FLOWERS FOR ALGERNON – Daniel Keyes (1966)

I keep a small list of canonical speculative fiction I have yet to read: Brave New World, Connie Willis’ Doomsday Book, The War of the Worlds, Ender’s Game, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Clockwork Orange, George Stewart’s Earth Abides and Pohl & Kornbluth’s The Space Merchants. They are canonical in the sense that they are often found near the top of all kinds of lists. The main reason why these particular titles still remain TBR after years of reading speculative fiction is that I don’t particularly want to read them at all.

You guessed it: Flowers for Algernon was on that list too. I’m not sure why to story did not really appeal to me – probably because it felt gimmicky and small.

When I read Richard Powers’ Bewilderment a few years ago, I learned Flowers of Algernon is pretty canonical in America. It’s on quite a lot of reading lists apparently – yet it is often challenged for removal from school libraries too. I decided to give it a go.

For those of you unfamiliar with the story, it’s about Charlie Gordon, a man with an IQ of 68 who has experimental surgery to make him smarter. Three months later he is a genius with an IQ of 185. The Algernon of the title is a mouse that had the same surgery, and starts to regress after some time.

First things first: Daniel Keyes’ debut novel – based on a short story he wrote in 1955 – is well written. Somehow, Keyes manages to grab the reader from the very first pages, and makes Charlie Gordon come across a real, authentic person. Keyes keeps the pace high, and the arc of Charlie interesting, and that’s not a mean feat at all – especially not since by now most readers know he will eventually lose his intelligence again. This makes Flowers for Algernon a novel in which the journey is the reward, not so much the climax.

Sentimentality is the book’s main draw. We feel for Charlie when he slowly realizes he was once retarded. We feel for Charlie as he remembers being bullied. We feel for Charlie when his mother can’t accept him being different. We feel for Charlie when he has trouble connecting with women. Again, making readers feel something is no mean feat at all, and Keyes deserves credit for that.

The novel’s themes by themselves are not superficial: what does intelligence do to a person? What does being smarter than most people around you do to someone? How are emotions and intelligence correlated? I’m sure lots of brainy people that read lots of books have bumped into these questions as teenagers, and possibly in their later lives as well.

But sadly this novel doesn’t show a lot of insight in the human condition – not that Keyes doesn’t have ambition, opening his novel with a quote from Plato’s Republic. Yet the end result is more philosophical soap opera than probing analysis: it seems as if the book only adds plot & emotion to the original short story, not so much ideas.

It’s a missed opportunity Keyes remains stuck in the dichotomy that many of these questions entail, and doesn’t offer much more than caricature: the smart guy has trouble with emotions. In the scenes with a fraudulent Gimpy, Keyes manages to even suggest rationality won’t really help when thinking about moral questions: “You’ve got to find the answer inside you – feel the right thing to do.” That’s obviously a load of bollocks, moral calculus is a real thing.

I’d rather side with Jan Lauwereyns, a Flemish author, who’s excellent novel Gehuwde Rotsen shows that rationality – which boils down to trying to understand stuff & people, and those attempts necessarily include doubt and insecurity – is a way to a bigger heart, contrary to the popular belief.

Charlie says this: “Intelligence is one of the greatest human gifts. But all too often a search for knowledge drives out the search for love. (…) Intelligence without the ability to give and receive affection leads to mental and moral breakdown, to neurosis, and possibly even psychosis. And I say that the mind absorbed in and involved in itself as a self-centered end, to the exclusion of human relationships, can only lead to violence and pain.”

I think the passage is misleading. Lacking “the ability to give and receive affection” is just as troubling for low IQ people as it is for very smart ones. What emotions are – another form of knowledge as Martha Nussbaum has it, rooted in biology as Jaak Panksepp wrote – or what intelligence exactly is, Keyes never explores. The novel remains stuck in clichés.

There has been a current of anti-intellectualism in our culture for ages, and Keyes surely didn’t do anything to counter it: according to a character Charlie lacks openness and warmth because of his higher IQ, and he becomes arrogant, self-centered and antisocial. The other brainiacs in the novel, the scientists in charge of the experiment, are petty and in it for their own careers.

Not that the novel doesn’t have any nuance whatsoever: to Keyes’ credit he shows that the characters that mistreat Charlie are human too, not monsters.

But that doesn’t save Flowers for Algernon from being superficial in how it treats intelligence. Aside from talk about Charlie learning lots of languages, reading lots of books and writing scientific papers, his character doesn’t have really intelligent insights at all. None of his thoughts were worth nothing down. Keyes’ focus never is on Charlie’s newly acquired mental powers, but rather on the emotional & social changes resulting from him becoming better at perceiving & understanding his surroundings.

The novel goes down easily, entertaining throughout, telling a simple, sentimental story that hardly asks the reader to look in the mirror or question anything. Or maybe it does for those with an average IQ? I don’t think so, but I could be wrong.

All and all, Flowers for Algernon has merit as an emotional soap opera story: it is smooth and crafted well. Those looking for speculative fiction that challenges the mind don’t miss a thing if they keep it on their to-read list for ever.

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As for emotions: better watch Penny Marchal’s movie Awakenings. That is based on a true story, and leaves out the intelligence stuff. As it is without an attempt at some kind of philosophy, the movie – starring a superb De Niro – presents a similar arc that has a much clearer focus, and hence packs a much bigger emotional punch.

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