October 30, 2014
This is the book I've been reading at work. I've heard it said that The Outsiders, by far Hinton's most famous work, is the only one worth reading. But I had a student in the past who liked that so much when we read it in class that he went on to read some other of Hinton's works, and he enjoyed those, too. And I think that those who say The Outsiders is her very best book to be mistaken; Tex, for one, is just an enjoyable.
Tex, or Texas, is similar to Ponyboy in some ways. About the same age, mostly cared for by a seemingly overbearing older brother, a bit of a troublemaker but with some depth to redeem him. Tex is a great character.
Some of the themes of this book are similar to The Outsiders as well, but there are many differences as well. In rural Oklahoma, just outside of Tulsa, there's not so much the distinctions in social class or the cliquiness of the urban-set text. This is more of a family drama than a social commentary, so I could see why The Outsiders has perhaps more literary merit. It doesn't make Tex's story any less compelling, though.
Tex loves his horse Negrito, so he is devastated when his brother Mason sells the horse, and his own. Why would he do this? Because he and Tex have been left alone as widower Pop has been traveling the rodeo circuit. I didn't get much of a feel for Pop; on the one hand, he's rather thoughtless, but he's not a mean drunk, plus he raised a child who wasn't his own. But Mason, a senior who is a basketball star, is a fascinating character. Serious-minded, he's desperate to get out of their small rural community, but he also feels that he's the only one who can care for Tex. After their big fight, during which Mason beats the shit out of his little brother, he feels horrible. He's obviously a young man with a lot of complex emotions, and Tex crossed him at the wrong time. It's clear that Tex loves and respects his brother, and he comes to understand him more by the end of the book, and quickly forgives him selling his beloved horse and kicking his ass.
Tex considers a lot about who is meant to stay in their little world, and who is meant to go. A fortune teller at the state fair puts this in his head. He is told that he will stay. This in itself only seems to bother him a little bit, but he considers the fate of others in his life. His girlfriend Jamie is told that she will go. He knows that Mason is meant to go, too. An old friend, Lem, was meant to stay. But he'd gotten his girlfriend pregnant, and in the 1970s in Oklahoma, there was only one respectable thing to do. He's in Tulsa since their families aren't supportive, and Tex feels sorry for him. Lem isn't happy; he should have stayed.
Tex goes through some heavy stuff in this book: all that family drama (and then some!); his first girlfriend, who happens to be his best friend's younger sister, with a disapproving father to boot. I find it bizarre that the Collins kids call their parents by their first names, and yet their father is so strict. They only ever address him as "sir"; maybe they do it behind their backs, a cathartic and subversive gesture of disrespect. I don't know if it was explained. The Collins kids were an interesting influence on both Mason and Tex, and I would have wanted to read more about them.
Besides all the family issues and girl trouble, Tex is looking into the future as he anticipates tenth grade, the official first year of high school in his community. He at least lived somewhere populated enough to have two separate buildings for junior high and high school. My first teaching job was at a school with all grades in one building. Very small western Iowa town, very rural, but I did imagine some similarities between what Tex and Johnny and their crew got up to (jumping motor bikes, riding around in trucks and meeting at a car wash or something on a Saturday night, occasionally smoking weed or drinking) with what my former students might have been up to themselves. I'm not going to pretend that underage drinking is just horrible, because it happens. However, Tex's observation that he'd rather ride with a drunk driver than an overly cautious stoned one was disturbing. If that was normal in his world, I imagine that kids dying in drunk driving accidents was all too common. Kind of like babies having babies, as Tex's mother must've only been about seventeen when she had Mason.
What's great about Tex as a narrator is how frank he is. He's very honest, almost unflinchingly so, and isn't really afraid of much. But he admits when he is afraid. I'd have a hard time believing that everybody wouldn't love Tex (except maybe his teachers...I love the English teacher who gets him excited to read books about horses). He doesn't mean anybody any harm, and the antics he gets into are mostly harmless. Okay, he did steal a car once, a couple of years before the story starts, but it sounded like he took a careless neighbor's wheels for a brief joyride and got caught putting it back. Mason's concerns for his brother are understandable, but I think Tex will be all right.
I plan to recommend this book to my students. I think that while The Outsiders has made its way into a typical American language arts curriculum, Hinton has kind of been ignored as an outstanding young adult author. Her works are accessible and still have appeal for adolescent male readers. Conveniently enough, this happens to be the exact demographic that I work with.
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