Algernon, Charlie, and I

by Daniel Keyes

  I swallowed hard. "Well, it was an emergency, and it was the only 3,000-word filler I could find. I see some talent in this guy. I thought I'd encourage him."

  Erisman frowned and looked at me hard. "Well, maybe."

  "What didn't you like about it?"

  "Oh, come on, Dan. He doesn't miss a western cliché. Every character is a stereotype. The plot is corny. Some glimmer of writing talent, I agree, but he's got a lot to learn."

  "I was hoping to bring him along."

  He pursed his lips, held my gaze with his soft blue eyes, and shrugged. "Well, maybe. But he's got to edit his work. I know most of our B-list writers are getting paid a cent a word, but that's for lean copy, not padding. Tell him that good, tight writing comes from shaking each page and letting any word, or sentence, fall out if it won't be missed."

  "Hemingway's style," I said.

  "Exactly. Hem once said that if you didn't know something, it left a hole in your work But if you knew it and deleted it, the work would be stronger."

  "So that's how he did it, by shaking out the excess."

  Erisman nodded, dropped the Western Stories manuscripts on my desk, and picked up my edited stack of manuscripts for Best Sports Stories.

  "Too bad Hemingway didn't do sports stories," I said.

  "Didn't he?" Erisman's eyebrows went up. "Tell your young writer to read 'My Old Man,' about horse racing, and "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber,' about lion hunting, and 'Fifty Grand,' about boxing, and one of the really great novels, The Sun Also Rises, about bullfighting, with the incredible scene of running the bulls in Pamplona, and about deep-sea fishing in The Old Man and the Sea."

  "Oh, well, I didn't think of those as—"

  "As commercial fiction? Dan, we're talking about style. And for the purest style that got him the Nobel Prize for Literature, read—I mean, tell your young writer to read—"The Killers" and "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place."

  "I-I'll tell him."

  "Can't stay today," he said. "I'm looking forward to seeing the Marvel Science Fiction lineup next week. We'll have lunch at Childs."

  After he left, I sat back in my chair, took a few deep breaths, and went through a pile of science fiction stories with gray folders from the shelves behind me. One was by Lester del Rey.

  Since he had helped me get this job, I read his story eagerly. The plot was original, the scenes absorbing, but oddly enough, it seemed wordy. To use Erisman's phrase, the pages needed shaking out.

  I called Scott and told him how much I liked the story, but that I thought it needed minor revisions.

  There was a silence at the other end, and then, with slow, deadly emphasis, he said,"Lester ... doesn't ... rewrite. He gets two cents a word. If he revises his work that would mean he's getting only one cent a word."

  "I see."

  "Are you going to buy it?"

  I took a deep breath. It was presumptuous of me but I couldn't compromise what I felt strongly. "Not as it is, Scott. Sorry."

  "That's all right, Dan. I wanted to give you first shot at a new del Rey story. I'll sell it to another magazine without any trouble."

  He did.

  By this time, I thought I should get a regular literary agent, so I delivered three early pieces of work to Scott Meredith for consideration. His two-and-a-half-page letter shows how naive I was. He, or more likely one of his readers, wrote that my writing showed promise but the stories "were off the beam for marketing."

  There followed a reasonable analysis of the three pieces, none of which were ever published because they are indeed amateurish, apprentice work. He was not sending me an agent's contract, Meredith said, because he didn't feel that either of us should be tied down at this point.

  I wrote a new story called "Something Borrowed," and submitted it to another agent who specialized in science fiction. Frederik Pohl, at the Dirk Wylie Literary Agency, wrote me his impressions.

  The trouble with the piece, he explained, was that it was a Ray Bradbury-type story, and that nobody but Bradbury ought to write Bradbury stories.

  Then he softened the blow by adding that he expected to sell "Something Borrowed." He felt I could do much better, he said, and was eagerly awaiting my next story.

