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Alison Stewart: You are listening to All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. When I say Ponyboy, what's the first thing that comes to mind? Your brain may have gone to a paperback book, fairly slim, about 190 pages, with images of teenage boys in the cover and the name S.E. Hinton.

It wasn't clear the author of the soon-to-be classic novel about socio-economic tensions between the working and upper middle classes kids in Oklahoma was the work of a very young woman named Susan Eloise Hinton. The book became a classic, taught in schools, loved by some, yet it became one of the most challenged books of the 1990s according to the American Library Association.

Written when Hinton was a teenager growing up in 1960s Tulsa. Years later, she'd go on to co-write the screenplay for The Outsiders with Francis Ford Coppola. The film and book came out decades ago, yet both still resonate with people so much that they may make a pilgrimage to a museum dedicated to the film. It's in Tulsa. S.E. Hinton went on to write several more books but chose to live a decidedly not literati life.

Which is why it was so unusual that journalist, Patrick Sauer, she agreed to speak to him. The conversation led to a piece for Smithsonian Magazine titled S.E. Hinton Is Tired Of Talking About 'The Outsiders' No One Else Is.

Joining me now to explain why Hinton might be a little bit over it and why the rest of us are not is Patrick Sauer. Welcome to the studio.

Patrick Sauer: Thanks for having me.

Alison Stewart: Listeners, did you read The Outsiders? I know you did. Did it resonate with you? What did it mean to you at the time? Give us a call. 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC, or maybe you are a fan of the movie The Outsiders? 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. Our social media is available as well @AllOfItWNYC. You can tweet to us or send us a DM on Instagram. Obvious question, what got you interested in The Outsiders?

Patrick Sauer: I grew up in Billings, Montana, which is also not a literary hot spot. I was 12 when the movie came out, so I was the perfect age. I was a reader, but I think I mostly read nonfiction biographies, especially sports biographies. That was my jam.

When I read that book, it resonated just in a recognizable way. Tulsa and Billings aren't exactly the same, but they're pretty close and the story resonated. My dad was a doctor, so we were not on the other side of the tracks as it were, but my school, it was small, there was a fair number of single mothers. You find single mothers.

I grew up downtown and Billings is not a particularly wealthy town. I recognized the socioeconomic divisions in the book. Then drinking and fighting and all of the things that we did for entertainment back then.

Alison Stewart: Just remind people a thumbnail of what the book is about.

Patrick Sauer: Sure. It's a story that Hinton wrote about her own high school experience, and she went to Will Rogers High School in Tulsa, which is a pretty well-known school. Basically, it's set in the early '60s, and it is primarily a story of the haves and the have-nots, the Socs, who are the rich kids, and the greasers who are so named because of the grease they put in their hair.

There is a fight at the beginning, and one of the greasers, Johnny, ends up killing one of the socs. They go on the lam. It's basically the story of those two over two weeks. The main character is Ponyboy, who is the youngest of the Curtis brothers. They are orphans, and they all live together in a house, and that's the greaser's hot spot. It's two weeks in the life of these kids.

There's a tragedy in the middle where there's a fire, and they end up rescuing a bunch of kids from a church camp. Then they get back home. There's more trouble between them. The law gets involved. Three characters will die, and it's a realistic slice of life in a way that books like that didn't really exist when she wrote it.

Alison Stewart: Interesting. The number is 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. We are talking about The Outsiders. Do you remember reading it or seeing the movie? Did it resonate with you?

212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC, or you can hit us up on social media. You can tweet to us @AllOfItWNYC or send us a DM via Instagram. My guest is Patrick Sauer. He's a journalist. The name of his piece is S.E. Hinton Is Tired of Talking About 'The Outsiders' No One Else Is. We'll get to that part in a minute. She started this when she was really, really young.

Patrick Sauer: Yes at 15. The funny thing is she told me that she had been writing for years already so she was very precocious. Although, as the famous story goes, she got a D in creative writing the year that she wrote The Outsiders because she was too busy ignoring the assignments to write The Outsiders.

It was finished by the end of high school and published in her freshman year of college at the University of Tulsa. She was way ahead of her time. In fact, when I told some people that I was doing this story, they were like, "How old is she?" She's in her 70s, but I think people would assume she's much older than that because most people don't write their great work of fiction at 16.

