← The Read Well Podcast
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- [00:04]
A
Welcome to this week's episode of the Read well podcast. My name is Eddie Hood and I'm your host, where I believe it's more important to read well than to be well read. So grab your favorite book, open up your notes, and let's get ready to learn something fascinating. I am really excited for this week's episode of the Read well podcast because we're talking about my favorite book from this year's reading. It's Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keys. And I heard about this book through my good friend Dr. Martin Jacobson, who's been on the show several times. And I want to welcome you back, Dr. Jacobson, or as we like to call you, Marty on the show. How you doing?
- [00:44]
B
I'm good. I do have a little announcement.
- [00:46]
A
Oh, announce away.
- [00:48]
B
My department conducts a great books lecture once a month, and I was the speaker this month. It was Tuesday.
- [00:57]
A
Okay.
- [00:58]
B
And we talked about Herman Hess's Siddhartha.
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A
Okay.
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B
And as I was looking it over, I noticed that it sort of had my note taking system going on. In the regular book, I've got, you know, highlighting and underlining and marginalia. Then I make notes on a little pad.
- [01:19]
A
Okay.
- [01:20]
B
Which I then formalize into a legal pad.
- [01:23]
A
I love this.
- [01:24]
B
I. And as I was looking everything over for today, I've got the same system.
- [01:30]
A
Yes.
- [01:31]
B
And these notes are five years old because I gave a Great Books lecture on Flowers for Algernon five years ago.
- [01:38]
A
Yeah. This is fantastic. You're a note taker. That's why we talk a lot. For those of you who don't know, Dr. Jacobson, he teaches linguistics and he's sort of dabbled in English and literature and all sorts of stuff at West Texas A and M and has been a really fun guest on the show because we have similar sort of approaches to reading books. Again, reading slow, taking notes when it really matters, and trying to apply the ideas. And this year, as we've had our discussions, you kept mentioning this book, Flowers for Algernon. And I was secretly in the back of my head going, I have no idea what he's talking about. I don't know this book. And so I, I, I, after interviewing you once or twice, I went out and I, I looked up the book and I read it. And this is the first, this is the first book where, where I think I cried. I don't, I don't cry. Not because my crying is broken, but I actually, like, I was jumping up and screaming. I had tears. I was angry, I was happy. I felt all of the things in this book. So it easily became my favorite fictional book of 2024. And so, first of all, I just want to thank you for. For giving me this book that was just a really great gift and telling me to go read it. So today we're going to talk about why. Why, why this book was so moving, why you love it, what your note taking process has been on it, and any insights. I'd love to go through some of the characters and the plot points. But ultimately what we do on this show is I like to read books that challenge the way we think. This book does that really well. This book challenges the way we think because it asks a specific question. And here's the philosophical question behind Flowers for Algernon. And then we'll kick this discussion off. The question is, is it ethical to experiment on human beings? Is it, is that, is that a wise thing? Are we crossing an ethical threshold by doing experimentation and playing God, as it were? Is that a fair way to sort of put the crux of this book, do you think?
- [03:37]
B
Yes, that seems right to me. That's certainly one of the things that it does. It has a lot of themes in it. And he also does a great job. This is more of a cultural thing, I think, but he does a great job of capturing psychology from the late 1950s. So the outlook of the book has almost a historical kind of value to it because he studied psychology. His first degree was in psychology.
- [04:05]
A
Oh, really? I didn't know that.
- [04:07]
B
Yeah, yeah, he got a. A degree in psychology in 1950, and then he got a degree in American literature later. Another sort of fun fact is he worked as an editor in the comic book world and actually worked for Stan Lee.
- [04:21]
A
Really?
- [04:21]
B
Just kind of interesting fact. Yeah.
- [04:23]
A
Okay.
- [04:24]
B
But he got a teaching certificate so that he could have a paying job, which that's definitely reversed itself since 1957, I think. But it was. It was an interesting moment that, you know, he decided to go back and he became an English teacher. And that's what he did for a while. He taught high school English for a while.
- [04:41]
A
Well, I'm glad he went down the lurch.
- [04:42]
B
Flowers for Algernon. He was the guy who wrote Flowers for Algernon and he was a creative writing professor after that. Yeah, a couple of different places, but that's. Right, that ethical thing do we have. It's a Frankenstein story almost.
- [04:57]
A
Yeah. Yeah, it is. So here's. Here's a fun thing to think about. When it comes to ethics, there are always sort of two sides to this question. There is the sort of spiritual, metaphysical side. The ethics are given to us from a higher being, some sort of he, she, it that created all of this. And for those who aren't on that side, the other version is ethics are defined by mankind and are somewhat malleable, and we're learning how and what is allowed. And so this book is pushing the envelope on that question. Now, for all of you who have not read Flowers for Algernon yet, there will be spoilers in this, but we're going to share this in such a way, I don't think the spoilers are going to ruin your enjoyment of this book. I think they will actually enhance it. Most, most fictional books, you don't want to know what's coming. But what we're going to talk about today will sort of arm you with some things that will deepen your appreciation for these characters, like Charlie Gordon and a few other people. So should you watch this? If you haven't read the book yet, I don't think you'll be harmed. I think you'll actually benefit from it. But make the choice. If you don't like spoilers, come back and watch it after you've read the book. Let me sort of set the stage real fast because I think this is important. If you've never heard of this book, the main idea is that Charlie Gordon is a mentally handicapped man in his early 30s, and he is the protagonist of the book. Now, he. He lives in an institution full of mentally handicapped people. And at the head of this institution are two scientists. There's a. There's one who's sort of a neuroscientist, and there's one who's more of a psychologist. Right. And what they're doing, kind of behind the veil is these two scientists are performing experiments on a mouse. That's the mouse on the book. Right. Flowers for Algina. And what they're trying to do is improve intelligence. Right. Dr. Jacobson, that's. That's the goal that they've. They've.
- [06:50]
B
Yes, that's right.