  That night, as I flipped through my idea folders, I saw a scrawled note, "What would happen if we could increase human intelligence artificially?" I remembered wondering about that many years earlier as I had waited for the train that would take me to class at NYU.

  Turning a few more pages, I saw the title, "Guinea Pig," followed with just a couple of typed lines:

  Story similar to "The Man Who Could Work Miracles." Plain guy becomes a genius by brain surgery—experiences fantastic heights.

  The word surgery flashed me back to my biology class dissection. It hadn't been a guinea pig, I thought, but a white mouse! But the man would be used as a guinea pig. I realized this memory, drawn out of the depths of my mind, was turning into an idea for a story. But that's all it was—an idea.

  It didn't occur to me then that mulling over the concept of making someone a genius through brain surgery was the first step on my journey to find a character that both I and the reader could care about.

  The mouse didn't become Algernon until much later.

  10. Editing Pulps and Writing Comic Books

  AUREA AND I BEGAN DATING REGULARLY. Although we fell in love, we agreed that before we could think of marriage I would have to be solidly on the path to becoming a professional writer.

  In 1950 and 1951 I wrote more westerns for our magazines under pseudonyms, and Erisman agreed that the young writer I had taken under my wing when I bought his first western story had come along nicely. "His style has improved: no more clichés, tighter prose, cleaner plot. He spins a good yarn. There's even a hint of characterization."

  But I still hadn't published anything under my own name.

  In the spring of 1952 I was asked by the editor of Other Worlds Science Stories to submit a story for a special "All Star Editor Issue!" It was going to feature six stories by science fiction editors. If they bought my story, I would be paid two cents a word.

  I thought of the "Guinea Pig" idea, about increasing human intelligence through surgery, but I sensed it would be a complex story. I didn't feel ready to write it, so I put it out of my mind and kept searching.

  I found another idea in my note folder. What if a slave-robot was emancipated? How would it deal with antirobot prejudice? How would he support himself?

  In the same folder, I saw a note. "Algernon Charles Swinburne. Odd first name." Maybe I would name the first free robot Algernon. I decided, instead, to name the robot—Robert.

  I mentioned the emancipated robot concept to Lester del Rey over coffee, and he offered me fifty dollars for the idea. It was tempting, but I figured if Lester was willing to buy it, it must be worth writing.

  "Robot Unwanted," my first real publication under my own name, was the lead story in the issue. It was 5,000 words long, and the check, after a 10 percent deduction for the agent's fee, was for $90.

  The one copy I still have is on crumbling pulp paper, and as I open to it the page comes loose. The blurb reads: "Robert was the only one on Earth—an F.R. That meant he was a free robot; free to do anything he wanted—but he didn't want to die!"

  For a writer, there is no feeling to match the elation that comes from seeing your name in print under the title of your first published work As you walk the streets of Manhattan, you wonder why people aren't rushing up to ask for your autograph. You toy with the idea of quitting your job and writing full-time for fame and fortune.

  When the rejections of other stories keep coming, you drift back down to earth.

  But some people in the closely knit science fiction writing and publishing community took note. Many SF editors, agents, and writers had known each other as fens in the early years. One such group called itself the Hydra Club. I had met many of its members and was often invited to their parties, but I was too young to be accepte
d into this circle.

  One Friday afternoon, after the publication of "Robot Unwanted," I got a phone call, inviting me to join a poker game at the home of H. L. Gold, which was also the office of Galaxy the magazine he edited. I'd heard stories that since his return from World War II duty, Horace had developed agoraphobia, and rarely left his home office.

  As a way of socializing with other writers, editors, and agents, he had set up a regular Friday night nickel-dime poker game at his New York apartment. It wasn't the Deux-Magots in Paris or the Algonquin Round Table in New York, but for a wannabe author it was exhilarating to be among people devoted to writing.

  Players would drop in any time, from after dinner until breakfast. We played games like High-Low Seven-Card Stud, Anaconda, and Iron Cross. And until I learned the subtleties of the games and the people at the table—when to bluff, when to fold—the tuition fee in this poker seminar left a gap in my fifty-dollar-a-week paycheck.

