Flowers for Algernon
I am re-visiting Flowers For Algernon. It came up on the escapepod podcast. I think I last read it in middle school English, but I remembered it strongly enough that I put the podcast on pause and hesitated for a full day. It's a sad short story. (I wasn't sure I was ready for that.)
The first thing I didn't realize is just how old a story it is. It was published in 1959!
Despite that, it really doesn't feel dated to me, as I listen to it. The only anachronism involved the use of a typewriter, but that didn't feel at all unbelievable to me because the machine was probably lying around gathering dust and that's why the doctors loaned it to him.
I'm not quite at the end yet. Charlie/ Charles is mid descent.
Comparing what I'm hearing with my memory of what I read, it's quite close. I'd forgotten just what it is that Charles does at his peak.
I had retained just a vague sense that Charles passes some time as a superior colleague to the doctors. But I had no recollection of the key scene where he recognizes that he too is laughing at a dumb waiter and he dedicates himself to being better than that, and remembering where he came from and to doing research to help "all my people" who deserve more respect than they get. It's a big moral core, but I'd forgotten the scene.
So, as a side effect of forgetting the details about the high-point research, I'd totally forgotten that the one who did the research that mathematically predicted his decline was Charles himself. In fact, I didn't recall that they had a mathematical formula. A little more poignant this way, but it's enough in my mind to have drawn the inescapable generalization qualitatively by observing Algernon.
In my memory, what Charles spent most of his smart time on was pursuing a relationship with Ms. Kinnian. But perhaps I enlarged this. So far it's been there, but much more sparsely than in my mental version. I remembered her reciprocating more, and being helplessly disappointed more, as he slips toward and below peership.
Maybe that's yet to come, but I doubt it. All their dates so far have been described in only a spare sentence or three each.
Edited to add: Ahh, here's the scene where she has to leave the room crying. At least that exists!
One wtf moment, where out of the blue, on the way down, Charles/Charlie runs into a question of whether his parents' marriage was happy. Was this just a trope in the late 50s?! It doesn't seem to add much to the story, and structurally it's not balanced by rose-colored assumptions on the way up. He just kinda bounces off the question. And I'm left scratching my head --- and partly because up until that point I guess I'd quietly assumed his parents were dead or not in touch any more. This scene with his mother is the only mention of his parents or parenthood or family relations in general in the whole story! No wait, I'm wrong, his landlady does make one mention of having kicked out her son for being a "loafer". That contributes to the story, though, by building up the tension of what's going to happen to our protagonist Charlie.
Must be an automatic trope, like the distant barking dog ☺. Serious Story iz Serious: it can has questioning of institution of marriage.
(Idea credit: link from comment 76 on an article linked to from Sonya's recent post. Thanks for what turned out to be a very opportune idea!)
In conclusion, this short story stands the test of time and does not suck.
The conversion from written to spoken word was handled admirably, but if you have the choice, I'd say go for written. It's easier to see the spelling and punctuation (oh, punctuation!) tricks by eye than to hear them by ear. On the other hand, the voice talent did good work with changing the speed and fluency of his speech. I might miss that, if I read it only.
The first thing I didn't realize is just how old a story it is. It was published in 1959!
Despite that, it really doesn't feel dated to me, as I listen to it. The only anachronism involved the use of a typewriter, but that didn't feel at all unbelievable to me because the machine was probably lying around gathering dust and that's why the doctors loaned it to him.
I'm not quite at the end yet. Charlie/ Charles is mid descent.
Comparing what I'm hearing with my memory of what I read, it's quite close. I'd forgotten just what it is that Charles does at his peak.
I had retained just a vague sense that Charles passes some time as a superior colleague to the doctors. But I had no recollection of the key scene where he recognizes that he too is laughing at a dumb waiter and he dedicates himself to being better than that, and remembering where he came from and to doing research to help "all my people" who deserve more respect than they get. It's a big moral core, but I'd forgotten the scene.
So, as a side effect of forgetting the details about the high-point research, I'd totally forgotten that the one who did the research that mathematically predicted his decline was Charles himself. In fact, I didn't recall that they had a mathematical formula. A little more poignant this way, but it's enough in my mind to have drawn the inescapable generalization qualitatively by observing Algernon.
In my memory, what Charles spent most of his smart time on was pursuing a relationship with Ms. Kinnian. But perhaps I enlarged this. So far it's been there, but much more sparsely than in my mental version. I remembered her reciprocating more, and being helplessly disappointed more, as he slips toward and below peership.
Maybe that's yet to come, but I doubt it. All their dates so far have been described in only a spare sentence or three each.
Edited to add: Ahh, here's the scene where she has to leave the room crying. At least that exists!
One wtf moment, where out of the blue, on the way down, Charles/Charlie runs into a question of whether his parents' marriage was happy. Was this just a trope in the late 50s?! It doesn't seem to add much to the story, and structurally it's not balanced by rose-colored assumptions on the way up. He just kinda bounces off the question. And I'm left scratching my head --- and partly because up until that point I guess I'd quietly assumed his parents were dead or not in touch any more. This scene with his mother is the only mention of his parents or parenthood or family relations in general in the whole story! No wait, I'm wrong, his landlady does make one mention of having kicked out her son for being a "loafer". That contributes to the story, though, by building up the tension of what's going to happen to our protagonist Charlie.
Must be an automatic trope, like the distant barking dog ☺. Serious Story iz Serious: it can has questioning of institution of marriage.
(Idea credit: link from comment 76 on an article linked to from Sonya's recent post. Thanks for what turned out to be a very opportune idea!)
In conclusion, this short story stands the test of time and does not suck.
The conversion from written to spoken word was handled admirably, but if you have the choice, I'd say go for written. It's easier to see the spelling and punctuation (oh, punctuation!) tricks by eye than to hear them by ear. On the other hand, the voice talent did good work with changing the speed and fluency of his speech. I might miss that, if I read it only.