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A
They've discovered a procedure they can perform on a living creature that will make it smarter. Who wouldn't want that? Right. I want to get smarter with a quick operation. And. And it works on the mouse, at least in the beginning. This mouse is able to go through very complex mazes quickly. It starts to learn rapidly, and they think, this is great. Let's move it to a human being. And so what Marty was saying is they begin to look at their pool of patients in the mental institution, and they had to pick someone who was going to be right for this procedure. And as you pointed out, they picked a young man named Charlie Gordon in his early 30s. And you mentioned that they picked him because of his sort of work ethic. What do you mean by that?
- [07:35]
B
Well, they, Alice Kenyon says that he's very earnest in his studies and that he works very hard at them. And it's that work ethic, as you put it, that's going to make the procedure work because he's got sort of a native endowment for conscientiousness and pertinacity. Right. And he has a job. He works at a bakery. So it's, you know, he does have models for this kind of thing too. And if he's going to carry out the, you know, if the outcomes are going to be null, if the subject has no gumption or no attributes for performance. Right.
- [08:18]
A
Ah, okay. So. So, so these two scientists, the, the neuroscientist and the psychologist are going, who do we use? We can't. I mean, we only got one shot at this because our careers are on the line. If we don't get this right, we're gonna get a lot of trouble. We're experimenting on a human. So we need to get somebody who's gonna take this seriously, who actually wants to get smarter, who's gonna put the work in. And so they're looking at all their patients. And Charlie is this nice, lovable, sweet guy who works at a bakery. He sweeps floors at the bakery. That's pretty much all he can handle is like basic menial tasks. He was given the job in the bakery as a kindness, pretty much. Right. That the guy owns the bakery, is helping him because he knows he's mentally handicapped. And. But everybody likes Charlie. Everybody's friends with Charlie. At least he thinks. And that's another interesting thing I want to explore with you today is how friendship changes as Charlie changes, because that's interesting. Yeah. But in the beginning he is a hard working, naive, simple guy who wants to get smarter. He actually wants to be smart. And he knows that he, he's not everything he could be. So that's our first, that's our first step in the book. Right? He's chosen because of who he is. Yeah. Okay, well, so you mentioned that there's this wonderful lady in there named Alice. Alice is his teacher. Let's talk. So what kind of teacher is she? She's, she's, she almost teaches like little kids and people like Charlie pretty much, if I remember. Is that right?
- [09:47]
B
Right. She, she works in The Institute.
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A
Okay.
- [09:51]
B
And she teaches mentally challenged adults. And Charlie was one of the students in her class.
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A
Okay.
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B
And he was sort of, I guess, the most capable one, first of all. But he also had that job, which means that he has other skills that will help when, you know, he starts to change and all that kind of thing. Interesting thing about the choice of it, though, is was he capable of informed consent for this procedure?
- [10:19]
A
That's a good question.
- [10:20]
B
That's like, this is one of the things when I teach this to my freshmen, this is the big question. And there's really no way that he could possibly have been capable of informed consent. But back in 1966, when this novel was published, that was probably a lesser question than it is in 2024, where consent's a much bigger part of our common parlance and. And a bigger consideration socially. But the. There are several episodes in the book where Neymar or Strauss or even Alice will say, man, we gave you this opportunity.
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A
Yeah.
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B
Like, it's a gift, right. That. That they're doing for him, which it's not at all. And as we go through the book, Charlie starts to say, I'm a human being. I'm a human being. And I actually did a word count on that.
- [11:14]
A
So while you're looking for that one.
- [11:16]
B
At some point about how many times. That said, it's about 60 times that he refers to himself as a person or a human being. But Strauss and Niemer don't think of him that way. They think of him more as a different Algernon, as another test subject. And there's this great episode where Charlie beats Algernon and then he beats him 10 times. It's really interesting to me that it's 10 times, but they ran Algernon through the maze 10 times. So it's a procedure. It's a procedure. It's evidence that it was a procedure being performed on him.
- [11:48]
A
So for people who haven't read the book yet, what Dr. Jacobson's talking about is that there are the two scientists, Professor Niemer and Professor Strauss. Nehmer's the neuroscientist. Strauss is the psychologist. They don't necessarily see Charlie as a human being. They see him as a test subject. Now, as they perform this operation on him, because he is chosen, he. He begins to grow in intelligence. At the very beginning, he's same old Charlie after the procedure, and he's somewhat disappointed in that. Charlie thought he would instantly be smarter. He has to put the work in, though, and apply himself and the neural Connections begin to happen. The synapses fire faster and faster, and eventually he becomes quite intelligent. But as he grows in intelligence, his understanding of self changes and he becomes a human being, which is what Dr. Jacobs is talking about. In the beginning, Charlie's just happy to be in the room. But as he gets smarter, he realizes, wait a minute. I'm a human being. I'm a separate entity. I'm a creature with rights. I have rights. And this is metaphorical of what happens when people get educated. The more educated we get, the more we understand that we have a specific place in society, that we have rights, that we should act a specific way and so on. But what I like is, you said that Charlie begins to beat Algernon. For everybody listening, you haven't read the book. Algernon's the mouse. What Dr. Jacobson means there is that the scientists have been testing the mouse's intelligence by running him through a maze. After Charlie gets the same procedure, they give Charlie pretty much an identical maze and see if he can run the same pattern and get there faster than the mouse. And for the first several days or weeks after the procedure, he can't. He's still plain old Charlie, and he gets frustrated. But eventually his intelligence picks up and he starts to beat the mouse through the maze, right? And it becomes apparent that, oh, Charlie's getting smarter now. So another thing that I think is interesting is how the book is written. I think the style of the writing is probably the most enjoyable part of the book, and it threw me off in the beginning. But the book is written kind of. Well, it's written in what we call progress reports. It's like a diary of Charlie Gordon. So can you talk to us about why that style of progress report matters and how it helps us experience his intelligence as it grows?
- [14:10]
B
Yeah, well, we refer to that as an epistolary novel. And an epistolary novel is basically a novel that comprises written records of some kind, whether they be letters, telegrams. Dracula is an epistolary novel as well. So. And this. I mean, you bring us up and it puts us right in the middle of. Of the issue. Okay? We're getting our understanding of this highly sophisticated procedure from the guy it was performed on, and it's performed on him for the very reason that he's not very bright. Right? So, as you know, Shakespeare says, is this a tale told by an idiot? I mean, that's a valid question. Okay. It seems judgmental. But then there's another passage in the book where. And they make this point more than Once he's the only person who can tell the story because nobody else is experiencing this rapid increase in intelligence. He goes from 68 to 185. In IQ, that's seven standard deviations. The way IQ tests work is that all of the possible scores are laid on a bell curve, and every standard deviation is like another level of intellectual capacity. Okay. And we see Charlie sort of go through these, and there's an interesting passage about that, actually.
