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

  As I reread the pages, I laughed aloud at Charlie's responses to the inkblot. Then, suddenly, it hit me. I was laughing ¿¿Charlie. The way I was telling the story, the reader would be laughing at Charlie. That's what most people did when they saw the mentally disadvantaged make mistakes. It was a way of making themselves feel superior. I remembered the day I broke the dishes, and the customers laughed and Mr. Goldstein called me moron.

  I didn't want my readers to laugh at Charlie. Maybe laugh with him, but not at him.

  Sure, I had the idea, and the plot, and the character, but I hadn't found the right way, the only way, to tell the story. The point of view, or what I prefer to call the angle of vision, was wrong. This had to be told from Charlie's perspective. It had to be first person, major character angle—in Charlie's mind and through Charlie's eyes all the way.

  But how? What narrative strategy would let the story unfold?

  Would the reader believe that a developmentally disadvantaged person could write this as a memoir from beginning to end? I couldn't believe that myself. I liked the idea of each event, each scene, being recorded as it was happening, or right after it had happened. Diary? Again, not plausible that—at least in the beginning and at the end—Charlie would sit down and make long journal entries.

  I struggled with the narrative strategy for several days, growing more and more frustrated, because I felt I was so close to unlocking the story. Then one morning I awoke with the answer in my mind. As part of the experiment, Charlie would be asked to keep an ongoing record, a progress report.

  I had never heard the term before, or read a story or novel in which it had been used. I suspected that I was developing a unique point of view.

  Now that I had found Charlie's voice, I knew he would tell it through my fingers on the keys. But how would I handle the sentence structure and spelling? Students in my modified classes provided the model. How would I know how he thought? I would try to remember what it was like to be a child. How would I know his feelings? I would give him my feelings.

  When Flaubert was asked how he could have imagined and written of life through the mind of a woman in Madame Bovary, his answer was: "Iam Madame Bovary."

  In that sense, I gave Charlie Gordon some of myself, and I became part of that character.

  Still, I was worried about opening with the illiterate spelling and short, childish sentence structure. I wondered about the readers reaction. Then I remembered what Mark Twain did in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Before plunging into the vernacular of the uneducated Huck, Twain alerts the reader with the authors educated voice.

  The novel opens with a "NOTICE": "Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.

  "BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR, Per G. G., Chief of Ordnance."

  This is followed by an EXPLANATORY:

  "In this book a number of dialects are used, to wit: the Missouri Negro dialect, the extremest form of the backwoods Southwestern dialect, the ordinary 'Pike County' dialect, and four modified varieties of this last..." signed "THE AUTHOR"

  Only then, after having prepared the reader, does Twain begin the first-person narrative from Huck's point of view and in his voice.

  You don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, but that ain't no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth.

  I decided to follow Twain's strategy My original opening—which I later deleted and can no longer find—begins with Alice Kinnian coming to the lab and asking Professor Nemur if he has heard from Charlie. Nemur hands her the manuscript, the first pages of which are written in pencil, pressed so hard she can feel the words raised on the back of the paper.

  Only then does Charlie's voice take over as I type:

  progris riport 1—martch 5

  Dr. Strauss says I shud rite down what I think and evrey thing that happins to me from now on. I dont know why but he says its importint so they will see if they will use me. I hope they use me. Miss Kinnian says maybe they can make me smart. I want to be smart. My name is Charlie Gordon. I am 37 years old and 2 weeks ago was my brithday. I have nuthing more to rite now so I will close for today.

  When I saw those words on the page, I knew I had it. I wrote through that night and the nights that followed, feverishly, long hours, little sleep and lots of coffee.

  Then, in the middle of the night, partway through the first draft, after the scene in which Charlie races the white mouse, I called out loud, "The mouse! The mouse!"

  Aurea jumped up, startled. "Where? Where?"

  I explained and she smiled sleepily, "Oh, good."

  I turned back to the typewriter and typed a note to myself:

  The mouse, having had the same treatment as Charlie, will forecast events connected with the experiment. It will be a character in its own right, and a furry little sidekick for Charlie.

  A name—I had to give the mouse a name. My fingers went over the keys. It just appeared on the page. Algernon.

  After that, the story wrote itself, about thirty thousand words—what would be called a long novelette or a short novella.

  In that first complete draft, the story ends with Alice Kinnian looking up from the folder of progress reports with tears in her eyes, and asking Professor Nemur to go with her to help find Charlie.

  Phil Klass (William Tenn) by this time had moved with his wife, Fruma, into an apartment across the street from me in Seagate. Phil was ‹-he next person to read the story after Aurea. When he returned the manuscript the next day, he said, "This will be a classic."

  I knew he was teasing me, and I laughed.

  My next move was to get a different literary agent. I phoned Harry Altshuler, introduced myself, and told him of H. L. Gold's request that I write a second story for Galaxy. Altshuler asked to read "Flowers for Algernon," and I sent it to him. He said he liked it, and would be pleased to be my agent. H. L. Gold should, of course, have first crack at it.

