This month we are celebrating the birthday of American author Daniel Keyes who is best known for the novel, Flowers for Algernon. Keyes (August 9, 1927, to June 15, 2014) was born in New York City. Before joining the U.S. Maritime Service at seventeen, he briefly attended New York University.
He worked as a ship’s purser on oil tankers managing ship accounts, filing financial reports, crew payroll, and dealing with customs.
After his service, he returned to New York and earned a B.A. in psychology from Brooklyn College. After graduation, Keyes worked for publisher Martin Goodman’s magazine company, Magazine Management eventually becoming an editor of their pulp magazine, Marvel Science Stories.
He began writing for Atlas Comics, the company’s comic book division. After Goodman’s company transitioned from publishing pulps to paperback books and men’s adventure magazines, Keyes became an associate editor of Atlas (the 1950s precursor of Marvel Comics) and worked under art director, Stan Lee.
Stan Lee was a supportive boss who trusted his editors to deal with cartoonists, scriptwriters, and lettering crews. Lee personally reviewed plot synopses submitted by his crew and offered feedback. He recognized Keyes’ talents in several comic book genres, science fiction, horror, fantasy, and suspense.
Keyes also worked as a staff writer for horror and science fiction comics. He considered it a detour on the road toward his dream of establishing a serious literary career but admitted needing the extra money. In 1952 he married Aurea Georgina Vasquez, and they had two daughters, Hillary and Leslie.
Keyes spent several years teaching high school. He taught students in the gifted program and special education classes for students with intellectual and emotional disabilities. He credited an interaction with a boy in one of his special education classes as his inspiration for Flowers for Algernon.
After writing his one-paragraph synopsis for “Brainstorm,” Keyes decided not to submit it to Lee because he felt the story should be more than a script for a comic book.
He wondered if intelligence could be medically manipulated through the use of drugs, surgeries, or a combination of the two, what would happen to the person who went from intellectually disabled to genius? How would they adjust to their world? How would they be received by their peers? What would happen if they began to regress and lose their intellectual abilities?
The short story published in 1959 in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and the subsequent novel published in 1966 that grew from his synopsis involved a mouse named Algernon and Charlie, an intellectually disabled man.
After experimental surgeries raise Algernon’s IQ, Charlie becomes the first human to have the procedure. As his world changes and Charlie becomes a genius, Algernon begins to regress. When researchers can’t save Algernon, Charlie realizes he will suffer the same fate. It’s a beautiful, but tragic story, and I don’t know anyone who can read it without tearing up.
Keyes won a Hugo Award in 1959 for his short story and the Nebula Award in 1966 for the book. It was adapted into an Academy Award winning feature film in 1968.
Keyes wrote and taught creative writing at Wayne State University. He became and English and creative writing professor at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio.
He died at the age of 86 from complications caused by pneumonia thirteen months after his wife’s death. Friends and former students of Keyes noted that his greatest quality was always his ability to empathize with people regardless of what they were going through.
In 2016, Daniel Keyes’ children established the Daniel Keyes Family Endowed Scholarship at Wayne State University to encourage future writers and educators to spread kindness and empathy in communities around the world.
Works by Daniel Keyes:
Novels:
Flowers for Algernon (1966)
The Touch 1968 (aka The Contaminated Man 1977)
The Fifth Sally (1980)
Until Death (1998)
The Asylum Prophecies (2009)
Short Stories:
“Precedent” (1952)
“Robot Wanted” (1952)
“Something Borrowed” (1952)
“The Trouble with Elmo” (1958)
“Flowers for Algernon” (1959)
“Crazy Maro” (1960)
“The Quality of Mercy” (1960)
“A Jury of Its Peers” (1963)
“Spellbinder” (1967)
“Mama’s Girl” (1993)
Non-fiction:
The Minds of Billy Milligan (1981)
Unveiling Claudia (1986)
The Milligan Wars: A True Story Sequel (1994)
Algernon, Charlie and I (2000)
Photo Credits:
Daniel Keyes image:
By http://www.fantascienza.com/magazine/notizie/19052/daniel-keyes-se-ne-va-il-papa-di-algernon/, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=43102756
Book Jacket:
By http://www.pbagalleries.com/search/item192191.php?, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20716935