- [15:32]
A
Okay. So while you're looking for this, I think that what I want to point out as Dr. Jacobson reads these passages, the progress reports change in quality over time. So in the very beginning of the book, as Charlie's writing, it's. You can definitely tell he's very sort of simple minded. Almost all the words are spelled wrong. It's like chaotically written. It's actually hard for me to read. In the beginning, I was like, oh, my gosh, what's happened? Then I realized, oh, this is the handicapped guy writing. And he's. He's being asked to write these reports by the scientists every day. How are you feeling? But each day, as the progress reports change, he gets smarter. And you can tell because the grammar gets fixed. He starts crossing out words and spelling them right. And then he begins using words I don't understand. Eventually in the book, I'm like, he's. He's passed me. And that's the interesting part of this book, is that you can identify for yourself when Charlie gets smarter than you.
- [16:23]
B
Yeah.
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A
Oh, he just passed me.
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B
And I think, too, that it's a brilliant instance of the writer showing instead of telling.
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A
Mm.
- [16:31]
B
We're not just getting this sort of description of how much smarter Charlie is. We see his writing change. We see that he. There's this great passage. It's April 7th, April 6th and 7th. It's page 38 in the book. Today I learned the comma.
- [16:48]
A
Yeah.
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B
This is a comma, a period with a tail. Ms. Kenyon says it's important because it makes writing better. She said somebody could lose a lot of money if a comma isn't in the right place. And he's got a comma, like every two or three words, right?
- [17:04]
A
Yeah.
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B
Now, what's interesting about this, to me, and this is speculation at some level, but this is the language acquisition process. This is how language acquisition works. And this, the language acquisition hypothesis was actually kind of a new thing when Keys was studying psychology.
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A
Interesting.
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B
And basically the idea is that every healthy human has the capacity for language acquisition and what, to put it in sort of an extremely abbreviated form. We're born with all the rules, and we pair out the ones that don't apply to the language that we keep hearing from our parents and caregivers. And what Charlie's doing here in this paragraph is he's trying out the comma everywhere it can go, right? So he's applying all the possible rules. Then in the next one, he says I use the comma wrong. It's punctuation, Miss Kenny. And told me to look up long words in the dictionary. So there we go, right? What are we doing? We're figuring out what vocabulary applies. Then on the next page, on page 39, April 8. I read the grammar book last night and it explains the whole thing. So the language acquisition process takes about five years from birth. And actually the first linguistic interactions begin about three months old.
- [18:32]
A
Wow.
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B
The bedrock for it, like turn taking facial expressions, non verbal cues, all of those things are sort of put in place. And then actually we get the grammar rule before we get the next level of, of speaking. So, for instance, we know a sentence before we can use a sentence. Okay, so what we've got in these two pages here is that Keys has compressed this whole theory, I'm guessing, has compressed this whole theory into a couple of pages of writing. And he is so good at that.
- [19:04]
A
This passage you pointed out with the comma was one of the parts where I, I audibly laughed out loud. It was so funny. And here's why, everybody. Because as, as Dr. Jacobson's pointing out, he. You've got this young guy who's just so excited about knowledge and he, he's just taught the comma. And if you have to see the words on the page, because he uses. Once he learns what it is, he puts it everywhere. Like Marty said, I just have to read this. He says, if a comma comma isn't in comma, the right comma, place, comma, I got, comma, some money, comma, that I, comma, say. It goes on for, like, sentence. He puts it in between every word. I just needed to point. And for me, that's how I feel about education. When I learn something new, I get excited about it. And I felt his excitement of learning about the comma. It just made me laugh. So good.
- [19:55]
B
So we mentioned IQ earlier. Here's a nice passage where we sort of mark Charlie's advance. Okay, where are we at page 49.
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A
Okay.
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B
Okay. And what's really interesting about this is we get. And this happens again and again in the book. We get Nehmer saying this Strauss saying that and either Bert or Alice saying something else. It's almost like thesis, antithesis, synthesis, except that when we get to the synthesis, Keys kind of pulls the rug out from under us. So let's read a paragraph here. I'm not sure what IQ is anyway. Professor Nehmer says it was something that measured how intelligent you were. Like a scale at the drugstore weighs pounds. And, Ken, that is such a great sentence for Keyes writing. Yeah, but Dr. Strauss had a big argument with him and said an IQ didn't weigh intelligence at all. He said an IQ showed how much intelligence you could get. Like the numbers on the outside of a measuring cup. You still had to fill the cup with stuff. Now, here's. Here's the third one. But I asked Bert Seldon. Burt's an interesting character. I asked Bert Seldon, who gives me my intelligence tests and works with Algernon. So I asked the guy who does the work, and he said that some people would say both of them were wrong. And according to the things he's been reading up on, he's a PhD student at this time. The IQ measures a lot of different things, including some of the things you learned already, and it isn't really a good measure of intelligence at all. And Keys does this every 35, 40 pages. He says, well, we, you know, maybe we're trying to increase intelligence, and we don't really know what it is. We're not entirely sure that we can even measure it. Right. The next paragraph. So I still don't know what IQ is, and everybody says it's something different. Mine is about a hundred now, and it's going to be over 150 soon. Put that in place. Menza is about 132. So we're moving really fast.
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A
He does. He does. Like, it's a slow. Then it really goes for Charlie.
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B
Yeah, but that's. That's an interesting point in the novel, I think, where the whole mechanism we're using to justify the. The procedure that they performed on him may not even have any merit. It's. I'm getting so worked up here. I'm sorry, but that's interesting to me. Another. Another little passage that comes from something you said about Charlie being human. Page 59.
- [22:30]
A
It's a little bit.
