Did S. E. Hinton Really Write The Outsiders By Herself?

The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton might be the BEST YA NOVEL EVER!!!   When The Outsiders was published in 1967, Young Adult fiction didn’t really exist.  Bookstores didn’t have YA sections.  All the books that weren’t meant for adults were in a kids’ section.  If you were a teenager looking for a ‘good’ book, you wouldn’t find it in the kids’ section.  If you wanted the good stuff, you had to read what the adults read.

I’m not saying that The Outsiders changed that, but The Outsiders helped.  It’s a good book (that’s my book review). I recommend it (that’s a bonus to my book review). Almost everybody likes The Outsiders.

I even liked teaching The Outsiders with my 8th grade students before I retired.  The students generally enjoyed The Outsiders (though they weren’t always wild about the essay assignments that came with it), and the book has enough literary weight to justify it being in the curriculum.  I appreciated the literary references, and I had fun explaining why Pony Boy read Great Expectations while Johnny liked Gone With The Wind and Darry read The Carpetbaggers.  Haha. The Carpetbaggers. Haha.  You ought to see what I think about The Carpetbaggers .

S.E. Hinton wrote a bunch of books as an adult, and none of them that I’ve read come anywhere close to the depth and details that The Outsiders had.  I’m not going to go into those details too much because it would be wasted effort.  Hardly anybody would read all of it, and anybody who has read S.E. Hinton books probably knows what I’m talking about. Plus, I don’t care enough to make that kind of effort.  I’m just wondering. 

I’m treating this like I treated the argument about who was more important to the creation of Marvel Comics in the 1960s, Stan Lee or Jack Kirby.  I just looked at what Jack Kirby created by himself and what Stan Lee created by himself, and I had my answer.  With S.E., we can look at The Outsiders, which she allegedly (I’m kidding) wrote when she was around 16, and then look at all the novels she wrote as an adult, and we can see the difference.

I’m not saying that S.E. Hinton DIDN’T write The Outsiders.  I just wonder if maybe somebody possibly helped her out and wasn’t credited.  Maybe it was Truman Capote (that’s a To Kill A Mockingbird joke).  Maybe it was someone else in the book publishing business.  I don’t know who it was.  And if she had help, that person should get some credit.  Then again, that might damage the ‘story’ that a 16 year-old girl wrote this, and the publishing world can’t have that. It’s a good ‘story.’  

Even if S.E. Hinton didn’t write The Outsiders by herself, I wouldn’t think of SE Hinton as ‘fake’ like some people think Helen Keller was ‘fake’ or the the moon landing was ‘fake.’  Even if Helen Keller didn’t really accomplish everything she was said to have accomplished (it WAS in a movie, and movies never embellish the truth), it still makes a cool story. Even if the U.S. never put men on the moon, it was a cool story, and it gave the U.S. a win when it needed one. In some situations, you don’t mess with a good ‘story.’

I’m not trying to bash S.E. Hinton or outright make accusations. I know what happens to people who go against the ‘story.’ They’re called ‘crazy.’ They ‘commit suicide.’  Even worse, the algorithm shuts them down. And 50 years later, people(sometimes, not always) look back and think ‘maybe that loon had a point.’

And remember, asking a question is not the same thing as making an accusation.  I’m not accusing S.E. Hinton of secretly having help writing The Outsiders.  I’m just curious about the disparity in quality between the The Outsiders and the novels she wrote as an adult.  I’m just asking the question. I’m just wondering.

I SAID I’M NOT ACCUSING HER OF ANYTHING!!!

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