Alison Stewart: You mentioned this earlier, and she said to you, "Nobody was writing about what was going on in my high school, the social and class warfare." What was being written for teenagers around this time that this came out, and then what was revolutionary about what she wrote?

Patrick Sauer: I think there are some classic novels, Lord of the Flies, Catcher in the Rye, but the way she explained it, it was still just mostly books written for elementary school students but aimed at a teenage market. She told me the story was Mary Jane went to the prom, but that book never mentioned that she snuck in liquor or that they would be using the backseats of the cars.

What was revolutionary, she just told a story of what high school was like. I don't know that the deeper themes of-- It's obviously a staple of fiction, the have and have not, but I don't know that it had been presented that way, particularly, from a Midwest point of view. There's more East Coast books because of where the publishers are and along with that, every character in the book is white.

It's all male. In fact, she is S.E. because the publisher didn't want a woman's name on the front or thought it would be better, so she went with S.E. instead of Susan Eloise. It was not a new story, but it was just a story that hadn't been told in that matter-of-fact concrete way.

Alison Stewart: The publishers just didn't believe that anyone would buy this story about a bunch of boys if it had a woman's name on the cover.

Patrick Sauer: I think they thought it would be a much tougher sell. That would be my guess.

Alison Stewart: Let's take a call. Let's talk to Rachel calling in from Staten Island. Hi, Rachel.

Rachel: Hi. Thanks for taking my call. I just was sharing with the person answering the phone that I'm an English teacher. I never read this book before I'm embarrassed to say, but I was teaching in a private school on Staten Island to seventh graders, and they loved every minute of it. Even though they were from more wealthy backgrounds, they were still able to identify very strongly with the various characters.

Alison Stewart: Could you tell what it was that they were really keying into, Rachel?

Rachel: They really delve into the relationship between Johnny and his older brother, Dally or Darry. I always get them confused.

Patrick Sauer: Darry is the older brother. Dally is Dallas Winston.

Rachel: Dally was right. They really identify with the struggle that Ponyboy had with Darry, the conflict. I think they could really identify that in their own life. They made some really--

Alison Stewart: Go ahead.

Rachel: No, they made a lot of very insightful observations about the struggle that Ponyboy was having with his older brother, who was like a father.

Alison Stewart: Rachel, thank you so much for calling in. That was an interesting factoid I got from your piece that it was actually teachers who picked up The Outsiders first, not kids.

Patrick Sauer: Yes, originally, it was sold as a dime-store paperback novel. I think it was put with mystery novels of the Mickey Spillane types, and it didn't sell all that well. Viking Press realized that there were little pockets where it was selling, and they pieced together that it was teacher's word of mouth that the kids were loving this book. It's tough to get kids to read, particularly boys.

The book's success was originally driven by teachers and their students. I think one thing that really makes the book universal, in that sense, is every teenager feels like they're an outsider, even if they're-- Other than the 1% of confidence teenagers so that it does crossover in that way too. They're very sensitive boys, but they're lost. There's something to that I think that does speak to just about every adolescent.

Alison Stewart: There's S.E. Hinton is active on Twitter and she's fine, she can be salty sometimes.

Patrick Sauer: She can.

Alison Stewart: One question fans tend to Labaggers is, why did Dallas have to die? She usually replies, and these are her words, "Because I'm a stone-cold bitch." What did you pick up from her about the way her relationship has changed with this book over the years?

Patrick Sauer: As the piece is called S.E. Hinton Is Tired Of Talking About The Outsiders, and I think that she said that at the end of our conversation, I don't want-- it wasn't like she led off with that, never been very awkward. It's just at resignation at the end, said all I have to say about this.

I think what's interesting is that the book-- she knows that the book will always be number one on our list. I think the movie though, really did change her relationship to the book because she's close friends with almost everybody in the cast still.

Alison Stewart: Really?

Patrick Sauer: They come to see her and she's been a huge help in the museum. My sense is that she's proud of her legacy just maybe doesn't need to rehash the story again and again, although she doesn't do that many interviews. It's not like she's told these stories hundreds of times. I was glad she talked to me, that's for sure.

