![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Stay gold, Ponyboy
Aug. 9th, 2007 09:24 pmThe Outsiders is one of my ten desert island books. I first read it when I was a little younger than Ponyboy, who was and always will be fourteen. I adored him and Sodapop and Darry, wanted to be part of a gang as close as the one they were with Johnny and Dally and Two-Bit and Steve.
The other day I saw a new book with S E Hinton's name on the cover, and I picked it up. Some of Tim's Stories is divided into two parts: the first is a collection of interconnected short stories about two cousins whose lives are intertwined; the second is a series of interviews with the author. The stories are pretty damn good, and the interviews contain lots of fascinating stuff I never knew. Like how the original title for The Outsiders was Different Sunsets, or how she's written a screenplay for a paranormal western that she's going to novelise if it doesn't get made, or how the 2006 DVD release of The Outsiders: The Complete Novel restores twenty minutes of deleted footage. (Must get!)
On sequels and fanfic:
"I felt a lot of pressure to write a sequel. I still do feel a lot of pressure to write a sequel. If you go to fanfiction.net, there are more than two thousand Outsider stories, and a lot of them are sequels. I'm fine with fanfiction.net if that helps kids get the feel of writing, but to me The Outsiders stands where it is. I ended it at the right place. I'm not sixteen, no matter how well I remember being that age. I could not capture that moment again. But I may write a sequel and put it in my safety-deposit box to be opened after my death, just to keep another writer from doing a sequel after the copyright expires. As much as I don't mind fanfiction.net, I'm uncomfortable with the thought of somebody else seriously messing with my characters."
Yeah. When a book becomes an icon, no sequel can do it justice. Especially for a story so wrapped up in my own youth - it's like a faded photo, preserving a moment in time. I just want to imagine Ponyboy, forever, stepping out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, thinking of Paul Newman and a ride home...
The other day I saw a new book with S E Hinton's name on the cover, and I picked it up. Some of Tim's Stories is divided into two parts: the first is a collection of interconnected short stories about two cousins whose lives are intertwined; the second is a series of interviews with the author. The stories are pretty damn good, and the interviews contain lots of fascinating stuff I never knew. Like how the original title for The Outsiders was Different Sunsets, or how she's written a screenplay for a paranormal western that she's going to novelise if it doesn't get made, or how the 2006 DVD release of The Outsiders: The Complete Novel restores twenty minutes of deleted footage. (Must get!)
On sequels and fanfic:
"I felt a lot of pressure to write a sequel. I still do feel a lot of pressure to write a sequel. If you go to fanfiction.net, there are more than two thousand Outsider stories, and a lot of them are sequels. I'm fine with fanfiction.net if that helps kids get the feel of writing, but to me The Outsiders stands where it is. I ended it at the right place. I'm not sixteen, no matter how well I remember being that age. I could not capture that moment again. But I may write a sequel and put it in my safety-deposit box to be opened after my death, just to keep another writer from doing a sequel after the copyright expires. As much as I don't mind fanfiction.net, I'm uncomfortable with the thought of somebody else seriously messing with my characters."
Yeah. When a book becomes an icon, no sequel can do it justice. Especially for a story so wrapped up in my own youth - it's like a faded photo, preserving a moment in time. I just want to imagine Ponyboy, forever, stepping out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, thinking of Paul Newman and a ride home...
