Outsiders

I die a little every time some idiot declares that Shakespeare sucks or Sophocles had no talent. When I hear this, part of me wishes for a Literary Inquisition to put Philistines on the rack and teach them Aristotle’s Poetics.

Then there are the edgelords who attack Hemingway and Faulkner, The Great Gatsby and Of Mice and Men. These are highly regarded works and writers, ones that I greatly admire.

What holds me back from blanket condemnations is that I can’t stand Henry James and I didn’t get much from On The Road. (I would never say Henry James “sucks”–his work clearly has merit–but I just don’t like it.)

There are murky areas of literature. Was Poe a genius? Was Lovecraft? Is Stephen King? Where do you draw the line?

I bring this up because I absolutely can’t stand the work of S.E. Hinton. Hinton is different from the others. Her work doesn’t have the objective value of Henry James but it’s clearly superior to E.L. James.

On Saturday, the Wisenheimers riffed the 1983 film The Outsiders and I was shocked how dated Francis Ford Coppola’s directing felt. I got to thinking that my opinions on the book might be justified and infallible and that’s never a safe thing.

Ideally, the Wisenheimers could have picked up the pace for riffing. The Mystery Science Theater 3000 television show averaged one joke and a three-second pause; Mystery Science Theater 3000: the Movie averaged a six-second pause between jokes. That might not seem like much but it helps explain why the movie underperformed. For most movies, Wisenheimers should push closer to three seconds.

For The Outsiders, the riffing got me thinking introspectively (again, never a safe thing). Maybe I never liked S.E. Hinton because her books were about relationships and I was always a creepy loner.

I loved H.P. Lovecraft’s short story “The Outsider,” about another creepy loner. That was one of the most influential stories of my life. Maybe my reaction towards Hinton was more on my end.

I need to watch another 1980’s horror movie about a mutant crocodile to recharge.