Algernon, Charlie, and I: A Writer's Journey

  [She says,] "But you're changing emotionally too. In a peculiar sense I'm the first woman you've ever been really aware of—in this way. Up to now I've been your teacher—someone you turn to for help and advice. You're bound to think you're in love with me. See other women. Give yourself more time."

  "What you're saying is that young boys are always falling in love with their teachers, and that emotionally I'm still just a boy."

  "You're twisting my words around No, 1 don't think of yon as a boy"

  "Emotionally retarded then."

  "No."

  "Then why?"

  "Charlie, don't push me. I don't know. Already, you've gone beyond my intellectual reach. In a few months or even weeks, you'll be a different person. When you mature intellectually, we may not be able to communicate. When you mature emotionally, you may not even want me. I've got to think of myself too, Charlie. Let's wait and see. Be patient. "

  I see now that by throwing myself back into the work, I was transforming my despair at being rejected by my editor into Charlie's emotional upheaval as Alice rejects his fumbling, adolescent displays of affection.

  It left me feeling much better about the novel. Instead of prefabricating a formula love triangle, I was letting it grow out of the story.

  I drew on my courtship and marriage to Aurea for the emotions. As I was laboring over this new dimension of the novel, in February of 1964, Aurea was giving birth to our second daughter, Leslie Joan.

  Meanwhile, Cliff Robertson, who was trying to get the movie version under way, insisted on seeing the novel manuscript. I told him it wasn't ready yet. From time to time, as he flew from his New York home to Hollywood, he would phone me to meet him at the Detroit Airport. We would have lunch or dinner.

  During one of these meetings, we talked about his performance in the television version, The Two Worlds of Charlie Gordon. I told him about H. L. Gold's attempt to get me to change the ending for Galaxy, and how glad I was that I had resisted. "But I've seen many U.S. Steel Hour shows," I said, "and I don't ever recall seeing a downbeat ending before this. How was it possible to keep the teleplay ending so close to the novelette?"

  Here's what he told me:

  He and the scriptwriter had wanted to stay true to the story, but the producers at the Theater Guild as well as its U.S. Steel Hour sponsors had said that the downbeat ending didn't fit the mold of their hour-long teleplays.

  After much wrangling, Robertson said, they came up with a compromise. As he knelt beside Algernon's grave in the backyard, he was to pick up the book with the blue cover—I recall it was Milton's Paradise Lost—which he was no longer able to read. He was to turn a few pages, register surprise, then excitement, lips moving as he silently started to read it. An upturn, to suggest that his intelligence was returning.

  "Cliff, I saw the show," I said. "I didn't see that."

  " The U.S. Steel Hour was live television, Dan. Charlie just wouldn't let me do it."

  He knew he'd been instructed to do the upturn, to hint at a happy ending, he said. But he was so deep into the character that he just sat there, frozen until the OFF THE AIR sign lit up. "They were all furious!" he said. "You can't imagine the names they called me. They shouted, 'You're through!' 'You'll never act on TV again!'"

  But the rave reviews the next day, and the Emmy Award nomination changed all that, he said, and led to his buying the movie rights for himself. Now, he'd hired a young writer to do a screenplay. Would I care to read it?

  "Sure," I said, pleased at his story of the TV ending.

  Then he leaned back thoughtfully. "Of course, Dan, you realize that in a full-length feature movie, we can't have a downbeat ending. The audience could never handle that."

  Uh-oh ... I thought, here we go again.

  Robertson leaned over the table. "How would it be if Algernon doesn't die? At the end of the movie, when he's lying in a corner of the maze, we think he's dead..."

  I sat there frozen.

  "Then, as the camera pans in," he said, "and focuses on Algernon, he lifts his snout, wiggles his whiskers, and takes off running the maze. Just a little upbeat ending—"

  "Cliff, I'd rather not hear any more," I said, tossing down my napkin. "I'm still working on the novel. It's your movie. I've got no control over what you do with the ending, but leave me out of it."