  By 1953 the pulps suffered a serious decline in readership as a result of the new paperback books and television, and since Stadium Publications had to cut expenses, they gave me notice. Erisman would have to handle all the magazines by himself, using the house-name Arthur Lane to give the impression that a staff was still operating. The pulps soon vanished except for some of the science fiction magazines, like Galaxy, Astounding, and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

  A few days before my job was terminated, Bob Erisman and I had lunch at Childs in the Empire State Building. We reminisced about working together. I leaned back after coffee and said, "Bob, I have a confession to make."

  His eyebrows went up.

  "Remember that writer whose stories you hated at first, and I told you I saw some talent in him?"

  "You mean 'Bushwhack at Aransas Pass'?"

  "Yeah. Well, I used a pen name and submitted that and all those other stories through an agent. I wanted you to know."

  Bob smiled. "I guess confession is good for the soul. Remember those western and sports novels and novellas you weren't permitted to buy because they were written under contract?"

  "Sure."

  "Well, what do you think I was doing at home in Mystic, Connecticut, after I checked your work and wrote blurbs and titles?"

  "You?"

  He nodded.

  We had a drink together and toasted the end of an era.

  In contrast to the decline of the pulps, Martin Goodman Publications' subsidiary, Timely Comics, was flourishing. Goodman offered me a transfer, a job working for his son-in-law Stan Lee, who was in charge of the comic book line and has since become the head of a multimillion-dollar corporation called Marvel. Since my $17.25-a-month rent was almost due, I accepted what I considered a detour on my journey toward a literary career.

  Stan Lee was a lanky, shy young man who kept pretty much to himself and let his editors deal with the scriptwriters, cartoonists, and lettering crew. Writers turned in plot synopses. Stan read them, and as a matter of course, would accept one or two from each of the regulars he referred to as his "stable." As one of his front men, I would pass along the comments and criticism. The writers would then develop them in script form, with dialogue and actions for each panel, much like movie screenplays.

  Because of my experience editing Marvel, and because I'd sold a few science fiction stories by then, Stan allowed me to specialize in the horror, fantasy, suspense, and science fiction comic books. Naturally, I began submitting story ideas, getting freelance assignments, and supplementing my salary by writing the scripts on my own time.

  One of the ideas I wrote, but didn't submit to him, I called "Brainstorm." It started out:

  The first guy in the test to raise the I.Q. from a low normal 90 to genius level ... He goes through the experience, and then is thrown back to what he was ... he is no brighter than he was before, but having had a sample of light, he can never be the same. The pathos of a man who knows what it is to be brilliant and to know that he can never again have the things that he tasted for the first time, including a brilliant, beautiful woman he fell in love with and with whom he can no longer have any contact.

  I didn't submit it to Stan Lee because something told me it should be more than a comic book script. I knew I would do it someday after I learned how to write.

  In the fall of 1952, in violation of Commandment Three—"Thou shalt not marry while in psychotherapy"—I proposed to Aurea and she accepted.

  When I told Stan Lee about it, he rubbed his hands together and gloated. "That's great, Dan. Get married. Buy a house, take on a big mortgage. Buy a fancy car. Then you won't be so independent."

  Phil and Morton Klass threw rice at Aurea and me as we left City Hall. A big wedding party at Peter Fland's Studio. Models and friends and a few relatives. The wedding cake was a cheesecake from Lindy's.

  We didn't buy a house. We moved into my cold-water bachelor pad. Aurea was still working for Peter Fland, and I was once again trying to rewrite my Merchant Marine novel while freelancing scripts for Stan.

  A few months later, Aurea phoned, sounding upset. "Peter and his new partner are arguing. I think they're going to break up. You'd better come over and see that I get paid."

  I left my writing desk, and went to the studio. Before the day was over, Aurea had left Fland. The partner had offered us a deal. He wanted Aurea as a photographer and fashion stylist and me as an advertising copywriter and salesman. We invested our savings in the fashion photography business and celebrated dreams of success.