  Euphoria is a mild word to describe my feelings. I had just finished a story that had been in the back of my mind for years, and I felt good about it. And I had landed a respected agent who liked it and an editor who had asked for it. My troubles, I thought, were over.

  I was mistaken.

  14. Rejection and Acceptance

  A FEW DAYS LATER, Harry Altshuler called and told me he'd been in touch with H. L. Gold on behalf of another of his writers, and had mentioned my new story. "Horace wants you to bring it to his office-apartment. He'll read it right away. Do you know his place?"

  "It's where I learned to play poker and discovered I'm not very good at bluffing."

  "All right then. Don't discuss price if he wants to buy it. I'll handle that end."

  It was a long trip from Coney Island to Fourteenth Street on the east side of Manhattan, and by the time I arrived I was on edge. The story meant a lot to me, and I hoped it could be published in a major science fiction magazine like Galaxy. But Horace had a reputation as a hands-on editor who didn't hesitate to ask for changes.

  He greeted me at the door, took the envelope, and said, "Relax in the study while I read this in my office. Help yourself to coffee and doughnuts."

  It had never occurred to me that he would read it while I waited, or that I would get instant feedback from one of the most prestigious editors in the field.

  For the next hour or so, I drank coffee, read the New York Times, and stared into space wondering if he would like it or hate it, buy it or reject it. Finally, he came out of his office, deep in thought, and sat across from me.

  "Dan, this is a good story. But I'm going to suggest a few changes that will turn it into a great story."

  I don't remember how I responded.

  "The ending is too depressing for our readers," he said. "I want you to change it. Charlie doesn't regress
. He doesn't lose his intelligence. Instead, he remains a super-genius, marries Alice Kinnian, and they live happily ever after. That would make it a great story."

  I stared at him. How does a beginning writer respond to the editor who bought one story from him, and wants to buy a second? The years of labor over this story passed through my mind. What about my Wedge of Loneliness? My tragic vision of Book Mountain? My challenge to Aristotle's theory of the Classic Fall?

  "I'll have to think about it," I mumbled. "I'll need a little time."

  "I'd like to buy it for one of the upcoming issues, but I'd need that revision. It shouldn't take you long."

  "I'll work on it," I said, knowing there was no way I'd change the ending.

  "Good," he said, showing me to the door. "If not, I'm sure you'll write other stories for Galaxy in the future."

  I called Harry Altshuler from a pay phone and told him what had happened. There was a long pause.

  "You know," he said, "Horace is a fine editor, with a strong sense of the market. I agree with him. It shouldn't be too hard to make that change."

  I wanted to shout: This story has a piece of my heart in it! But who was I to pit my judgment against professionals? The train ride back to Seagate was long and depressing.

  When I told Phil Klass what had happened, he shook his head. "Horace and Harry are wrong. If you dare to change the ending, I'll get a baseball bat and break both your legs."

  "Thanks."

  He made another suggestion. He was then working for Bob Mills, editor of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. "Let me take the story up to Mills and see if he'll buy it."

  I was torn. Whereas Galaxy was considered the most successful science fiction magazine, F&SF was most respected for its literary merit. I told Phil to go ahead.

  A few days later I got the good news along with the bad. Bob Mills liked the story and wanted to publish it, but he was limited by the publisher to a maximum of 15,000 words per story. If I'd agree to cut 10,000 words, he would buy it at two cents a word.

  "I'll see," I said.

  The decision wasn't too hard. Recalling my own editing days, Bob Erisman's admonition to cut, and Meredith's comment that Lester del Rey would never revise because it would cut his income in half, I shook each page, and crossed out every paragraph and word that wasn't absolutely necessary. It didn't hurt as much as I feared.

  I got rid of that-ery and which-ery, and redundant phrases, and digressions. "Sentences plodding along with lots of little words just like this one does were revised." Changed to read: "I revised plodding sentences." Fifteen words trimmed to four without changing the meaning. At the same time, by altering were revised to I revised—passive voice to active voice—I changed pedestrian style into a lean, muscular prose.

  Then I looked at the last scene in which Alice puts down the manuscript and asks Nemur to go with her to find Charlie. I hesitated a moment, and then drew a long diagonal line through that page and a half, allowing the story to end with his words: "P. P. S. Please if you get a chanse put some flowrs on Algernons grave in the bakyard..."

  Bob Mills bought the story.

  That summer, I was invited to attend one of the getaway workshops in Milford, Pennsylvania, at which the old-guard Hydra Club writers were invited to spend part of each afternoon passing around pages of new stories for critique by their professional peers. I was invited to submit a story for the workshop, and I decided to let them read "Flowers for Algernon."

  The night before the workshop, I glanced through the manuscript and realized I'd made a mistake. Since I'd cut off the ending, in which Alice finishes reading the progress reports and goes off in search of Charlie, the opening, in which Nemur gives her the manuscript, was now superfluous.

  I'd written it that way because I was afraid to let the story open with Charlie's illiterate spelling and simple plodding sentences. I'd been afraid to throw the reader into Charlie's "special" point of view without warning.

  I decided I had to trust the reader.