  Four months later, on June 5, 1964, the editor wrote that he didn't care to publish the second version because I hadn't solved the problems he'd raised. He suggested that I try to sell the book to a paperback house, and if I made the sale, I would have to return the advance. He added, "If that doesn't work out, we can discuss a relatively painless way for Mr. Keyes to return the $650."

  After the shock wore off, I thought, well, that's that!—as far as this editor and publisher were concerned. I was opposed to the idea of selling it as a paperback original. I had put too much of myself into it to go that route. I wanted my first novel to have the respect and attention reviewers accord a hardcover trade edition.

  Although I was still willing to discuss ideas or possible changes with an editor who liked it for what it was, I decided I had to get my mind off it and onto the next book.

  On the same day, I received a wire from Cliff Robertson, asking me to send a copy of the novel to him in Alicante, Spain, and a second copy to a W. Goldman in New York.

  I answered him on June 8, 1964.

  Dear Cliff,

  Got your wire, but I'm sorry to report the book is not yet finished. I understand your impatience, but knowing how you feel about Charlie, I'm sure you wouldn't want to pressure me into sending out something unfinished. The novel changed so much since I last spoke to you that if I'd let you have it then it would have been absurdly different from what it is now—and not nearly as good.

  Let me tell you that it's a lot harder to develop this thing than I thought it was going to be. I'm pleased at the progress, but I won't consider it complete until the editor who is going to see it through publication agrees with me that there is nothing further to change, develop or cut.

  As soon as we're satisfied that the novel is complete, I'll send you a copy. I think you'll be pleased with the result.

  People often ask if I had anything to do with the screenplay, and I tell them, "Just once."

  Robertson and I continued to meet in Detroit until our last meeting before he filmed the movie. On that trip, he brought me the screenplay he had asked me to read. It was called Good Old Charley Gordon.

  The cover page had been removed, so I had no indication who had written it.

  FADE IN: was followed by a moving camera revealing an operating room scene, replete with surgeon surrounded by doctors, nurses, etc. Nurse dabs surgeons sweating forehead. An intense, cliché operating scene. But, seconds before the credits, the camera pans in.

  AND WE DISCOVER: The patient is a white mouse.

  Cute, I thought, and turned the page.

  The script seemed competent, well-written, clever. But I wondered why the screenwriter had changed Alice Kinnian to Diane Kinnian, or why he changed the spelling of Charlie to Charley, or why he spent so much time having M. C. Donnegan, boss of the paper box factory, looking for lemon ball candies. Minor things.

  I was bothered that he had Charlie's surgery take place about halfway through the 133-page script. Halfway through the movie! And the screenwriter had stayed close to the novelette—too close, I thought. He hadn't found dramatic equivalents for the mental events of the story. He had changed the rising and felling curve structure by having Charlie deteriorate, go through a second operation, raising hopes a second time, but resulting in failure. It had the shape of a two-humped camel.

  Then I remembered what Robertson had said about not wanting a downbeat ending in his feature film: "How would it be if Algernon only appears dead in the maze, and then the camera pans in, he lifts his head, wiggles his whiskers, and runs the maze?"

  When I reached the last three pages, I read them with trepidation.

  There it wa
s!

  Charlie is holding Algernon, who is very much alive, but "really very old and very tired," in his hand. Charlie raises his hand, bringing Algernon right up to his cheek. And then, A CLOSE-UP of Charlie and Algernon, cheek to cheek. A smile on Charlie's face. Tears in his eyes. And the scene fades out to the background music of "Charlie's Tune"...

  Hooray for Hollywood!

  I told Robertson I didn't care for the script. He said nothing and took it back.

  Many years later, during a period when I harbored delusions of writing screenplays as well as novels, I bought a newly published book, Adventures in the Screen Trade, by a writer whose work I had long admired.

