Flowers for Algernon

Technically I should be getting set to head over to d&d/roleplaying/chilling out a table, but I've got this book beside me, and the clock's a tickin'.

So I gave 'Flowers for Algernon' by Daniel Keyes a read. It got a mention a few weeks back on the Daily Show, with the requisite "Read a book, people!" shout out afterwards. So I did.

Thanks to popculture osmosis I was already aware of the story. An issue of Tangled Wed of Spider-Man did a good version with the Rhino. A dumb person wants to get smart, gets a procedure to become smarter, it works and he becomes a super genius, until it all goes away again. Oh, there's also a Pinky and the Brain episode with this premise. Of course.

Finally reading the actual story that inspired all the parody, itself a novel that was fleshed out from the authors original short story, and soon afterwards made into a play that, apparently you can go see at schools and whatnot, but yes- finally reading the novel... it's sad. It's crazy sad. I mean, it's not quite Doctor Who-Rose-is-trapped-in-an-alternate-dimension sad, but it's pretty up there.

There's always a huge narrative danger of inauthenticity when a writer is trying to sell us on a character that is supposedly smarter than the writer could ever be, but that hurdle was readily cleared thanks to the emotional intelligence of Charlie Gordon not really raising a lick.

He became book smart, he knew things (easy when you can read a page a second) but he still knew so little about his traumatized self, he often failed to empathize with others. People could patronize him when he only had a 70 I.Q., but he never really thought to patronize others when he had an I.Q. of 180. That sounds like a good thing, you say? It's terrible to patronize someone, you're thinking.

Not in this case. Here, a patronizing attitude would at least mean Charlie recognized how difficult it was for others to follow him now, would have meant an effort on his part to understand the people around him. But no, he just got mad at them, frustrated that they were all "frauds"- as if anyone could live up to the image of genius and power that the early Charlie Gordon held when he trustingly admitted himself for the brain boosting operation.

I should have written about this book earlier. Ah well.

Part of what fascinated me so much about it was the development into intelligence and self consciousness that Charlie undergoes. I likened it to an accelerated Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man for showing how a child grows into a thinking creature. I'm being redundant.

Regardless- I feel like both those books should be required reading for early childhood educators, but, considering I did ask just such a student whether or not she'd read either book and the answer came back 'no', the odds seem poor. There are certain ideas dealt with in these books that may be challenging to certain world views, but there's nothing wrong with that. Either your views hold fast to interrogation, or become appropriately amended.

I should mention that Flowers here is written first person, as if by Charlie himself. This makes it a little tough at the beginning and ending, when you haf too reli on funetic spelling and suss out the meaning yourself. It's not that hard, but I was glad when the man got his intelligence boosted.

One interesting development over the course of the book. Starting off dumb, he had no idea when all his "friends" were making fun of him, though in the books journals it's pretty clear to the reader. When Charlie himself is finally aware of it, he gets angry, and it creates a distrust that colours his relationships throughout the rest of the novel. Finally, when he's returned to just about his starting intelligence (the book leaves it semi ambiguous whether or not he deteriorates further, I've heard tell of a version where the last letter is reprinted several times, in a sort of stuck drawl, or else a version where the last letter is cut off entirely, as though Charlie died mid-sentence. Of course I only have this one book to go by) Charlie goes to the class for retarded adults that he used to attend. He didn't think anything of it, he was just following his old routine. Of course, Alice Kinnian, the teacher at the front of the class, sees him, cries and hurriedly exits the class. Well, of course! She and Charlie had loved each other while Charlie was able.

Charlie, all of a sudden, "remembered some things about the operashun and me getting smart and I said holy smoke I reely pulled a Charlie Gordon that time."

'Pulling a Charlie Gordon' was something his co-workers said all the time, back in the day. It would have been a phrase that the old Charlie wouldn't have thought twice about, and a phrase the smart Charlie would have hated. To see Charlie say this about himself implies a personal growth in awareness despite his regressed intelligence. He soon after has himself commited to an institute for, well, people like him, so that he can't hurt anyone the way he hurt Alice just then.

The whole thing was marvelous... okay, wait, there was one bit of purple prose when Chalie and Alice hooked up that I thought stood too far outside the flow of the rest of the book. So, okay, one bit of criticism.