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B
After this, it's getting harder for me to write down all my thoughts and feelings because I know that people are reading them. Maybe it would be better if I could keep some of these reports private for a while. Now, there's a word that he probably never thought of before was privacy. Okay. I'm going to ask Dr. Strauss. Why should it suddenly start to bother me?
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A
Yeah.
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B
The idea that he might have a private thought, why should that be bothering me? He didn't even have the. I mean, again, it goes back to the informed consent question.
- [23:07]
A
I. I need to spend some time there for just a minute. First of all, I love that you pointed this section out, because this is where we. Again, Charlie begins to see himself as a real human being and realizes he has a private side and a public side. Children don't know. Know that I have little kids who at all have no idea that running around in the street naked is a problem. But once they hit about eight or nine, they're like, very concerned. Right. Like, it kicks in and certain things need to be kept private. We see that in Charlie, which is why I think Daniel Keys is such a brilliant writer, was because he, He. He got all that psychology in there, and it makes you as a reader, go, I have felt that. I have felt that time in my life where I realized I need to keep some things private. Right. And so you can instantly relate with the progress Charlie's making. I do want to go back to the informed consent thing for just two seconds. That is so personal to me and means so much. I hadn't thought of that. And now I want to read the entire book again. But for. For the people who watch my show, many of you know that I recently, well, a year and a half ago, left the Mormon Church. And one of the. One of the reasons why I did that is because I really struggle with the lack of informed consent in that specific religion. I'm not against all religion. I'm just saying in that specific one, case in point, I actually served as a missionary for that church when I went. And we were encouraged to meet new people. And on the second discussion, that we would meet with them. So three or four days after we were committing them to be baptized, within a couple weeks. They don't know anything about church history. They don't know the fact that they're going to have to pay 10% of their income to the church for the rest of their life. They don't know that they can't drink coffee or tea yet and they're having to commit and put a date on the calendar. They don't know any. There is so much to that religion that they need to know about before they can intelligently say, yes, this is a good choice for me. So when you said that, it, like, it was like a dagger in my heart. Of like, wow, this is like, informed consent is so critical. I just did a conversation with Dr. Michael Humer. He teaches at University of.
- [25:06]
B
I saw part of it.
- [25:07]
A
I watch philosopher. He specializes in epistemology, or what is knowledge? Essentially, that's his thing. So it's a lot of fun that we're talking about this today. We're watching Charlie's understanding of knowledge change and how that all interacts with informed consent. So to sum up, everybody, real quickly before we move on, when you make decisions in life, it's critical that you do so with informed consent. And Charlie's a great example of what happens when you make decisions without informed consent. Okay, I'm off my soapbox right here.
- [25:42]
B
Epistemology. I wrote it in the margin.
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A
Okay. Yeah, there you go.
- [25:45]
B
I do think that this is a work of epistemology. I mean, it is the big question. I mean, he talks about memory. He talks about whether we can measure intelligence or not. Memory is this huge thing. And again, we. We've got a. An older model, I think. And. And I think that even probably now, but especially back when this book was written, the idea of how much you can remember equals how smart you are. It's called crystallized intelligence. And I think they play on that a lot because every time he assesses his own abilities, it's whether he remembers or not. And he talks about, I'm remembering now, I'm remembering now, I'm remembering now. And that those. It's throughout the book they talk about memory and I'm remembering and all those kinds of things. And he really. Keys really hits that definition without ever saying it specifically, I guess you might say. But listen to this passage from page 221. It goes back to a passage I. I talked about earlier when we were talking about what IQ was. He was talking to Bert Selden that evening. And the next few days, I immersed myself in psychology texts. Clinical personality, psychometrics, which is the measure of intelligence, learning, experimental psychology, animal psychology, physiological psychology, behaviorist, gestalt, analytical, functional, dynamic. This is really interesting how it becomes this big list of words, right? Which means that there are a lot of theories going on about it. I think that's what Keys is trying to suggest is that, you know, when you've got this many approaches going on at the same time, it's up in the air, right? So it's a subtle sort of suggestion anyway. And all the rest of the ancient and modern factions, schools and systems of thought. The depressing thing is that so many of the ideas on which our psychologists Base their belief about human intelligence, memory and learning are all wishful thinking. So look where we are. We are so far into this book. We've had bookends almost from that first passage where he talks about IQ to this passage later in the book where we just don't really know that. This is a huge red flag. Right. It's like wishful thinking.
- [28:07]
A
Yeah. The question here is, how do I know that I know what I know?
- [28:12]
B
Right, Right.
- [28:14]
A
That's. That's what we should all be asking ourselves. And that's what one. That's one of the questions that this book is exploring. I'm going to say that again. How do I know that I know what I know? I'm walking around all day long with beliefs about things political, religious, ideological, sociological, and so on. And I'm pretty convinced in those belief patterns or those sets of beliefs. But how do I know that I know those things? How can I prove that that knowledge is correct? And it's interesting because as Charlie goes from a very naive, unknowing person to reading the most complex books and the complex fields, and he. He finds out that the more he reads, the less he knows. And.
- [28:52]
B
Right. That's a great.
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A
Yeah.
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B
It goes along with the Platonic thing. Right. Because there's a huge Platonic overlay in the book. And it's introduced by a paragraph from book six of the Republic.
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A
Yeah.
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B
The metaphor of the eye. And, you know, that whole idea of cave is in there. He uses the word cave four times in the book. What's interesting about that to me is that he uses the word cage a lot more often because Algernon's in a cage, but he doesn't like it. And Charlie, you know, in the middle of the book, frees him from the cage, I guess, because he thinks he deserves to be freed from the cage, and he builds him this elaborate new cage to play in, but it's just a prettier prison.
- [29:40]
A
Yeah.
- [29:41]
B
And I think that Charlie starts to see that same problem. Right. Because he talks about being in a cave. He uses the word four times. But. But it's intriguing to me that even though he ends up writing scientific papers about this and he learns languages overnight, and he's got all these sort of, you know, unreal attributes. I mean, one of the arguments is that this is a work of science fiction. And I think that's a really good argument. And that's how I class the novel when I teach it to my students, is that it's a work of science fiction. So we get the Fiction part, right. That you can get that much smarter that fast, but that you couldn't possibly get that much smarter doing it on your own. That there has to be some kind of supernatural help. And again, I mean, I think you're. I think your religion comparison is an apt one because Charlie believes in these people. They're like priests to him in a way, right? And they offer this salvation to him. Right? It is a kind of salvation. And. And he's the chosen one. He's. You know, there are all these sort of metaphors that are similar, but he doesn't understand everything. And that's. That's the way a lot of religions work, to confirm them before they know it. Right? Confirm them before they know it.
