In "Algernon, Charlie & I: A Writer's Journey" (Dimensions, 2000), Daniel Keyes wrote about the inspiration for his classic 1966 story, "Flowers for Algernon": the day a student had told him, "Mr. Keyes, I want to be smart," a line Charlie Gordon voices in "Flowers."
After he finished the followup book, Keyes remembered another story.
Keyes was teaching a special-education class in New York City. One student always put his head on his desk during class.
It turned out the boy was almost completely illiterate. Keyes, using phonics, started to tutor the boy.
"It was amazing as he started to learn," says Keyes, 76, who visits Pittsburgh today as a guest of the One Book, One Community reading program. "He became excited. The reason he always had his head on the desk was he was ashamed. But as he started to read, he was transformed. He had his hand up all the time. He became my assistant. When I had to go out of the room, he'd take charge for me."
The student's transformation, however, didn't last. Because of a family problem, the boy missed school for a few weeks. When he returned to Keyes' classroom, all the progress the boy had made was lost. He could not read at all.
"It was heartbreaking for me," Keyes says. "I think that pretty much was, in later years, the pattern for 'Flowers of Algernon.' When the boy came up to me and said, 'I want to be smart,' that was the motivation. That put it all together."
"Flowers for Algernon" is the 2004 selection of the One Book, One Community reading initiative. Residents in Western Pennsylvania have been encouraged to read Keyes' book, which won Hugo and Nebula awards for science fiction; has been published as a short story, novella and novel; was adapted for a stage production; was filmed as a television drama; and made into a motion picture, "Charly," which earned Cliff Robertson an Academy Award for best actor.
"Flowers for Algernon" has long been used in junior and senior high school reading programs. But such is its gravitas that it transcends literature. The Literature, Arts and Medicine Database, an online resource for medical humanities sponsored by New York University, cites the book as a useful starting place for discussions broaching a wide range of medical issues.
Keyes thinks one of the ways to address mental health issues in schools would be to start with more tolerance.
"We teach competition and we teach striving, which is great," he says. "But there's something missing in our education system: We don't each empathy. We teach kids how to beat other kids, and to strive ahead, but what would be wrong, starting at a young age, having contests where you get good marks if you can determine what the other kid is feeling⢠... That would certainly enable kids to stop bullying each other, because much of the inability, aside from the actual developmental disability, much of the problem of learning comes from the bullying and the shame."
Keyes spends much of his time discussing his work in a variety of forums. Since it was released in book form in 1966 -- it was first published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1959 -- "Flowers for Algernon" has sold more than 5 million copies and has been published in 30 different languages.
For all his successes, however, Keyes still thinks about the student who couldn't read in his special-education class long ago.
"At the end of 'Flowers for Algernon,' Charlie feels he's done something," Keyes says. "He's lost it all, but he's remembered something. And I like to feel this real boy who was in that class would remember that once he had learned to read, even though he'd lost it, and that there was some positive development. I don't know what happened to him, but maybe something came out of that." Additional Information:
An Evening with Daniel Keyes
Sponsored by : One Book, One CommunityWhen : 7 p.m. Monday
Admission : Free
Where : Carnegie Library Lecture Hall, Oakland
Details : (412) 392-6070 or the Web site
