Rumble Fish, then and now

READ The Outsiders or Rumble Fish, classic American novels from the Voice of Youth of the Seventies, and you would expect writer S E Hinton to be a man, with a past in gangs, a face like Howard Marks and the nocturnal habits of Keith Richards.

In fact the S E Hinton mingling with the press-night audience at Pilot Theatre's world stage premiere of Rumble Fish at York Theatre Royal is a rounded, middle-aged, unassuming figure, dressed in homely, commodious dark clothing. What's more, S E Hinton is a woman: S E stands for Susan Eloise.

"The book reviews for The Outsiders would have knocked it sideways if they'd known I was a woman. But once the first reviewers were fooled, it was let out of the bag," Susan recalls.

Even now, American high-school students still have a vision of S E Hinton that differs from reality. "Sometimes I wish I could just put a scruffy kid out there and let them think 'Oh, you must be S E Hinton'," she says.

Hinton's books have been taught in some schools, banned from others, but whatever the reaction, she carries the status of changing perceptions of young adult literature.

It was a pressure that initially burdened her. She had written her first book, The Outsiders, at the age of 16, and went on to suffer writer's block. "Writing was something that I'd always found fun. I loved writing; I don't know why I had a gift for it, but I'd been doing it constantly for eight years when I wrote The Outsiders. I wrote it whenever I could, at home, at school, wherever. I lived that book.

"But after it was published, I was doing TV and radio, and they were asking 'what is this teenage wonder going to do next?'," she recalls. "Before, no one had cared that I'd gone up to my room to write. Suddenly they did."

There was to be a four-year gap before she wrote another novel, That Was Then, This Is Now, a title that put the past behind her. In the fallow period, she had written a short-story version of Rumble Fish at 19 while taking a writing class at the University of Tulsa, her home city in Oklahoma.

"I knew at the time it should have been a full book, so I came back to it about six years later," says Susan, who wrote the novel on her husband's weekly poker nights. "He'd be out to two or three in the morning, so I'd write from six o'clock till he came in."

Rumble Fish, published in 1975, was famously turned by Francis Ford Coppola into a cult movie starring Matt Dillon and Mickey Rourke. Susan provided the script and appeared in the 1983 film too. "I played a nurse being aggravated by Matt Dillon, which believe me was not too painful to do!" she says.

She is always being asked how she came to write a latter-day Greek tragedy with such an insight into gang culture, social warfare and male aspirations. "I grew up in a rough neighbourhood and was a real tomboy at school, and I'd hang around with all the boys. I couldn't find anything to identify with in girl culture," she says. "Coppola never looked at me and said 'You're a wee thing, I can't understand how you wrote this'. He just said 'OK, go and make the script bloody'."

Is she still a tomboy? "Oh yes, I go jumping over sticks on horses, and at my age I should be certified for that!"

Her writing has branched away from young adult literature. Her last book, The Puppy Sister, was a fantasy for children aged seven to 11, and now she is about to do the final re-write of her first "adult" novel.

"No, I can't say the title. Not yet. The book doesn't even have a publisher yet, and when I was writing it I didn't even think about getting it published. I was back where I was with The Outsiders. I've felt really loose," she says. "Language, sex scenes, whatever I've wanted to put in there, I have."

Has she any uncharted territory she wishes to explore as a writer? "I'm sure there is, but I've not thought about it yet. Two years ago I had no inkling that I'd be writing an adult novel now."

S E Hinton, the Voice of Youth, has but one word of advice for aspiring writers. "Read," she says. "Read. Read. Read. That's how you learn."