  Our partner, I soon discovered, seemed to be an incorrigible liar—at least that's what I believed at the time. I survived the year only by assuming that when he said it was nighttime, it was really daytime. The dream of business success turned into a recurrent nightmare. The partner is standing in front of me on a subway platform. I feel a rage.... I raise both hands and step forward.... Then another train, the elevated train of my childhood, thunders past my bed and I pull back, turn away, and hide under the covers. Never mind. I sold out to him, and we lost the savings we invested in the company.

  No longer able to afford twice-weekly psychoanalysis sessions, I violated the Fourth Commandment by giving my therapist one fifty-minute-hour's notice.

  I heard his voice from behind—actually speaking to me!

  "You are a great mistake making. You, the rules knew when we started. You must pay for whatever appointments you for the rest of the month don't keep."

  I got off the couch, looked him in the eye, and paid him. "Thanks for the memories."

  Just as I later transformed my Tests and Measurements advisor into Burt the tester who administers the inkblot test to Charlie in "Flowers for Algernon," I see now that my ex-shrink was probably the model for Dr. Strauss.

  For the purpose of exploring the writing life, let's set aside the current arguments for or against psychoanalysis. Over the years, as a writer, I have come to believe strongly in two of Freud's ideas: the power of the unconscious as a motivating force directing behavior, and his method of free association to plumb subconscious connections.

  Since most writers use their own experiences to breathe life into their characters, and to create believable settings and actions, those two concepts provided me with ways to explore a lifetime accumulation of material, as well as the tools with which to retrieve them. My dream of becoming a writer grew out of my love of books and storytelling, but the only material I can really call my own is stored deep in the unconscious area of my root cellar. I use free association like a gardener's spade to dig out connected memories, bring them into the light, and replant them where they can bloom.

  Many years later, when I was developing the novel version of Flowers for Algernon, I felt the book needed a psychoanalytic session between Dr. Strauss and Charlie. I struggled with it. Then, frustrated, I put it out of my mind. A few weeks later, I awoke early one morning, feeling the answer surfacing in my mind—coming close to the barrier. I lay there until the mental pictures came through—myself stretched out on my analyst's couch
fighting to break through the Monday Morning Crust.

  Although I didn't know it at the time, my shrink had earned his fee.

  To write the scene, I just gave that memory to Charlie.

  Part Three

  Mind over Matter

  11. Looking for Charlie

  DURING THE NEXT FEW MONTHS, the idea of artificially increasing human intelligence surfaced in my mind many times. It was a period of false starts, experiments, trial and error. Some of the early notes suggest opening episodes and different names for the main character.

  An officer recommends his cousin for the experiment of having his I.Q. changed. Walton is a bachelor who has long been in love with a girl who works in the tapes library...

  Steve Dekker has been in and out of prison more times than he can count. It seems that practically every time he pulls a job he gets caught. He has this self-defeating kind of personality that ends up in failure. He decides that this is because he's not smart enough—also there's a girl he's nuts about who won't give him a tumble, because he's not bright. So when he reads an article about making animals smarter he barges in and offers himself as a guinea-pig for brain surgery.

  The story of raising Flint Gargan's I.Q. Flint is a guy who is crude, enjoys scrawling dirty pix on bathroom walls, fights at the drop of a syllable ... he's also filled with corny emotions, cries over sentimental gush, loves weddings, babies, dogs—has his own dog.

  Flint hated school when he was a boy, left school to go out on his own as a plumber's helper ... figures school's not so bad for some, but doesn't think that he would have been helped much by it.

  I try not to edit or judge while I'm writing. I let the raw material pour out, and if I feel it's good, I shape it later. But I didn't like Steve Dekker or Flint Gargan, and I wanted nothing more to do with them, or the dozens of other characters that appeared on my pages. I was searching my memory, my feelings, the world around me, for a clue to the character of this story.