Rumble Fish

Written in the still-lingering haze of youth… for the ones too wild to wait for tomorrow.

Rumble Fish was published in 1975, but S.E. Hinton actually wrote the original short story while she was still in high school, before The Outsiders had even been published. It appeared in a 1968 edition of the magazine Ninth Grade. Later, she expanded it into a full-length novel — one even more stylized and abstract than her previous work.

By now, Hinton was in her mid-twenties, deeply immersed in the process of crafting books that dug into identity, alienation, and the blurry space between myth and memory. Rumble Fish reflected a maturing voice, one unafraid to challenge narrative convention. Written entirely in first-person flashback and drenched in symbolism, it was both a continuation of her earlier themes and a radical break in form.

The book would eventually be adapted into a striking black-and-white film in 1983 by Francis Ford Coppola, starring Matt Dillon and Mickey Rourke — a fever dream of a movie that matched the novel’s tone perfectly.

The Story

Rusty-James lives in the shadow of his older brother — the legendary Motorcycle Boy. A gang leader turned ghost, Motorcycle Boy is more myth than man, known for his silent intensity, strange habits, and the aura of someone who’s already seen too much of the world.

Rusty-James, by contrast, is all fire and fists. He wants respect. He wants territory. He wants to go back to the good old days of gang rumbles and street rule. But deep down, he knows that world is dying — and maybe never really existed the way he remembers it.

When Motorcycle Boy returns after a mysterious absence, the tension simmers into chaos. Rusty-James tries to follow in his brother’s footsteps, only to realize he doesn’t understand the path — or the man — at all.

Rumble Fish is less about plot and more about vibe — an elegy for the lost boys of the street who were never really found. It’s about masculinity, myth-making, and the violence of trying to become someone who doesn’t exist anymore.

And through it all swims the rumble fish — beautiful, fierce, trapped in a tank, fighting its own reflection.