- [31:00]
A
I had not at all made this. This connection religiously until this discussion today. And now the book is even more important to me. This book is a journey of a human being. And you mentioned that the word bookends.
- [31:12]
B
Because this.
- [31:13]
A
This is actually an interesting story because we start with Charlie in a very disabled position. He grows to superhuman power intellectually, far out past, and even publicly shames the neural. The neuroscientists that operated on him. Right? He. He's at a party at one point, and this neuroscientist is trying to look intellectual and share his theories. And Charlie steps and he's like, actually. And he starts to correct him and say, that's wrong. The current research says this. So he's surpassed his. What's the word? You. His preachers, his pastors. I can't remember what you said.
- [31:45]
B
Creators.
- [31:48]
A
He surpassed them. But. And this is an important point, and this is a spoiler, so close your ears if you need to, you guys. Charlie. So there's a point in the book where the intelligence becomes too much. It becomes detrimental to the creature. And we see it in Algernon first, because he has the operation first. Algernon begins to decline into madness. Declines into madness. Starts banging its head on the side of the cage, like, running around frantically in the maze. And Charlie sees this and starts panic, like, oh, is this. Is this where I'm headed? And. And Charlie begins to descend. And that is the most important part of this book for me because we see. We get to see the full arc of how the world treats Charlie when he's naive to. When he's super intelligent, to when he's back to a deteriorated state. Right, let's talk about that for just a minute. Let's talk about how the other characters treat him through that arc. So in the beginning, when he's simple, naive Charlie. What are people like to him? How do they treat him?
- [32:51]
B
Well, they make fun of him, they make sport of him. They play jokes on him. And he doesn't really know that they're doing that right. He says, I pulled a Charlie Gordon. That's kind of the key line that that Keys uses in that instance. And it sort of sums up everything that's going on. Well, I pulled a real Charlie Gordon. He doesn't really know what that means. He just has heard other people say it about him. Then as he gets smarter and continues to work at the bakery, he runs the big machine that nobody else is smart enough to use. And then everybody hates it. And an interesting thing is a great movie from the 90s called Phenomenon, where this kind of thing happens. John Travolta is the star of it. He's got a brain tumor that makes him brilliant. So there's a spoiler. You don't have to watch the movie now, but it's the same. He's a regular guy. He's an auto mechanic. He's affected by this brain tumor. It stimulates his mind. He does the same thing that Charlie does. He gets way smart, and then the tumor takes his life and. Sorry, I'm ruining the movie forever. It's a great movie. It's on Tubi. You should watch it.
- [33:55]
A
If you haven't anyway yet, it's your fault. It's. It's an old movie.
- [33:59]
B
That's right. It's 96. My God. Anyway. But what's interesting about it, as you say this, is that Neymar and Strauss aren't worried about him at all. They're worried about what's going to happen to them if this experiment doesn't fail. So they put him on display at this convention in Chicago, and they play the film of when they were doing the Rorschach test on him before, and he didn't know that they did that. There's your consent problem again. They were filming him and he didn't know they were filming him. And they're using it as a basis of comparison now. And they're showing people, without even mentioning to him, that they're exploiting what he used to be vis a vis what he is now, and more importantly to them, what we are for having made him this. Right. But there's again, there's this really interesting thing that Keys does in the book where we get Nemur, we get Strauss, and then we get either Alice or Bert and Alice and Bert and Alice is always sort of, you have A responsibility to these people, you have a responsibility to the Institute, you have a responsibility to knowledge, you have a responsibility to the future of others.
- [35:12]
A
And.
- [35:12]
B
And there's all these sorts of. Piled on him, right? And anyway, there's this. But there's this thesis, antithesis, synthesis thing going on throughout the book. But what's interesting about it is that Bert and Alice kind of understand how Charlie feels about it, but Niemer and Strauss don't even give a damn. They're just, how is this going to affect me? And then we find out, you know, there are other elements to that and that they are sort of seeking recognition and the benefits that go with it and all these other kinds of things. And. But there are hints throughout that even they know that he's probably not going to be intelligent forever. Another brilliant thing about Keys writing is that foreshadowing is usually subtle. But not in this book. Not in this book at all. It's like Keys is standing there with a sign in his hand saying, it's coming, it's coming. Right? And it doesn't make it any less tragic. But again, I think that the way that Keyes writes this book, and it's hard to pin down who's who, but what we're talking about here is the ancient Greek concept of hubris that, you know, the scientists are guilty of hubris and Charlie becomes guilty of hubris as well. And. But Charlie in. In the end, he at least has a moment where he's ashamed of the way that he used to act and he understands that there's an eqiq golf.
- [36:40]
A
The problem is that Charlie. Charlie does feel guilt about how he behaved, but he has to come down from that height into more normalcy before he starts to feel guilty about being a jerk in his intellect. Right? That's another lesson that sometimes when we're at the height of our. Of our podium, we can't see ourselves for what we really are. That hubris. Behold.
- [37:02]
B
Yeah, so here's this great passage. It's on page 77. It's a lie, I explained as we walked out into the lobby. Things just don't happen that way. Of course not. She laughed. It's a world of make believe. Oh, no, that's no answer. I insisted. Even in the world of make believe, there have to be rules. Parts have to be consistent and belong together. This kind of picture is a lie. Things are forced to fit because the writer or director or somebody wanted something in it that didn't belong. And it just doesn't feel right. And if that is not a masterful summary of Aristotle's Poetics. I've never seen one. So there, you know, again, Keys has got a sort of classical, tragic construction in this book where we rise to the top, fall straight down.
- [37:50]
A
Yeah.
