So this is how a person can come to despise himself - knowing he’s doing the wrong thing and not being able to stop. Against my will I found myself drawn to Alice’s apartment. She was surprised but she let me in.
‘You’re soaked. The water is streaming down your face.’
'It’s raining. Good for the flowers.’
'Come on in. Let me get you a towel. You’ll catch pneumonia.’
'You’re the only person I can talk to,’ I said. 'Let me stay.’
'I’ve got a pot of fresh coffee on the stove. Go ahead and dry yourself and then we can talk.’
I looked around while she went to get the coffee. It was the first time I had ever been inside her apartment. I felt a sense of pleasure, but there was something disturbing about the room.
Everything was neat. The porcelain figurines were in a straight line on the window-ledge, all facing the same way. And the throw-pillows on the sofa hadn’t been thrown at all, but were regularly spaced on the clear plastic covers that protected the upholstery. Two of the end tables had magazines, neatly stacked so that the titles were clearly visible. On one table: The Reporter, The Saturday Review, The New Yorker; on the other: Mademoiselle, House Beautiful, and Reader’s Digest.
On the far wall, across from the sofa, hung an ornately framed reproduction of Picasso’s 'Mother and Child,’ and directly opposite, above the sofa, was a painting of a dashing Renaissance courtier, masked, sword in hand, protecting a frightened, pink-cheeked maiden. Taken all together, it was wrong. As if Alice couldn’t make up her mind who she was and which world she wanted to live in.
"—
So apparently Daniel Keyes - author of my Absolute Favorite Book of All Time, Flowers for Algernon - died on Tuesday. I know that when a famous person dies you’re supposed to quote their most Profound Statement on the Human Condition so as to draw attention to their wisdom and the impact they made on popular culture or art or our very humanity or whatever - but I’m not going to do that.
It’s not that Flowers for Algernon isn’t a beautiful book, or that Daniel Keyes wasn’t a good writer; rather, unlike a lot of my favorite books, this novel affects me in ways that go beyond its sentence-level style or overall aesthetic (and, let’s be real: for all its wonderful plot- and character-based moments, this is not a book that does particularly brilliant things with language). It affects me on an emotional level, a philosophical level, a psychological level - and, yes, a human level. It is sad and earnest and morally outraged and remarkably kind. It is my favorite book, a book I have re-read with almost-embarrassing frequency, and its author - rest in peace, Danny Boy - accomplished the kind of literary magic that I will always aspire to and never achieve but continue to aim for anyway.
This brings me to the passage I have chosen to quote - one of my favorite scenes from the book. It culminates in one of many awkward-yet-strangely-moving sexual encounters poor Charlie Gordon faces in his life as a genius (I’m not quoting that part of the scene for reasons of length and, you know, propriety) as well as demonstrates - in a refreshingly simple way - the main conflict of the narrative: whether it is better to be dumb and happy or smart and miserable. Additionally, it gives us some insight into Alice, who I have always related to quite a bit (though ever since I read Bossypants I have been forced to somewhat agree with Tina Fey’s description of Alice as “the lady teacher from the college who realizes, ‘I’ve got to stop dry-humping this mentally challenged guy!’”).
It is also a testament to, again, the thing that makes this book so memorable and lasting: its characters, their connections, and the ways in which their desire for intellectual credibility stifles their emotional expressiveness. The best art - and, I think, the best artists - is capable of both intellectual and emotional depth; Flowers for Algernon, and Charlie and Alice - and their creator, Daniel Keyes - understand that. Writers equipped with both Keyes’s intelligence and sensitivity are the only writers worth reading, and the only writers worth striving to be.
So even now, as a college graduate and would-be scholar of capital 'L’ Literature (and aspiring writer of lower-case 'l’ literature), I am not ashamed to name Flowers for Algernon as my favorite book, nor to mourn the man who wrote it as a gifted individual who wholly succeeded at the only thing a writer is really obligated to do: make his audience think, and feel.
