S. E. Hinton

It’s always debatable what should be said to free people—that’s why diversities or whatever you call it is a whole field or cluster of fields, as complicated as science—but for an older book this holds up pretty well, and while still having a feel of a relatively simple teen book. The differences and common values of subcultures are curious. More or less everyone in the modern West values mental activity, even those not in circumstances favorable to scholarship, right. “You don’t use your head.” Similarly to the academy, it is also among them most obviously evident in insults to intelligence like that. It’s just that, unlike say in the academy, “not using your head” means going to the movies without a security detail, basically. The semi-solitary rather-intellectual type is the one in danger of “not using (his) head”, right.

It’s also very well done in that the speaker doesn’t think that one social group is better than another; it’s not a facile, “they” have “the real world”, “we” have, whatever—a story, a book, a Threads rant, whatever. That gets tiresome. This is not that, but it is about “the outsiders”.

…. Yeah, and people don’t look at a gang member and see someone they might be able to help improve themselves with a little willingness, right—they stance is like, psychic corruption through the environment, basically: like the bad sort of Brahmin met the bad sort of historical materialist, right—‘If you wear the good, bourgeois shoes, you go to the seventh hell: and if I smile at you, then I go to the eighth hell’, right; except that this is America, so it’s like, If I hand a gang member a dirty newspaper, I turn to dust: the wind takes me….

And yeah, the narrator doesn’t take that and have a pain-producing reaction, right…. It’s sad, though. People believe in finitude. It’s their belief. I remember this has been assigned in schools, right: and it’s so odd, because it doesn’t partake of the colonial mindset of the left or the right, you know…. And I guess that’s why we didn’t take seriously this book they told us we were meant to take seriously, right: the training works….

…. But yeah: people are like: I don’t care! How can I! Nobody cares about things! ~like going to hell as a FOMO thing, right…. Although the thing about heaven and hell is, What kind of a god, worthy of the name, sends people to hell? And keeps them there, right! That’s what the Will does, whether its Congressmen with their prisons down to some small-time mob enforcer, right: people demand things of you, and then attack you and try to take away your ability to satisfy them, right…. Obviously an excellent god would let people know that they are not judged, right…. People judge, because they feel judged, because some deceived person tricked them when they were too young to know, and made them promise not to change, right…. And this is just everything, but: I see things in cycles now. Everything is cyclical. The linear stance is wrong; it is simply not the case…. It would be easy to characterize the linear view as the stance of a gangster set to get his in his one life, right…. There would probably be some truth to that, on some level, although it would necessarily be rather vague. And it would be unreasonable to demand that people hate themselves until they solve it all by themselves—‘ought implies can’, as Kant’s only readable line runes, right…. People do right sometimes, after their fashion. Usually they do not, but because they are deceived by the Will, you know. Until you have (some) free will, you are just a slave to, the!, Will, right…. I know, I should have quit after talking about the excellent god. Sometimes the Will seems realer than the excellent god…. The excellent god has no judgment: but he earns his keep on the battlefield, you know….

…. It’s an excellent book. Simple and no bullshit.

And maybe I’m being pessimistic and the teacher who assigned it did want us to read it, but there’s definitely bullshit out there, lol:

“Popular English historian Bob Mann, author of the best-selling, “Shakespeare did not have enough/the right kind of snobbyness” has written an epic new novel about the Middle Ages! “Storm of Metal” will appear in book stores on April Fool’s Day! Prove that you’re a fool—today!”

…. It is kinda like a simplified story, impressionistic, not quite realistic—like a preacher’s teaching story or an old myth, like a thing from before people became sophisticated—like a medieval legend from 1967 (the space age, I know). Everyone is a little smarter than they’d really be, and everything takes less time—everything takes much less time, everything is compressed. People say the right thing more or less the first time, instead of saying ten wrong things in a row and walking away none the wiser, like in real life, and then ten years later something awful happens and they realize shit…. (Or not, lol.)

But it’s a style, you know. I don’t know when people decided there was only one way to tell a story, but…. I mean people told teaching stories/myths in medieval Wales, but the English governors or whoever thoughts that “stories are not supposed to be told in Welsh”, lol.