- [37:51]
B
Okay. And it's because we have this ambition that is beyond our ability or is a result of an obsession that we're going to carry through no matter what happens. So you may compare it to Creon and Antigone. Right. That he just will not let go of this possibility. It's. I said so, and that's it. And we. I mean, this is that not exactly what Nehmer and Strauss are. Are doing to Charlie. I mean, even Alice, I think, to some degree, says, we're doing it anyway. We're doing this no matter what.
- [38:22]
A
Yeah.
- [38:23]
B
And no matter what is that Charlie has this dreadful experience in his life because of it. That's another question that I ask in the class and students really like to think about this. Was Charlie. Would he have been any less happy if this hadn't happened?
- [38:39]
A
That's an interesting question. He. If we go back to the concept of how people. Because I'm going to tie happiness to relationships. He has relationships all throughout the book. In the beginning, though, as you mentioned, people make fun of him, and he says, oh, I called another Charlie Gordon. But he thinks they're his friends. He thinks everybody loves him. He's having a great time. People are laughing with him. He doesn't realize they're laughing at him. He's not smart enough to know that yet. As he gets smarter, he actually begins to make some friends because he gets into the world of sort of normal intelligence pretty quickly. People start to go, oh, Charlie, you're changing. What's going on? His boss gives him a promotion to the bigger machine, and his teacher Allison starts to be like, wow, you're really. And they actually start hanging out and you. Is there, like, a romantic interest here? And what I want to explore is the theme of relationships and sex that he experiences through the book, because he has There. There are two women in this book that Charlie interfaces with. Allison, his teacher, who he greatly loves and wants to be with and wants to treat her like a real woman, but he doesn't know how to act around her.
- [39:49]
B
No idea.
- [39:49]
A
He can't figure it out. In the beginning of his journey, he. He. There's reverence for her because she's the teacher and she's kind and sweet. As he gets intelligent, he realizes she's beautiful. Whoa, I didn't see that before. She's gorgeous. And then he starts to want to be romantic with her. But he's still, even though he's smart up here, intelligently. One of the interesting things about this book, Dr. Jacobson, he grows in IQ, but his emotional intelligence never catches him. He stays. Our emotional intelligence is different than our intellectual intelligence. And he never develops that emotional intelligence. He always stays emotionally insecure. He always stays a child. He always, he's always like questioning himself. So when he's alone with Allison, he behaves like a 6 year old or like an 8 year old in a 32 year old body. He wants to kiss her, but he doesn't even know how to do that.
- [40:42]
B
Right.
- [40:43]
A
That creates some interesting tension. The other girl is. He moves out, gets his own apartment. Faye is a free spirit. She's wild. She's the kind of girl that comes through your window because they have adjoining apartments.
- [40:57]
B
Literally in the book. Yeah.
- [40:59]
A
She crawls across the fire escape and will literally come through his window naked. Like she's just that sort of free spirited girl. And she teaches him about, you know, the physical side of relationships. And he's. So, yes, we get to watch him deal with that intellectually at one level and emotionally at a very different level. So I just think that's. That needs to be pointed out too. That's another reason why I love this book, because Keys is not just exploring intelligence, but is exploring how intelligence affects other aspects of our lives.
- [41:31]
B
Right, Right. That's right. That's exactly right.
- [41:34]
A
Yeah. I loved, I loved this book for so many reasons. But the characters are really important because of how they interact with Charlie. So for anybody that hasn't read the book yet, while Marty's looking up this passage, pay attention to all of the different characters. Pay attention to how they, how they change as Charlie changes. And that will give you a sense of the psychology of the book as well. In fact, I wanted to read a quick passage here. I'm on page 199. This is May 17th. He's lying next to Faye and he doesn't know how to. He's in bed with her. And it says, I settled down beside her. I don't know much about this kind of music. I have to think about it. Don't think about it, she whispered. Feel it. Let it sweep over you like the sea. Without trying to understand, she lay back on the grass and turned her face in the direction of the music. I had no way of knowing what she expected of me. So that last line is always in. Charlie said, I have no idea what she's expecting right now. And he's trying to plot. He's always trying to apply the things he's learned in books to women. Right. Is this like a physics problem? Is this a math problem? How do. What's the logic here? And he can't feel. He doesn't know how to feel.
- [42:41]
B
But he doesn't know how hearts work at all.
- [42:44]
A
Yeah.
- [42:44]
B
Even just.
- [42:45]
A
He.
- [42:46]
B
He doesn't even really even understand like lust. I mean, he's without basic. If we put this on Maslow's pyramid, he only really had subsistence level motives before.
- [42:59]
A
If we take this back to informed consent really quickly while you're looking for this, for Charlie to decide whether he wants this operation or not, one, the doctors would have had to explain to him all of the different things he would encounter and what life would be like with or without this surgery. And. And they would have needed to explain. You're going to experience love and relationships and sexual encounters and those kinds of things. But the problem is Charlie was at such a naive level or a low level of intellect, he couldn't have received that information. So even if they had told him those things, we're going to be videoing you in the, in the Rorschach test, he wasn't smart enough to know what that test is or why that would matter.
- [43:39]
B
Right.
- [43:39]
A
This is a problem too, with informed consent that the person who's being asked to believe or change their knowledge might not be ready for that yet. It's this. That's so good, that insight.
- [43:53]
B
Alice. He's talking to Alice and he's thinking about Alice and he discovers, he says, there's this really interesting passage where he says, higher than hers. Now then hers. Her IQ was higher than mine at 68. I did the math.
- [44:10]
A
Okay.
- [44:10]
B
Her IQ would have been 128, which is top 2%, really, of the general population almost. That's way smart. And she's got all these accolades and she's talking about writing a thesis I think she's working on. She and Bert are both kind of getting a higher degree, which is really interesting to me that, that we've got other learners in the story. Right. But they seem to have more on the ball than Strauss and Nehmer do. Oh, for sure. It's kind of an interesting, interesting thing to me anyway, that, that's. It's an important moment when Charlie sort of thinks about Alice in that clinical way that he's been thinking about himself because he's got this clinical lens whether. When we get lost sometimes because the action's right on top of the story. But I think we forget that everything Charlie says is Charlie describing himself. He's writing about himself. It's a clinical enterprise. It's a progress report. Right. It's not a diary entry. So there is this. This clinical. And that's that clinical voice that Charlie adopts. I mean, sometimes it's, I gotta write this about myself. Sometimes it's, I wrote this article in Hindi about. And then later on it's not. But it's always this. He's always a little bit away from himself.
