Book 20: That Was Then, This Is Now

That Was Then, This Is Now

 

S.E. Hinton

1971 Viking Press

See? they all look like hippies.

But, that's appropriate. Unlike my cover for The Outsiders.    

That Was Then, This Is Now, should, in my opinion, replace The Outsiders as the standard fare for S.E. Hinton Required Reading.... or at least go together with it. It's a much more moving and honest story, with a much more realistic application to the readers. Of course there are some far-out notions that wouldn't likely apply to the reader, especially the reader this novel is marketed for (Young Adult), but that's what makes a novel a novel.

"If I had had a date that night, I woulda been somewhere else. But Bryon, yothat ain't the way things went. You can't walk through your whole life saying, "If." You can't keep trying to figure out why things happen, man. That's what old people do.  That's when you can't get away with things anym more. You gotta tjust take things as they come, and quit trying to reason them out. Bryon, you never used to wonder about things. Man, I  been gettin' worried about you. You start wonderin' why, and you get old."

Basically, the protagonist goes from having everything to losing everything in what is much, much more of a coming-of-age story than The Outsiders ever thought it could be.  

If I had never read any of Hinton's other works, and was only going to judge this one on its own merits, I would have to say the same thing, but the characters in each of these novels exist in the same world, separated only by a few years. Ponyboy makes a prominent appearance, and the rest of his family is mentioned, so it's not like Hinton wasn't trying to create a franchise. 

I think That Was Then   is a little shorter than Outsiders, but I would argue, and I think for good reason, that it's more to-the-point and moving. It's too close to reality to not be.  Maybe Hinton's inexperience is what made her such an effective writer-- she told it like it was with disregard for the nonsense expected of fiction writers and just told the damn story. 

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and sometimes a story is just a story. 

I think Hinton got that, and just happens to be an excellent storyteller at the same time.

I still don't understand why this is labeled as youth fiction or fiction for young adults. Drop an f-bomb in there and all of a sudden it's what all of the hipsters are talking about.  

Either way, it's worth your time on the bus.