  William Goldman had not only written twelve novels including Boys and Girls Together, The Princess Bride, and Marathon Man, he had also written eleven screenplays, among them Masquerade, Harper, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, All the President's Men, Marathon Man, and A Bridge Too Far.

  When I opened Adventures in the Screen Trade and turned to the table of contents, I saw "Charly and Masquerade."

  What in the world?

  The chapter opens with the statement that Cliff Robertson got him into the movie business in late 1963.

  Goldman points out that he had, by that time, written three novels, and was deeply blocked in his fourth when he met Robertson. He describes how Robertson told him about a story he'd optioned. Would Goldman read "Flowers for Algernon"? And if he liked it would he write the screenplay?

  Goldman said yes, although he'd never written a screenplay before, and he read the story as soon as Robertson was gone. He refers to it as "a glorious piece of work."

  Then, realizing that he didn't even know what a screenplay looked like, Goldman dashed down to the all-night bookstore in Times Square at two o'clock in the morning, and found a book with the word screenwriting in the title.

  Goldman describes his meeting with Robertson in Alicante, Spain, and about returning to New York to continue on his first screenplay. After he sent the finished script to Robertson, he says, the next thing he knew he was off the project and Stirling Silliphant was writing it.

  Goldman describes how shocking and painful it was for him. He'd never been fired before! Robertson hadn't even told him what was wrong with that first script he'd ever written. "But if I were forced to guess," Goldman adds, "I would say, odds on, my screenplay stunk."

  Then I remembered Robertson's wire from Alicante, Spain, asking me to mail the novel to someone named Goldman in New York. I recalled the script ending with Charlie holding Algernon up to his cheek and smiling with tears in his eyes, as they go off together—that corny upbeat ending!

  That's when I realized I had been, at least partially, responsible for William Goldman—one of Hollywood's A-list screenwriters—getting fired from his first movie assignment.

  Sorry, Bill.

  18. We Find a Home

  STILL NUMB FROM THE EDITOR'S SECOND REJECTION of my novel, I set the manuscript aside until a colleague, in whom I'd confided, asked to read it. A few days later, he told me he felt the editor was mistaken. "The book is strong," he said, "but something is missing."

  I winced at the double-edged comment. Maybe my mouth fell open. Maybe I blinked dumbly. I didn't know what to say. Getting out of my chair, I mumbled something like, "Well, I can't imagine what's missing, and it's too late to add anything now."

  Back in my own office, I stewed over it. My colleague hadn't suggested that I make changes because of marketing needs, or editorial guesses at what readers wanted, or an ending to satisfy an audience. Going to bed that night, I thought about what he'd said. "Something is missing." He was suggesting that it needed more of what it intended to be—something the story needed Was there another gap Id overlooked? What?

  Next morning I awoke with a phrase in my head: Charlie's spiritual curve...

  And it echoed in my mind. Where's the spiritual curve?

  Suddenly, it was clear. The original story had followed Charlies psychological curve—intelligence, or I.Q. Then, with the love story, I'd developed his emotional curve—now sometimes called the E.Q.—or Emotional Quotient. What was missing—what Charlie still needed was the third curve, rising to the spiritual peak of his mind. Perhaps in the future it will be known as the'S.Q.—or Spiritual Quotient—or just Soul Q.

  I needed to find my way along the mysterious third path of Charlie's spirit.

  And, so, I went back to work, thinking I must be crazy to be revising and rewriting so much. Then I remembered a passage from Sherwood Anderson's memoirs I'd often shared with writing students who protested reworking their material:

  I have seldom written a story, long or short, that I did not have to write and rewrite. There are single short stories of mine that have taken me ten or twelve years to get written.

  And so it went with Flowers fir Algernon. While my colleagues traveled to Europe during the summer of 1964, I stayed in Detroit and explored Charlie's spiritual curve. I felt it had to come after he discovers what's going to happen to him, when he knows he's going to lose it all.