- [45:26]
A
This is. This is why I like. This is one of the reasons why I like the book so much, because it makes you feel all of the sort of rainbow of emotions of human beings with. With Allison, this woman that he loves, there's a point where you. You feel hope because you think, oh, Charlie's finally going to find somebody who will love him because Allison genuinely cares about him. And you see a point where his intelligence begins to reach hers. And you. You get excited. There's hope. But then you see it pass her. And once it passes her, like, at least I felt like, oh, no. Because you could see them starting to, like, sort of separate emotionally. She no longer feels comfortable with him in the same room because she's like, I don't fit. You're way beyond me. I can't even have a conversation with you anymore. And he doesn't know how to respond to that. So when I read this book the first time through, I felt like it was a science fiction book and. And a drama. If they had a baby, that would be Flowers for Algernon, right? Yeah. Very good. Well, I guess we're getting close to sort of the hour mark here, and I want to sort of bring this down to the crest of where Charlie begins to come down at the end. We're coming to the end. But there's a point where Charlie realizes that his peak intelligence is going to degrade, and he has to. He has to in himself accept that because there's nothing he can do to change it. First of all. And we see again how people begin to treat him as he loses his intelligence, as the scenes to wear off. Why is that interesting?
- [46:58]
B
Well, because it returns to where he was. And it is again, it's like in middle school, we learned about the Witch's Hat, which is, you know, the story gets to a climax and then everything sort of settles itself out. But with Charlie, there's this harrowing moment where he goes to visit the Warren State home, which is where he's going to end up after the inevitable decline. And it's almost. I mean, you could almost frame that as the climax of the story itself.
- [47:33]
A
Yeah.
- [47:33]
B
That he's still got enough understanding to know what's going to happen next in his own situation. And in a way. In a way, it fixes his hubris, I think. Okay. Whereas Nehmer, we, he, Niemer and Strauss are hoping. Right. Hubris is everything they are. Charlie's got just enough going on, just enough understanding. I think he gains this understanding from Faye and Alice and maybe even some of the minor characters. Like there's a woman at the bakery who's always very kind to him. And he mentions Charlie. He's very fond of her. But Charlie's got this presence of mind to know what's gonna happen to him. And in a way, when he goes to visit the Warren stay at home, he's accepting it. Tragic heroes don't accept. That's why they're tragic heroes. Right. So the tragedy for Charlie is that, in a way, he becomes the measuring stick for the other characters who just aren't very good people, whether they're the guys in the bakery who make fun of him, the scientists who experiment on him, the people in the audience at Chicago who laugh at the old Charlie. There are all these things that are going on with him. And that moment in the. In the story is really very harrowing moment to me. That he's. He's once a preview that makes you think about how. I mean, that's growth, because Charlie wouldn't have had the presence of mind for bravery before. And then when he starts to accelerate, he doesn't think about other people very much. But when he gets to that point where the inevitable decline is upon him, he wants to see what that means. He. He wants to know where he's going to be. Right. Where he's going to belong, if. If that's the right word that we can come up with. Because there's another scene earlier. He goes to pick up Alice for a date, and he goes back to the classroom where he used to be a student, and they make fun of him. And it's a. It's a classic instance of Plato, right? It's the escaped prisoner going back into the cave, right? And everybody says, well, you just don't know how things work here. It's funny to me. And. And Charlie's too big for his britches kind of moment. Right. But, I mean, Keys is definitely doing that. I think he's. He's giving us the parable of the Cave right there in a few paragraphs in the middle of the story where he goes to pick up Alice for this date. And it's like, man, how was I ever, you know, I've seen the light. I don't get this, but the people in the class are like, yeah, we. You sure don't. You don't belong here anymore. It's like that, you know, can you give it back? I mean, that's another important question is once you've progressed, can you, can you take that step back from it?
- [50:20]
A
Great comment. So here's for anybody that's listening watching this little interview and was thinking, I really want to read this book. And now you're thinking, maybe I don't. It sounds sad. I would encourage you to read it for a couple of reasons. One, I don't know that it ends up sad. It does. It is a sad book, but it also ends kind of nice at the same time for a few reasons. Why? One, when Charlie's at his height of intelligence, I don't feel like he's very happy up there. He knows a lot of stuff, but he's also very self aware that people don't like him, that he's just, he'll never fit in because his intelligence is too high and he analyzes everything instead of being in the, in the moment and living well. When he comes back down, yes, he loses his intelligence, but he, he, he loses that sense of like self editing, self hatred, self loathing and just goes back to loving life and loving, you know, those kinds of things and at least appreciating some stuff. But also it's interesting because as he comes back down, we, we find him back in Allison's class as a, as a, as a lowly student trying to make sense of life. And yeah, it's, it's tragic at the end, but I like how you pointed out that as he's declining, he, he learns the skill of bravery. And I think that's what makes this book redeemable, is that you honor and love Charlie because he's gone through this journey and he's facing his death with courage. It reminds me of Socrates. Right? Socrates, the philosopher who, who, you know, he taught a specific way of thinking how to live well, and the Roman emperor did not like that and they pretty much forced him to commit suicide and he faced his death. And just an important thing to think about. How do you, how do you face your end? With bravery. Because it's all going to happen.
- [52:07]
B
Dignity, even, whatever. Right?
- [52:09]
A
That's right. With dignity and bravery. Because I'm going to have to do that. Marty's going to have to do that. We're all going to have to do that. And so this. That's why this book's so great, because it. It sort of. You get to experience something hard with some courage. And it's. It's a beautiful ending, I think. Hard, but beautiful.