Alison Stewart: How did you get her to talk to you?

Patrick Sauer: I got her to talk to me through Danny Boy O'Connor. He is a member of the former hip-hop band, House of Pain. If you know them, you probably know Jump Around, [crosstalk] which is still mass-played everywhere all the time. After the group broke up, he bottomed out drug and alcohol problems.

When he got sober, he formed a new band, they were touring, and he found himself in Tulsa. He had a flashback to when he was a kid and he had seen the movie. He'd never read the book. He's like, as he told me, I didn't know people read books. The movie had a huge impression on him.

He had paid a guy $100 to drive him around town. There's the Curtis boy's house still pretty much in the ramshackle condition. He said it would look like the movie Seven in there, just there were literal farm animals inside. It was like a drug den. He thought this was terrible they're going to tear it down soon. He made it his life's work to present the museum, to present Hinton's work.

They became friends and he said, I think she will talk to you just when you make sure when you pitch her, it's not a story about her per se. Because my original idea was I wanted to write S.E Hinton bART of Tulsa. I wanted to write about how the city has changed and how she's been a rock. He was like, she's not really that open to talking herself in that way. That was a good help. Then, I just reached out and about a month later she said okay.

Alison Stewart: We'll hear more about that conversation in a moment. Want to take one quick call? Pam calling in from Atlanta.

Patrick Sauer: Oh, nice.

Alison Stewart: Hi, Pam. Thanks for calling All Of It.

Pam: Thank you. I'm a retired school media specialist and I almost always worked in public school in middle school. I've been retired for 15 years, but I started working in 1969 and the book has always been perennially popular with students because it's very real. It shows people how to deal with real-life situations. I think that's what makes it so popular. I can certainly understand why the author is a little bit over it because it's still very popular with both educators like me and also with students.

Alison Stewart: Pam, thank you so much for calling in. We are talking about the legacy of The Outsiders with Patrick Sauer. He is a journalist, the name of his piece and Smithsonian Magazine as S.E. Hinton Is Tired Of Talking About The outsiders No One Else Is, as you can tell because we are getting calls. Give us a call, 212-433 WNYC, 212-433-9692. Did you read The Outsiders?

Did it resonate with you? Have you been to Tulsa ever? What did you think of the movie? What impact did it have on your life? 212-433-9692, 212-433 WNYC. We'll have more after a quick break. This is All Of It.

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This is All Of It. We are discussing the legacy of The Outsiders with Patrick Sauer. He wrote a piece for Smithsonian Magazine, S.E. Hinton Is Tired of Talking About The Outsiders No One Else Is. Patrick, you told one of my producers that young adult literature does not exist without S.E. Hinton. How did her work change young adult literature as we know it?

Patrick Sauer: I think primarily it gave publishers the confidence that they could put out books that teenagers actually want to read. There are a few other titles that I remember from my own childhood, one that always stuck in my head is A Hero Ain't Nothin' But A Sandwich, which was a story about young African American, I think in Harlem who grew up around the heroin trade.

It was very great. I don't know which book came first or, but I feel like that became-- realism became okay. Once success breeds more success, and I think people adolescents were able to see themselves, which is of course seems insane now, where there's YA is one of the biggest things in the world, but at the time, I don't think kids had books like that to read other than the classics like Lord of the Flies or something but those books are not your neighbors.

They aren't your friends. They're still a level of removal from your typical adolescent. I think that would be the biggest thing the book did is just gave permission to other writers to tell their own stories.

Alison Stewart: The Outsiders was turned into a movie by Francis Ford Coppola released in '83. The story of how it became a movie is remarkable. Would you share that?

Patrick Sauer: There was a librarian, a school librarian in California, Fresno, I believe who again, had trouble getting boys to read books. She found the kids loved this book, so she decided this should be a movie. Her name is Joanne Masaki, I believe, I hope we pronounce that right.

She wrote a letter to the local newspaper. That person told her to contact Parade Magazine, the film editor, of Parade Magazine, who then suggested she contact S.E. Hinton, who then never responded to her. Undeterred, she sent a copy of the novel to Francis Ford Coppola we're talking who had just come off a massive bomb called One From the Heart. If you don't know anything about it, it was a huge disaster.

