THE OUTSIDERS

Can you believe I’d never read The Outsiders? I had zero interest in gritty realism as a kid. In fact, when a member of my book club picked this as our February selection, even though it seemed like a perfect opportunity to remedy this gaping hole in my cultural literacy, when I actually sat down to read I was still less than excited. Juvenile delinquents: depressing, right? Well, shoot, I loved it. Turns out this is less a hard-hitting “issues” book and more a sweet, perceptive (and now slightly old-fashioned, in a vintage-cool way) coming-of-age story. Beneath their tough exteriors, the characters are funny and sensitive—if perhaps too much so; we spent a long time in our club meeting discussing whether the book was an accurate depiction of young men of that time and place or a female teen writer/reader’s idealized version of them, but in the end I don’t think it matters because, hey, it’s fiction, and they feel honest enough within the world of the book. The plot isn’t particularly strong, but I got so swept up in Ponyboy’s smart, poignant narrative voice that I was happy to go along with it. Even when read 20 years too late, this classic definitely lived up to its hype for me, and now I’m putting S.E. Hinton’s other books on my TBR list—especially since I learned that they take place in the same world as The Outsiders and contain some overlapping characters. (I’ll also admit to being quite tempted to buy myself this rad t-shirt.)

As a bonus, during the afterglow from the novel, I also watched the Outsiders movie (handily available on Netflix Instant Watch) for the first time. Of course, the cast is near-legendary at this point, a gold mine of before-they-were-quite-stars, but in most other respects I’m sad to say that it’s not a great film. Sometimes painfully so. My major complaint: no voiceover. I know that excessive narration can be a crutch for lazy filmmaking, but when you’re adapting a first-person novel told by a character as winsome as Ponyboy, doing away with it entirely is also a mistake (I thought the Coen brothers included just the right amount of narration in True Grit). I was hopeful when the movie began with the first line of the book, but confused when it faded out mid-sentence and was replaced by the blaring, cheese-tastic Stevie Wonder original track “Stay Gold” (seriously, I love Stevie, but NO). That was it for the voiceover until the very end, when, like the book, the movie came full circle—but without the book’s explanation that the framing device is an essay Ponyboy’s writing for his English class, this device makes no sense. Otherwise, the film is a technically faithful adaptation in that it covers all plot points, but stripped of the novel’s two main strengths, the nuances of the narrative voice and the character-building (most of the first third of the book is basically cut), that plot felt even more creaky and implausible (case in point: the fire in the church). Some of the casting was excellent: Patrick Swayze was spot-on as Derry, Matt Dillon was surprisingly good as Dally, Diane Lane’s performance as Cherry made me take note of her for the first time ever, and young Rob Lowe, Emilio Estevez, and Tom Cruise were interesting to see—not to mention, holy cow, a one-line part for Tom Waits of all people! But unfortunately, C. Thomas Howell was not the Ponyboy of my dreams, and Ralph Macchio was downright laughably incompetent as Johnny—a major problem, considering that character is the emotional linchpin of the story. Add to all this Coppola’s often-showy direction and the result is mostly mawkish. I’m still glad I watched it, but its main value is as a Brat-Pack-era curiosity, not as a literary adaptation.