there’s the not-quite-believable assertion that the novel was written as a “theme” for Ponyboy’s English class: “Someone should tell their side of the story, and maybe people would understand then and wouldn’t be so quick to judge.” Despite its obviousness, this device strikes me as crucial to the book, providing a context for the occasionally clunky deus ex machina and foreshadowing, not to mention the sometimes workmanlike prose. To an adolescent, the clunkers probably reinforce the authenticity of the book’s voice, but the framing device establishes that unpolished authenticity as an aesthetic construction... (article continues)

I certainly agree, my copy is tearstained and I only need to read “Stay Gold” to sniffle. When Cedric hit Middle School I learned that in the umpteen years between when I read it and today, it has an assigned book, much to Cedric’s dismay. I can assure you, his copy will not be tearstained and treasured.

How would you have answered Deb's question?