…. It’s funny how the story could be so naive, almost, you know—it’s that 60s naivety: the street trash will read about the Old South while on the run from the cops; then at night, they’ll sing Kumbaya accompanied by folk guitar, right…. It’s not Exactly happy, but it’s like, like, it’s very simple and naive and dreamy, you know…. And somehow the critics loved it, instead of giving it the sci-fi vs the physics professor treatment, you know…. Only in the 60s, I guess. I don’t know.

…. I wonder if Jesus would have knifed somebody to save your life the way that Ponyboy’s boy did, right. Traditionally or biblically or whatever, Jesus takes the knife for you, and this is portrayed by Christians as morally superior to knifing somebody. As much as I don’t want to promote Christian violence—although it’s not as though portraying Jesus Christ as the victim of violence has ever slowed the Christian sword-arm, so to speak—you have to observe that in most fights, taking the knife isn’t very helpful. Your enemy is like, great, I knifed your friend: now, I’ll knife you.

The whole substitutionary atonement thing is so weird. It’s like in that Frank Capra movie (I won’t say which one, because it’s the whole fucking plot I’m telling you, almost) where the guilty person at the last minute takes the blame for the crime because the Naive American, ~Finally~, made him feel guilty, right…. But if substitutionary atonement made sense, there’d literally be no need for the movie, right. It would be like: the Naive American would be like, I get to jump on the grenade to save the enemy! (fist pump)

The trad Christian response is like: the less sense that The Truth makes in the real fucking world—the more you know that secularism and paganism are wrong and limited and evil, and that the church and its thinkers need special privileges to shelter them from having to produce something of value for society/the world, basically, right….

And it is true that the great majority of intellectuals, even practical and non-Christian ones, need or benefit from a certain amount of sheltering, right: but it’s a dicey thing, at best. Not a few “science” posts on Threads, are a picture of a (white, male, elite) scientist, with a quote, that’s basically—I’m prestigious and important, but not popular, or worshipped: worship me~ you know.

And then Christian theologians, it’s like…. Not even smug, like the scientist, you know, it’s like: offended to the point of wanting violence to happen. “How can you not worship me? I form ideologies that flout morality!” 😾….

It’s like accountability in the historical church is something you outgrow, right: if you’re a gang-banger or an outsider or a wife or teenager or even just a rank and file member, there could be accountability.

If you’re a leader…. You could be held accountable to the leaders above you…. Or perhaps to the race-feeling, you know, to the sense that the church is a race which needs to be sufficiently nationalistic…. But you’re not accountable to the outsiders, right. You just talk as though shit like that were true when you want to spoil somebody else’s birthday party, if they didn’t invite you or if you don’t want to go because you have a doctor’s appointment the week after, right….

Such, garbage, you know. The Christians have spoken well in saying that their good deeds are filthy rags, right….

…. Wow, and they even still said “broad” to mean “girl” in the 60s, right, (like: “goddamn girl, has the nerve to be pretty”, right), like: the 60s was still the Jazz Age, basically: it was towards the end, but it wasn’t over, even in its actual classic form, you know…. I feel like Frank Sinatra was still popular in the 60s, right….

…. “Shoot, my old man don’t give a hang whether I’m….”

Can you imagine, that The Beach Boys were popular in the 60s? That all that was happening at the same time? And they weren’t Socs, either, exactly, they were just…. Off in La-La Land, you know…. I mean, it’s cute. It’s not bad: I don’t believe in roughing up Brian Wilson for not being a soldier of the American Dream, or whatever, but…. It wasn’t like the market, the collective choice-making, was fucking open to too much else, right…. And then the few who didn’t like that, just kinda…. I mean, it’s exactly like the situation of pop (and pop rap) vs “rap” today, right…. (Except NOBODY is on the side of pop rap…. Except some people, who actually listen to it as music, you know….)

