In That Was Then, This is Now, the soc/greaser conflicts have pretty much ceased. Mark and Bryan aren't quite greasers, but certainly aren't socs. But "liberal" socs invite them to their mad parties, so the two are connected with both socs and greasers. The book is about the two growing apart, the climax being where Bryan discovers Mark is selling drugs. Drugs ruined the life of M&M, their mutual friend- a kind flower-child, who is apparently a little younger with them and, as the book makes him out, an innocent lamb whose life is ruined by a bad trip. Bryan, torn apart by his treachery of Mark, loses out on his relationship with Cathy, M&M's sister...who will wind up going out with Ponyboy, who Bryan has a grudge against at the beginning because his long-term girlfriend, Angela Shepard, left him to pursue a totally uinterested Ponyboy.
After these two, I read all the others. The only one I loved with the same fervency that I loved That Was Then, This Is Now and The Outsiders is Rumble Fish. This concerns a young teenager, Rusty James, who lives with his dad and occasionally his brother, the Motorcycle Boy. Their mother ran off with a liberal and they live in a tree house in California. Go figure. Rusty is not like Ponyboy and Bryan. He's a certifiable hood. The book is about his connection to the Motorcycle Boy, and how he needs his brother to be what he wants to be- the leader of the Gang, which is falling apart. It's been entirely too long since I read the book (I lost it! ), but ends with the Motorycle Boy dying. Rusty is transformed by a few incidents- various nasty fights- into being what his brother was- right down to being colorblind. What's up with that title? In one scene, the Motorcycle Boy finds immense pleasure in watching a species of fish that fights to the death if you put two of them in the same tank. "Rumble fish," he mutters, "rumble" being street talk for a fight, smiling. As the Motorcycle Boy lays dying, Rusty, in desperation, grabs the two fish- who are flopping around dying because the police shot up the pet place when the Motorcycle Boy broke in to look at the fish- runs to the river, and loses consciousness as he watches them fight. Now that, my friend, is imagery.
Some other fiction, mostly for school. In high school, I took advanced English and History courses, but standard everything else. One year, however, there was no more room in the AP English class, so I got stuck with standard English. The major work of fiction we read that year was A Seperate Peace. Now, my English teacher, being the wonderful woman she was, knew I didn't belong in a standard class, and the fact that the biggest guy in school kept trying to bother me (trying being the key word) also irritated her. So, she pulled a few strings, and voila! I was in AP English. Where I belonged! With the band people and the preps. They were reading A Catcher in the Rye, so I had to play catch-up. I wound up reading both. Personally, I prefer A Seperate Peace. That book is deep in all the right places. I followed up on A Catcher in the Rye, however, and read more of Cormier's stuff. Very depressing, I might add. No one in his books has a normal life, and most of his characters are nuts. I sort of liked the realism, but my teacher didn't.
This year I also explored southern fiction, hence why I've read Gone with the Wind and its sequel, Scarlett. Now, Gone with the Wind speaks for itself, as does Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle-Stop Cafe. I want to talk about Cold Sassy Tree. This was about a small Georgia town named....well, Cold Sassy Tree. The main plot was about this boy named Will and his grandfather, Rucker. Rucker delights in giving the church gossips plenty of fodder. He marries a woman young enough to be his daughters, has "church" in his living room, buys the first automobile and shows it off. The book is about Will's learning things as he grows up- about prejudice, love, and how much fun it is to toy with a gossip's mind. Of course, he relays all of this to us through his young adult eyes- he's in his early twenties. Olive Anne Burns, the author of this fine novel, attempted to write a sequel, but passed away during the process. What she wrote- and various thoughts of hers she wrote- are put together in a sequel of sorts called Return to Cold Sassy.
I also read some historical fiction, sort of. The Shaara family. Michael Shaara wrote The Killer Angels, a novel about the battle of Gettysburg. His son, Jeff Shaara, writing in a similar style, wrote Gods and Generals (a prequel to TKA) and The Last Full Measure (a sequel to TKA). Then he wrote Gone for Soldiers, a novel on the Mexican War, and two-book series on the American Revolution. Great stuff. As I graduated high school, I was moving on to another period. Now, I was no longer a teenager but a young adult, and these books, while still great, were no longer hitting the things that were starting to hit me.
We're Almost Done- Honest!