TheBook

How It All Started...

"I wanted something to read." states S.E. Hinton. "I'd wanted to read books that showed teenagers outside of the life of, 'Mary Jane went to the prom.'. She recalls, 'The books available just didn't read true, they didn't deal with the real lives of teenagers."

*She began writing The Outsiders during her sophmore year at Will Rogers High School in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Even though The Outsiders was her first published novel, it was actually her third novel. She had written two previously- neither of which were published - all before the tenth grade. She had been writing since the third grade, and her stories had almost completely been about cowboys and horses, including her first two unpublished novels.

**It took Hinton only a year and a half to write The Outsiders (the same year she managed to earn a grade of 'D' in a Creative Writing class). "The whole status thing drove me nuts," she says of her high school years. "It drove me nuts that people would get worked up over who they should and should not talk to in the hall."

She got the call that the book had been accepted for publication the day she graduated from high school. The book was released by Viking in April of 1967, as she was in her freshman year at the University of Tulsa.

It is well known why the initials of S.E. Hinton were chosen by her publishers at the time the book was initally published. However Ms. Hinton continues to utilize the name for publishing as it gives her the anonymity she loves at home and in her private life. She is a very private person and using the initals help protect that.

*Credit / Source:

"S.E. Hinton; the Library of Author Biographies" Antoine Wilson, 2003

**Credit / Source:

"Presenting S.E. Hinton" Jay Daly, 1989

Used with permission from S.E. Hinton

Publishing Information:

First Published: Publisher: Viking Books; (April 1, 1967)

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Awards:

New York Herald Tribune Best Teenage Books List, 1967

Chicago Tribune Book World Spring Book Festival Honor Book, 1967

Media and Methods Maxi Award, 1975

ALA Best Young Adult Books, 1975

Massachusetts Children’s Book Award, 1979

Speaking with S. E. Hinton
Interview from the back of the current edition of the book

Q: You were a sixteen-year-old high school student in
Oklahoma when you wrote The Outsiders. Where did you
get the Idea for the story?
A: I was actually fifteen when I frist began it. It
was the year I was sixteen and a junior in high school
that I did the majority of the work(that was the year
I made a D in creative writing). One day, a friend of
mine was walking home from scool and these "nice" kids
jumped out of a car and beat him up because they
didn't like him being a greaser. This made me mad and
I just went home and started pounding out a story
about this boy who was beaten up while he was walking
home from the movies-the beginning of The Outsiders.
It was just something to let off steam. I didn't have
any grand design. I just sat down and started writing
it. I look back and think it was totally written in my
subconscious or something.

Q: So was there a real-life Ponyboy? A real Johnny?
A: Ponyboy's gang was inspired by a true-life gang,
the members of which were very dear to me. Later, all
the gang members I hung out with were sure they were
in the book-but they aren't. I guess it's because
these characters are really kind of universal without
losing their individuality.

Q: What were you like as a teenager? Were you a
greaser; a Soc?
A: I was a tomboy. I played football, my close friends
were guys. Fortunately, I was born without the
need-to-belong gene that says you have to be in a
little group to feel secure. I never wanted to be
classified as anything, nor did I ever join anything
for fear of losing my individuality. I didn't even
realize that these guys, who were my good friends,
were greasers, until one day we were walking down the
street and some guys came and yelled, "Greaser!" It's
funny to look at people you've known all your life, to
suddenly see them as everyone else sees them, with
their slicked-back hair and cigarettes hanging out of
their mouths and their black leather jackets and
respond, "My God, they're hoods." You know them and
know they're not hoods, but they just look like hoods.
I had friends on the rich side of town, too, and saw
that they had their share of problems, also.

Q: How did you pursue getting The Outsiders published?
A: When I wrote it I hadn't thought of getting it
published. but at school one day I mentioned to a
friend that I wrote, and her mother happened to write
children's books.  I gave her a copy of the Outsiders,
ad this woman showed it to a friend who had a New york
agent. the agent liked it and sold it to a second
publisher who read it. She has been my agent ever
since. I recieved the contract from the publisher on
graduation day!

Q: What made you want to be a writer?
A: The major influence on my writing has been my
reading. When I was young, I read everything,
including cereal boxes and coffee labels. Reading
taught me sentence structure, paragraphing, how to
build a chapter. Strangely enough, it never taught me
spelling. I have always loved to write, almost as much
as I love to read. I began goofing around with a
typewriter when I was about twelve. I've always
written about things that interest me, so my first
years of writing(grades three through ten), I wrote
about cowboys and horses. I wanted to be a cowboy and
have a horse. Writing is easy for me because I never
begin to write unless I have something to say. I'm a
character writer. Some writers are plot writers. . .I
have to begin with people. I always know my
characters, exactly what they look like, their
birthdays, what they like for breakfast. It doesn't
matter if these things don't appear in the book. I
still have to know. I get ideas for characters from
real people, but overall they are fictional; my
characters exist only in my head.

Q: What books and authors inspire and influence you?
A: Well, as an adult, I can pick a lot of authors who
have influenced me. My favorite authors are are Jane
Austen, Mary Renault, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Shirley
Jackson. My favorite books are The Haunting of Hill
House, Fire from Heaven, Emma, and Tender is The
Night. I like Kurt Vonnegut Jr.'s novels, but not his
short stories, and the other way around for J. D.
Salinger. But people want to know your childhood
influences, and I'll have to say just books in
general. I loved to read, and as soon as I learned how
I was reading everything I could get my hands on. I
was a horse nut, and Peanuts the Pony  was the first
book I ever checked out of the library. I still
remember that book. The act of reading was so
pleasurable for me. For an introvrted kid, it's a
means of communication, because you interact with the
author even if you aren't sitting there conversing
with her.

Q: Why do you use your initials instead of your full
name? 
A: My publisher was afraid that the reviews would
assume a girl couldn't write a book like The
Outsiders. Later, when my books became popular, I
found I liked the privacy of having a "public" name
and a private one, so it worked out fine.

Q: When it was first published, the realism of The
Outsiders shocked a lot of reviewers, but readers
embraced the book. Did that surprise you?
A: No, I was pleased that people were shocked when The
Outsiders came out.  One of my reasons for writing it
was that I wanted something realistic to be written
about teenagers. At that time realistic teenage
fiction didn't exist. If you didn't want to read Mary
Jane Goes to The Prom and you were through with horse
books, there was nothing to read. I just wanted to
write somethig that dealt with what I saw kids really
doing.

Q: Why do you think the book has remained so popular
through the years?
A: Every teenager feels that adults have no idea
what's going on. That's exactly the way I felt when I
wrote The Outsiders. Even today, the concept of the
in-group and the out-group remains the same. The kids
say, "Okay, this is like the Preppies and the Punks,"
or whatever they call themselves. The uniforms change,
and the names of groups change, but kids really grasp
how similar their situations are to Ponyboy's.