…. And a gang (or whatever you want to call it) ISN’T a substitute for a family, right: anymore than a family is nothing about brothers—or a military unit a family, right. Although obviously people take that to mean that a family is a group of people united by blood or marriage: a mini-institution, like a church or a school, only less important and more relatable, right…. People need to grow up with a collection of personality types that’s appropriate to them, right: and that are healthy; not just a collection of random neurotic fighters, right…. But what is this “Family”, that conservatives tell us about, right?…. Charlotte Lucas (the 1813 one), avers that “happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance”…. The family IS an institution: an institution assembled by chance, right—by the wind….

…. In my new system, I’m going to call this general fiction/divergent pop. It’s like folktales, kinda, the ones not told by art-poets with artificial/artistic language, right:
~the things never said, by no one not repeating a poem, right…. Folklore is kinda the opposite: it’s about as simple as it gets, although it’s not vain or base, perhaps; and/or it’s from a different population, that one hears little about, in the world of white men, in the world of romantic propaganda, and Jack Blood IV: Blood Strikes Back, right…. So it’s a curious combo of about as simple as it gets, and yet perhaps might stir a curiosity in the academics: and make them stroke their long white beards, thoughtfully…. Or else, an ordinary person, being “good”, right….

…. Rescuing the children (TM), removed the “defeated, suspicious” look out of the street tough’s eyes.

Yes, many guys like that have a defeated, suspicious stance, right.

…. It’s often rather belabored and cleaned-up and simplified, right—maybe if it were three times as long, you’d get a sense of how much time people waste saying stupid shit, right…. But yeah: ok.

The guy who came to a bad end, wanted someone to set a boundary with him, right. Out of all the belabored wise things, that was the most intelligent…. He wanted someone, some Artemis, to tell him, No. No, this is where you stop, and I begin…. He needed that, at that stage in his development, right. It hurt him not to know where he ended. He didn’t know what it was all about.

The really sad thing is that, in real life, people take that guy—that personality—and give him Kaiser Wilhelm to fight against, and then he dies in battle somewhere, and then some educated fool who wouldn’t think that his “wife’s concerns” or whatever were worth even fifty pages, or even ten, or that she had a goddamn part of life, of her own, with its own sort of rules, right, writes an 800, 900 page book about the ten million dead or whatever, the fifteen million dead, right: and its proof that the male spirit cannot be limited and cannot do wrong, for the sake of (Nation), right: although occasionally a million men might die in some great battle, right—or a handful of great battles…. No, the male spirit cannot be limited: it has to guard the Nation….

Artemis does not hate the male personality, right: but sometimes, she says No to it, you know….

Oh, and this is just a random thought: but before 1965, the Socs must have liked jazz, right…. It kinda stands to reason: although the thought just kinda landed in my lap, and is of course an inference, even if nothing else really makes sense, right.

…. And it was 1967: the Soc saying that he wasn’t going to the rumble, because, you know, life isn’t fair: the struggle isn’t fair—his side was on top, and even if the greasers won the fight~ nothing was at stake, there was no way the Socs would be anything but the rich kids; people would just get bloodied up for no reason, and then it would be over and forgotten, and it would have been meaningless: so he would skip town, because he couldn’t go to the fight, the sham fight—and if he didn’t it was socially impossible to stay:

It was 1967; Vietnam was happening, the war. His character was the equivalent to what the conservative press would call a draft dodger, right?

Sometimes, things are not okay, right: and it isn’t okay to pretend….

…. It’s a curious cross between not letting teenagers see “too much” of the unreasoning passion and ugly hate of life, right…. And introducing a large window into the so-called under-deserving and underperforming, a large number of notions set into opposition with “pat” schema, right…. Both of those things are very characteristic of the 60s. It really is rather interesting…. It’s like how people were “supposed to” have been back then—people who wrote books, or—I don’t know. It does have a certain resonance with many people, things like this. And yet: it’s easy to underestimate, the sort of unreconstructed belligerence and ignorance, right, of the “pat” schema set, right…. And obviously it is rather reformist, right…. Maybe in a few years, all the folks getting trampled on the bottom will be seen and honored: and all it will have taken was a little get-together community night, a talk (maybe cake!) at a church or a library, or some fucking thing, right…. Pleasant Valley Sunday-hey….