  That night, I cut the first two pages and let the story begin with Charlie's words, in Charlie's voice:

  progris riport 1—martch 5

  Dr. Strauss says I shud rite down what I think and evrey thing that happins to me from now on. I dont know why but he says its importint so they will see if they will use me. I hope they use me.

  Then I went out to face my critics. Among those I remember forty years later, were Judy Merrill, Damon Knight, Kate Wilhelm, Jim Blish, Avram Davidson, Ted Cogswell, Gordie Dickson. I beg those I haven't mentioned to forgive me.

  We set out chairs on the front lawn, and then passed the pages around the circle. All I can remember now is the generous warm praise, the congratulations, and the sense that these people I admired had accepted me as a fellow writer.

  "Flowers for Algernon" was published as the lead story of the April 1959 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, with a cover by Ed Emshwiller. Five months later, he gave Aurea the original oil painting as a gift in honor of the birth of our first child, Hillary Ann. The painting still hangs in our living room.

  At the Eighteenth World Science Fiction Convention in Pittsburgh, in 1960, as Isaac Asimov handed me the Hugo Award for the Best Story of 1959, he praised it lavishly.

  Asimov later wrote in The Hugo Winners:

  'How did he do it?' I demanded of the Muses. 'How did he do it?'... And from the round and gentle face of Daniel Keyes, issued the immortal words: 'Listen, when you find out how I did it, let me know, will you. I want to do it again.'

  I wasn't alone on that celebration night. An unseen someone cast a second shadow in the spotlight beside me. Another hand reached out for the Hugo Award. Out of the corner of my mind, I glimpsed a memory of the boy who had walked up to my desk and said, "Mr. Keyes, I want to be smart."

  And he has been with me as Charlie Gordon ever since.

  Part Four

  The Alchemy of Writing

  15. Transformations: From Story to Teleplay to Novel

  SHORTLY AFTER "FLOWERS FOR ALGERNON" won the Hugo Award, CBS bought TV rights for the Theater Guild's U.S. Steel Hour teleplay. James Yaffee, author of the novel Compulsion, wrote the script. Cliff Robertson played the role of Charlie.

  Three weeks after I received my MA degree in English and American Literature from Brooklyn College, on the evening of Washington's birthday, I saw The Two Worlds of Charlie Gordon from beside Aurea's bed in the hospital where she was recovering from an illness.

  Nurses gathered to watch, crowding the room and blocking the doorway. They applauded when my name appeared in the screen credits, and again when the show ended. I pulled out a bottle of champagne I had smuggled in, and filled the little plastic medicine cups the head nurse provided. There were toasts and sips all around.

  Cliff Robertson's performance was stunning, so I wasn't surprised at the rave reviews the next day, or the nomination for the Emmy Award. Later, when The Two Worlds of Charlie Gordon lost, it was to Macbeth, starring Maurice Evans.

  A few days after the telecast, Cliff Robertson began negotiations for theatrical movie rights. As he told the press, he'd been "...always a bridesmaid but never a bride," referring to his TV performances in Days of Wine and Roses and The Hustler. He had lost those starring movie roles, he said, to Jack Lemmon and Paul Newman.

  Six months later, Robertson and I closed the deal. He was going to follow his TV success with a movie retitled, Charly, its childlike printing with a backward R.

  Lest the reader have the mistaken notion that all of this is the financial equivalent of winning the lottery, let me put things into perspective by revealing to you my 1961 writing income, after the 10 percent agents' deductions, all from "Flowers for Algernon":

  2/10—Best Articles and Stories reprint $4.50

  4/24— The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction $22.50

  9/8—Movie option from Robertson Associates $900.00

  11/2—Literary Cavalcade reprint $22.50

  Total Ne
t: $949.50

  So I had to continue teaching high school days to support my wife and child while I wrote nights.

  One afternoon, while I was on the train headed home from Thomas Jefferson High School, a colleague sat down beside me.

  "Dan, I read 'Flowers for Algernon,' a fine novelette," he said. "I've been wondering about some of the images and their meanings."

  Recognition is sweet.

  He mentioned something he'd noticed, was sure it had a symbolic meaning, and asked me to elaborate.

  I did. I pontificated on the levels of meanings, the central and peripheral symbolic motifs.

  When I was done, he looked at me quizzically, eyebrows raised. "Oh...,"he said, "is that all?"

  His words are branded somewhere in my writer's psyche. Since then, I have never explained, explicated, or interpreted my work, its meanings, its levels, its themes. My colleague had taught me a lesson. As long as the writer, or any artist for that matter, keeps his mouth shut, there can be argument and discussion and various interpretations and meanings. But once the writer explains or analyzes, he trivializes his own work.

  Although in this book I am describing writing methods, sources, and the creative process, I no longer explain. That's the reader's contribution.

  Well, now that some critics have proclaimed that writers don't really know what they're doing, much less understand their own works, it's best we keep silent about our intentions.

  What do I mean? Never mind.

  While all this was going on, I began a second version of a novel I'd 'worked on based on my Merchant Marine experiences. Someone once said, "The way you learn to write a novel is by writing a novel." And, I thought, the way to learn to write a novel better is to do it over.