She sent it to the wrong office, his New York office, which he didn't really get mail, which turned out great because the producing partner, he actually opened the letter, gave the book to his producing partner. He said, "All right. I'll give this book 10 minutes if it doesn't capture me, I'm throwing it out." He read it all the way on a flight cover to cover. Then they reached out to Susie, who apparently was not that enamored of The Godfather.

It was Black Stallion, it was she's a big horse person. It was Francis Ford Coppola's work as producer of the Black Stallion that she finally gave permission, gave him the rights to film.

I don't know if it was mandatory that they film in Tulsa or if that was part of it, but there was never a question. What's interesting to me, I have a personal cushion, my wife is from Tulsa and she was bused to a magnet school right near both where the Greenwood massacre took place.

Alison Stewart: Oh, my gosh.

Patrick Sauer: Which is also right near where The Outside's house is. She remembers it, Rumble Fish and Outsiders were filmed up, the other way around, but back to back. She remembers the movie crew being around. When I met her, I knew that was Kismet right there.

Alison Stewart: [laughs] You think about the careers that came out of there, Rob Lowe, Ralph Macchio, Matt Dillon, Emilio Estevez, C. Thomas Howell, Diane Lane, Patrick Swayze's second film role, and Tom Cruise. I was going to say to you, I went to the same high school as Tom Cruise and it was a big deal when he got this car. As you pointed out, it's pre before SEC fixed, Tom Cruise. [laughs]

Patrick Sauer: He's proud. If you look, go back and watch it, he's proud of his gnarly teeth. The funny thing is, he has the smallest role. He's the guy, you'd be like, oh, he was the one guy at the end there. Then, of course, he's now Tom Cruise.

Alison Stewart: That was a big deal like, Tom Mapother got a job, this one playing in on The Outsiders. Let's talk to Mary Lou from Westchester. Hi, Mary Lou. Thanks for calling in.

Mary Lou: Hi. Thanks for taking my call.

Alison Stewart: Tell us your experience.

Mary Lou: I saw The Outsiders in the movie theater the year it came out. I was 14 years old at the time. My sister, my best friend, and I saw the movie, I am not exaggerating, 14 times in the theater.

[laughter]

We loved it and we learned all the dialogue and we would just do all the lines. Of course, we thought the guys were all hot. It was just one of those back in those days when you could just sit and the movie would restart again and we just got away with it somehow seeing the movie 14 times. [laughs]

Patrick Sauer: It holds up the movie holds up.

Mary Lou: Oh, it totally holds up because then I watched it with my daughter when she read it in high school. We watched it together and I was like, "It still holds up," and she thought so too. Except for the long opening credits. I think that's what teens today hate is when old movies have those long openings but then more recently I listened to Rob Lowe's memoir, and he talks so much about Ebates played Sodapop in the movie, and he talks so much about his experience as a positive one.

Alison Stewart: Mary Lou, thanks for calling in. Let's talk to Jonah from the West Village. Hi, Jonah. Thanks for calling in again.

Jonah: Thank you. What a wonderful sequence and I echo your previous caller, Mary Lou about how captivating this movie was. Informative I'll give you a strange asterisk fringe piece of gay history as a 10 or 11-year-old. In 1983, New York City was beginning the terror of AIDS and a lot of young gay men were finding themselves and perhaps not coming out. I kid you not.

There were thousands of anecdotal stories of young, what would become gay men, boys who saw The Outsiders and saw the power and saw the masculinity and saw these attractive actors and it was a counterbalance to what was going on in that particular decade. There is this power to identity, even though those are not what those characters are, that drove a young man to become themselves and fight adversity.

For a New York City kid in 1983, as an 11-year-old that turned into coming out and knowing who you were. It was an unintended side effect. Quite amazing.

Alison Stewart: Jordan, thank you so much for sharing that. What a great comment.

Patrick Sauer: I feel comfortable saying S.E Hinton would find that amazing because she's very progressive and out there on a lot of causes. I hope she takes time to listen to that because that's fantastic.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Kate from Greenwich, Connecticut. Hi, Kate.