(shrugs) But it’s not poorly written. It presents something with some truth, almost not complete truth, in that it isn’t even vaguely factually true, you know…. And I don’t mean like, that in this fight coming up, the descriptions should be mechanistic and…. Like fucking Homer, ironically, in a certain sort of way: blow-by-blow. “And then Deucalion thrust his bright-spear into Thrasymachus, and….” Blah blah blah. Don’t forget to learn how to fight with spears, children! It’s a necessary talent…. You know, that’s how we leveled the city of Hue in South Vietnam: it wasn’t the Air Force: it was a bronze spear—and fancy footwork….

But yeah: if you represent the characters as bonding when they’d be, in actuality, pissing in each others’ faces or whatever…. I don’t know: metaphors aren’t important…. But yeah: there’s truth in the line of argument: but narratives aren’t supposed to be arguments…. It’s like the director (60 years old, balding), trying to edge the hero out of the way so he can fondle the love interests’ breasts “the right way”, himself, right—it’s like, your job is to interpret, to present, social facts, right…. Not to be the fucking flower child who lectures the goddamn Marines—you know, the lecturing in the 60s, right: the shrill pro-social anger, right…. A dozen Marines roll their eyes at this girl, sitting on her soap box with her Buddha flower, preaching peace…. And then eventually they get tired and one of them shouts, “We gonna go skin those muthafuckin yellow reds in Nam: but when we come back, maybe we tear your blouse off”: and they laugh, right…. And the flower girl gets angry, like: flowers are serious, and effective, weapons of policy: of truth, truth, you know…. The flowers are the ~truth~….

It was a weird time. I spent way too much time in my head, listening to music and being in the 60s—it was my way to be scholarly, yet abandoned, right, but…. Yeah, what a fucking delusional time, right…. Of course, people will look back at the early 2010s as delusional too: “Now that David Letterman has retired: the revolution is complete; everyone is safe…. You know: we won. Everyone is safe. The only thing left to do is to film a music video right…. There are no more problems, left in the world!” Was that Tina Fey? I mean, it was all of us, right: the white liberal world of the early 2010s was just one big bubble of the the same singular delusion, whatever contradictory way we ourselves decided to trot it out and theorize it, right…. Although most people aren’t liberals: they’re just unmarked whites, you know….

Yeah. I don’t know what to tell you people, anymore.

…. —(respectable, clean-shaven, midcentury stiff) Hoods? You writing about hoods? Can’t do that! (laugh of contempt)
—(thoughtful 60s liberal) Most people don’t like hoods: but I can write a book about hoods that’s so pro-social: people won’t recognize it. And that, will bring everyone together….

~Yeah, it’s funny, right: the 60s…. But you know what I’m gonna have to do, is to delete that baseball book from 1940, the Tunis book: and then I’m gonna have to try not to do that again, right—I guess it was my goddamn education, you’re taught to focus on the thing that ‘stands out’ or whatever: the thing that doesn’t belong with the others, even when you’re being popular, basically, (especially if it’s a white kid who doesn’t belong with the other lads, right), and it’s like: yeah, 1940, and baseball, equals: the objective is to hold up the system, right…. That they’re a hundred percent white males isn’t something you talk about—this is America…. And it ain’t really jazz-land, either, boy: it’s ~~America~~…. And obviously, that girls can play softball, actually if it weren’t for ‘the rules of life’, they could play baseball, right: that’s forbidden knowledge: and there’s no girls, no dates, no sisters or…. I don’t know? What kind of female relationships do these men’s men have, when they don’t want to bed? None: that’s kinda the point…. And it ends with him getting injured running into the fence, simulating death, basically: because that’s the point of a man’s life, right: to die…. And obviously almost the whole point of an all-male social scene is so that the males—not least the ruler-men—can bully the other males as only males can, right….

Yeah, “The Outsiders” actually is marginally worth reading, but I’m really going to have to be careful about reading too much “older” children’s/teen fiction, right…. I don’t support ageism, and many media-youth schema are simply delusions that are neither here nor there, nor do they have any real effect on things…. But yeah: that the world is changing a little, partly because the younglings largely are pushing for something different from what the world of the past was bullied into…. That really is one of the few good things, of these or any times, in a way, right.

