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Pages read today: 70 for Meredith, 10 for Ilya :)

So I finished Flowers for Algernon, as my esteemed co-author has already informed you yesterday, Gentle Reader. You didn't think there'd be a quiz, now did you?

Flowers is fairly famous, as sci-fi books go; its reputation precedes it. I knew the basic outline of the story long before I picked up the book. (I also dimly recollect that I once saw the '60s movie version, starring a younger and spryer version of Spider-Man's Uncle Ben as Charlie Gordon, but I knew the same basic outline before that, too.)  Spoilers, I guess?: it's your basic, classic story of a rise to greatness and/or power, followed by a decline and fall. Charlie Gordon begins the novel as mentally challenged, has his mental capacities greatly enhanced by a sci-fi surgical procedure (there's something or other muttered about "enzymes" also), and then tragically returns to his original level as the effects of the surgery prove to be temporary; and this is all traced through entries from the diary that Charlie himself keeps over the course of the experience.

I wonder if it's the way the story embodies that archetypal rise-and-fall arc that draws people to the novel, because really it's only competently written. The prose and dialogue are efficient but never especially memorable. Some of the ideas would have been best left out entirely: there's some passages that feature a troublingly unquestioning acceptance of musty Freudian notions, and in general the symbolism is pretty unsubtle. (Charlie in his genius phase thinks of his past self almost as a different person, so of course there's a scene where he talks to his past persona in the mirror; that sort of thing.)

The novel was expanded by Keyes from a novelette he published in 1960 in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, when it won the Hugo award (for "best science novelette," according to the author bio in my edition). I haven't read the shorter version, but I feel fairly confident that the inserted material Keyes used to pad out the story to novel length are the "flashbacks" to his troubled childhood that Charlie describes in his diary. These flashbacks have almost no relationship to the rest of the story, and in their early appearances they're written in a style that doesn't match up with Charlie's intelligence level.

The best or most interesting thing about the novel, the point at which it doesn't just follow along with the archetypal arc, is how it depicts Charlie's rise with all its thorns intact (hi, mixed metaphor!). Despite the way he dissociates mentally from old Charlie, genius Charlie makes, several times, the point that old Charlie was a person, a human being, deserving of more respect than he ever received; that his meteoric ascent in IQ, in other words, is not the only worthwhile thing about him. At the same time, the novel also describes how, once he reaches genius levels, Charlie falls prey to arrogance and contempt for the people around him, whose intelligence his own prodigious mental powers have outstripped. I appreciated these elements as complications, however minor, of the archetype.

The next book I've selected to read (3a) is Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim. Here, again, I have seen the '60s movie, starring Peter O'Toole (RIP) not long after Lawrence of Arabia, but have yet to read the novel (though I am a big fan of Heart of Darkness).