  And so I wrote:

  October 4—Strangest therapy session I ever had. Strauss was upset. It was something he hadn't expected either.

  What happened—I don't dare call it a memory—was a psychic experience or a hallucination. I won't attempt to explain or interpret it, but will only record what happened...

  Although I drew on my own psychoanalytic sessions for this scene, the images and thoughts are not mine. They came out of Charlie, who had come alive for me. As far as I was concerned, the spiritual experience in that scene was his.

  I see a blue-white glow from the walls and the ceiling gathering into a shimmering ball. Now it's suspended in midair. Light ... forcing itself into my eyes ... and my brain ... Everything in the room is aglow ... I have the feeling of floating ... or rather expanding up and out ... and yet without looking down I know my body is still here on the couch...

  Is this a hallucination?

  "Charlie, are you all right?"

  Or the things described by the mystics?...

  ...I've got to ignore him. Be passive and let this—whatever it is—fill me with the light and absorb me into itself.

  Charlie feels himself merging with the cosmos.

  ...exploding outward into the sun, I am an exploding universe swimming upward in a silent sea ... And then as I know I am about to pierce the crust of existence, like a flying fish leaping out of the sea I feel the pull from below...

  I wait, and leave myself open, passive to whatever this experience means. Charlie doesn't want me to pierce the upper curtain of the mind. Charlie doesn't want to know what lies beyond.

  Does he fear seeing God?

  Or seeing nothing.

  As he reverses, and comes downward, shrinking into himself, Charlie sees the Mandala—the multipetaled flower—swirling lotus that floats near the entrance of the unconscious.

  After the session, Strauss says, "I think maybe that's all for today."

  "Not only for today. I don't think I should have any more sessions. I don't want to see any more."

  As Charlie leaves, he thinks: And now Plato's words mock me in the shadows on the ledge behind the flames: "...the men of the cave would say of him that up he went and down he came without his eyes..."

  I hadn't planned the scene. I just let it happen and—giving part of myself, including my own break from psychoanalysis, to my fictional character—it developed far beyond a spiritual curve. It became Charlie's cosmic experience.

  Two other major publishers rejected the revised novel, one on the last day of 1964:

  "...a challenging if rather difficult, idea for a novel, which I do not feel that the author has quite managed to bring off. Its definition is clearly that of a tour de force—one character of consequence, one inevitable course—and requires, in effect, a stunning execution ... I'm sorry I couldn't feel better about it."

  Another rejection letter in March of 1965:

  "Apologies and excu
ses; the only reason fir holding up Daniel Keyes FLOWERS FOR ALGERNON this long ... is that it caught me too, and I just had to keep it in my mind for a while.... I'll just say it is a near-miss for us, and I'm still not altogether sure I'm right to let it go, and I want very much indeed to see anything else your Mr. Keyes does, if he remains free of other publishing commitments."

  Nice to know, but my heart grew heavier with each rejection, chipping away my ego, my determination, my hope.

  The four-year lectureship agreement with Wayne State University would run out by next spring. If I didn't have a book published by then I'd have to enter a Ph.D. program to keep teaching on the college level.

  For faculty teaching creative writing programs in higher education, a published book was generally considered the equivalent of a doctoral dissertation. So for me, indeed, it had become publish or perish.

  I wondered if I could keep writing in the face of all this rejection. Three years of developing the novelette into a novel appeared to be going down the drain. Now, I doubted that it would ever be published. Although I hadn't written "for the drawer" as the poet Emily Dickenson had, I felt that's where my "Flowers..." would wither. No one else would ever read it.

  "All right," I told myself. "Let go. It's done."

  Then, as I walked along State Street toward my office at Wayne State University, something unexpected happened. I'd been short on sleep, feeling depressed, and as I neared the building, I suddenly felt an icy sweat, the blood draining from my head. I steadied myself against a streetlamp. So this was what a heart attack or a stroke was like. This was dying. This was how it all ended ... My ending ... The book's ending...