…. It’s certainly a curious sort of book, in its way, right. It’s not realistic—although that isn’t the right term…. I don’t think there’s one lower-class girl, in the whole book, right?: just to take the gaping hole of what isn’t there, right…. I don’t think there’s one thing, hardly, in the book, that happens in a truly naturalistic way: everything has the feel of schema, rather than observation, right…. Subtle bias is never too far behind, you know: good-thinking, upright paternalistic midcentury bias—for the sake of the little people, right….

A lot changes in culture over time: a few years or decades, and old creatures of thought have taken themselves to the crypt to be put in sci-fi-stasis, right: and new creatures of thought open their little eyes, wouldn’t you say…. By 1974 The Rolling Stones were already saying: hey. We’ve been doing this a long time. It was their 12th year in the business, together…. Even some medieval alchemist would be very sore if an apprentice showed no improvement after a decade, right: or if a decade’s worth of manuscripts got eaten by the flames of some small-minded bigot, right…. At the library here—it’s 2024, and they’re giving away teen books from the early 2010s, right. They don’t even want a dollar for them anymore. “Just take them, away….”

The world did exist before TikTok, of course: but it is VERY easy to grossly overestimate the value of old books, you know…. You read Jane Austen: all the introducer wants to talk about is the massively obscure antiquarian literature from like the, 1810s or the 1780s, of whatever: it’s like—girlfriend, the 1780s are OVER, okay….

~How credulous man grows in his search for class privilege, right. Sometimes, it strains the imagination, what people actually try to convince themselves to believe, right….

—I was mentally ill. Then, I wasn’t mentally ill. I snapped out of it.
—What brought you to your senses, Ponyboy?
—I realized that there is no such thing as a girl whose father isn’t rich.
—Ah. A comforting notion, I’m sure. (Dr. Freud lights up a cigarette, right in the middle of the room)

~Right?

…. Oh good: the rest of it is just fluff to skim vaguely

—How is that you’re a human being even though you’re a girl?
—Well: I’m pretty smart—so I figure I’m not a girl.
—(to camera) Brains win; drudges lose. The future is bright, my fellow citizens. (to the author/interviewee) And may God bless America.
—(beat, then) Thank you.

…. (rolls eyes) But yeah: people just seem to be, as a factory setting almost, like bloody…. Like, groveling, conformist little kiss-a….. Right? Oh, thank you for letting me read the book. (Indian accent) I promise: you let me read the book, I obey. Oh, yes sir. Oh, yes sir. Please, no beatings. Oh, thank you, sir. Yes, God bless you. May the Sun smile on your empire. May the road rise up to meet it…. Thank you for the opportunity to obey…. Thank you, for letting me be like the others. Please, sir: if a man tells you, you no fair to people—bring him Sanjay—I tell him, you let me read the book. You let me obey. Sanjay thank you, sir. Thank you, sir. Thank you.

~And we call that, “being educated”, right. In the case of your pet dog, it would be abuse, right. But in the case of…. Well, especially, the lower orders, right…. One can’t be too careful. I hope that you understand that all of this is completely compatible with the ~best~ liberalism, you know: I have it on the highest authorities….… (meer)

This is a book that manages to be simple, but complex. Its about the the complex confluence junction of poverty, gangs, and family dynamics. People aren't what they always seem, both good and bad.

Ponyboy is our main character, sitting at the edges of his family and friend group. Fitting in is all he wants with the Greasers. He is a bit of an oddball, in that he does well in school, does well in sports, but also hangs out with the loser kids from the wrong side of town.

I'm amazed that this book was originally written by a 16 year old (although took a few years, and probably re-writes, to get it published). The story isn't as simple as us vs them - the rich kids have their own set of problems that are often the same problems of the poor kids.

At the end of the story, there isn't an a resolution. Guilt and confusion are often anger and sadness mixed together - Ponyboy is affected by what happened, from seeing an enemy die, to watching his best friend die in a hospital bed, from juvenile thug to hero... This leaves it mark, and the book doesn't shy away from it.… (meer)