- [52:24]
B
So one of the things that we talk about in writing and in teaching literature is the so what? Question. When something happens, so what? But in Flowers for Algernon, it's now what? I think the question becomes now what? Because Charlie really doesn't know what to do next. Right. Things are happening to him, and really, at some level, he doesn't have any control over any of it. Even when he's in the grip of. Of his most creative and intellectually active moment, he doesn't know what to do. He doesn't know what to do with that. He publishes all these things and he's trying to keep it, and then he's participating in the analysis of his downfall as well. And that's a really sort of unsettling thing. But again, tragic heroes don't do that. That's not hubris. There's a bravery in that. I'm going to map this until I can't anymore. It's important, but I think the importance has changed. Instead of the importance of supporting this for others, I think he's warning others. I think he wants to be in on warning other people or in stopping this from happening again. There's bravery in that, and there's thinking of someone other than yourself in that. And I think Nehmer actually does relent ultimately and say, no, we're not going to do it anymore. But Charlie is. That's a very brave moment where he. He knows it's not working out. He's going to use the rest of his ability to make sure that nobody else has to suffer what he is.
- [53:56]
A
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I think this is a book that's. If you read it, anybody that's watching, if you choose to read this book, I think you'll be very happy that you did. And I hope that the comments we made today actually deepen your appreciation of that. For me, it definitely helped even. More. I've read this book twice now. Now I got to go back and read it at least a third time with the concept of informed consent. Just, just that insight is like, got my brain going a thousand miles an hour. And now I want to go back and look for all of those little spots where these people are doing things to him without informed consent, and he thinks it's for his own benefit. Well, before we wrap up, is there anything else that you think we need to end on here for this book?
- [54:37]
B
There is something. It's toward the end when Algernon dies, and he didn't even remember to put it in his progress report. Algernon died two days ago. And there's. There's something in that. Just that one sentence that he didn't even prioritize Algernon's death enough to mention it right away. The book changes at that moment, I think. And we know that Charlie's inevitably going to collapse. There's no hope anymore if he can't remember his best friend, if he can't privilege what's happening to. To the only other entity that really could sympathize. And there's this little part in the middle where they. They're telepathic. Right. There's a little bit of telepathy between them and. And which is interesting. I mean, it's something that if you know there. That's a common trope in science fiction, that you. Telepathy is a kind of common trope in science fiction. So the fact that he and Algernon could have this little mind meld is not impossible. Right. But that he would forget that only person who ever, you know, sympathized. That he would forget that he died, that he. That he couldn't. That didn't strike him as important enough to mention right away. Everything that. That's almost the climax of the novel. Yeah. To me is when he doesn't remember. That's not important enough to mention that Algernon died two days ago. That there's something really profound about that lapse. And I really do think it's a turning point in the book. And I think Keys meant to do that.
- [56:14]
A
You know, there are several points in this book where there are sentences like that. Whereas the reader. I just went, whoa. And just many, many sentences. I mean, I don't know what Keys had to go through to write this book. Clearly he got educated in several fields to put this work together. But there is something beyond just going to school that makes his book great. I mean, I don't know how he did it, but there are so many insights into just human behavior that I connect with that make me as a human, go, wow, that was really good. So this book is one of my favorites. Again, it's one of my favorite books and definitely the best fictional book I read in 2024 is flowers for Algernon. I do sell it in my bookstore@edgewaterbookstore.com and I make these cool little 4x6 notebooks that go along with it. What I did is I sort of captured my 30 favorite quotes, and they're at the bottom of each page in the notebook. I've added 12 questions in here to help you sort of get more out of this book. For example, question 9. How does this novel explore the theme of loneliness? Because Charlie's very lonely throughout the book, and he becomes aware of that loneliness as he gets more intelligent. And then he has to face a new kind of loneliness as he goes back into being uneducated. So. And I feel like that as well. I mean, we're in it. We're in a society right now where loneliness is very prevalent in our lives. We're connected digitally. Great. But my goodness, I missed the days in the. In the 80s where you could go out to lunch with a friend and see a real human and shake their hand. We don't do that anymore.
- [57:40]
B
At least we really don't.
- [57:41]
A
So it's a great novel for today. Yeah.
- [57:44]
B
There's a terrible passage in here about how college professors aren't as smart as they seem. And I don't like that. When that's not a very good passage at all. That's. That should be strict, and we should make a new version where we strike that from the record. That can't possibly be so. But no, it's. It's interesting how. Yeah. He talks about the college kids and how he's jealous of them and he wants to have those, and he starts smoking a pipe because he thinks it makes him look smart, and he's doing all these things, and then he says, oh, they're, you know, 20 pages later, they're so juvenile and they don't understand. And then 50 pages after that, it's like these professors aren't nearly as smart as they think they are. They're just human beings like anybody else. That's not true, of course, but interesting how, you know, he's ma. He's mapping his own progress based on these markers in society of what smart means. Again, another brilliant kind of thing that Keys is doing here, where he marks Charlie's progress in more than one way.
- [58:37]
A
It's good. Well, everybody, if you're looking for a really good book to read, I think Dr. Jacobson and I both fully endorse Flowers for Algernon. It's.
- [58:46]
B
It's.
- [58:46]
A
It's a book that every time. Yeah. I've given this book to several people now. And every time they're like, how come I haven't heard of this book? Where's this? And it's a very popular book. It's been around. It was written in the 50s. Is that right?
- [58:57]
B
It was. The short story it's based on was written in 59. The novel was published in 66.
- [59:03]
A
Okay, there you go. So it's been around for a while. So a bit like the movie phenomenon if you haven't read it yet or seen it yet. Like, sorry, it's been around a while. So. But hopefully our comments have helped you appreciate the book more and get more out of it. But yeah, consider going and picking it up and really sort of going on this, this arc of what it means to be a human being. All the good, all the bad, all the, all the romance, all the hubris, all of the loneliness. It's really, really good. Dr. Jacobsen, thank you so much for being on the show again. I really enjoy having you on here. It's fun to nerd out about books we love, right?
- [59:35]
B
Yes, it surely is. Thank you for having me on.
- [59:37]
A
Yeah, I appreciate it. For everybody that's watching again, leave us a comment down below. Let us know what you thought of this, this conversation. Did you like it? Is there anything we can do to make it better for you? And as always, until next time, remember to read slowly, take notes and apply the ideas. I'll see you next time. If you'd like to take your reading to the next level, then head on over to thereadwellpodcast.com there you'll find daily posts on how to read well. You'll also get access to all of my book notes and tools for becoming a better reader. And as always, don't forget to read slowly, take notes and apply, apply the ideas. Thank you for listening to the Read well podcast.