Kate: Hi, how are you?

Alison Stewart: Great.

Kate: Can you hear me?

Alison Stewart: Yes you're clear.

Kate: I called in to share that I had first read it in 1978. It was in my parochial school library. I was in sixth grade and I was sharing with the gentleman who answered the phone that I don't remember the details. I never saw the movie but I remember the feelings associated with reading the book. I'm a public high school teacher and it's been in my classroom library for two-plus decades. Whenever a student says they need an independent reading book, I whip it out, they read it, they love it and it's always being read and reread for whatever reason.

Alison Stewart: Thank you for calling in. I appreciate it. Debbie says I was 13 when the movie came out the first movie where I cried my eyes out in a theatre to see Ralph Macchio's character in the burn unit and to hear Stevie Wonder stay gold, the most heart-wrenching moments I've experienced at the movies, we're talking about the legacy of the outsiders as well as the legacy of S.E Hinton.

It's interesting when you when you said she's progressive because I was checking out her Twitter feed and she retweets a lot about helping people in Ukraine. She does seem like she's a very progressive person. Is Tulsa a progressive place these days?

Patrick Sauer: She says it is. It's a little hard to skew coming from now Brooklyn to [laughter] Tulsa, but I will say I've been my wife for 30 years and over the years I've gone there. the city has changed a lot. There's a really burgeoning art scene. The Woody Guthrie Center, the Bob Dylan center, and then coming to terms with Greenwood or at least acknowledging it, there's a powerful new museum there.

I would say if Oklahoma has a progressive place outside of probably Oklahoma City because the University of Tulsa is it. That may not be the same definition of progressivism as we have here but that's about as far as I would say.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Anne who's a retired teacher calling in from Staten Island. Hi Anne, thank you for calling in.

Anne: Good afternoon. I was introduced by a librarian in New York City public school. A librarian who came to the school to visit and I was a librarian for 35 years and all those years once the book had been published, it was a favourite of mine and my eighth-grade students, and I owe special thank you to the librarian who had passed on but she was a dear friend and she took me aside and showed me that book

and then came to my classes, and just gave a little bit of information to whet the appetite for the students. Thank you so much for bringing it up again. It's a great book.

Alison Stewart: Thank you for calling in. Christine on Instagram message is to say "I lost count of how many times I read The Outsiders as a preteen in the early '80s. Even though the Tulsa class struggle was a world away from mine as a Suburban Girl in New Jersey, it gripped me fiercely, such a vivid story. A teenage masterpiece in every way and the movie just made it that much more iconic."

The movie had an incredible-- this is another listener impact to my 12-year-old self. It's so interesting that people are talking about that time in their life when they're trying to figure out who they are that this movie had such meaning to them.

Patrick Sauer: Rereading the book for the piece at 51 what's really striking- I saw more in the movie than I probably realized. These really sensitive characters like this, possibly because a woman's writing that, the characters but they're incredibly kind to each other and gracious even amongst the violence. It stands out in a way I don't think I probably even caught back then. It was really interesting rereading it as an adult with a 12-year-old.

Alison Stewart: How long did it take before I see him and it was like, "I'm done talking to you. Patrick, you're a nice guy but--"

Patrick Sauer: We've talked for over an hour. She loves talking about the externalities of The Outsiders. She'd like talking about the museum. She's really blown away by that it exists that people come from all over the country to see it. Yes, she was friendly. She's funny, very dry with- my favorite thing she said is perhaps it doesn't come through, but I have a very strong sense of humor and that was the tone she used.

She was great. I think it was just more of, "I'm 74. We're done. I'm done talking about The Outsiders." I was like, "I'm glad that I was on the other end of this phone to hear about it."

Alison Stewart: The name of the piece is S.E Hinton Is Tired Of Talking About The Outsiders No One Else Is. You can read it in Smithsonian Magazine. Thanks to everyone who called in with their memories and thanks to Patrick Sauer for sharing his reporting. Thanks, Patrick.

Patrick Sauer: Thank you. Stay gold.

Allison Stewart: That's it. That's all of it for today. Hey, remember our public song project today is the deadline. Go to wnyc.org/publicsongproject, and I'll meet you back here tomorrow.

 

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