Recently I opened one of my notebooks and was momentarily puzzled by a list of book titles on one page. Then I remembered that some expat friends of mine living in Brussels had taken me out for a night on the town while I was visiting them. By the book-list stage of the evening I was already down a bottle of raspberry beer (ah, Belgium) and two gin-based cocktails, and would be consuming more alcohol before the end of the night, so perhaps it's not surprising that the intense hour-long conversation about books in which I loudly insisted that everyone! at the table! tell me their favourite book! so I could borrow them all from the library! became a memory with a hint of fuzziness to it.
Nevertheless.
Nevertheless.
Flowers for Algernon. I'd heard the name before, and the title sounded suspiciously like something that might have oozed from the pen of Mitch 'Cloying Sentimentality And Cheap Fucking Pathos' Albom. Then I found out about the Hugo and Nebula awards.
(Booklogging by Faye: fifty years behind the times! Next up: the Iliad.)
For those of you who, like me, didn't study this book at school, the premise is this: an intellectually disabled man called Charlie volunteers to be the first human subject of an experimental procedure which proposes to increase intelligence, and has been shown to do so in a mouse called Algernon. The book is made up of Charlie's progress reports, a diary which shows the gradual improvement of his intellectual power, and the consequences that this has for his life and happiness. As far as literary achievement goes, I think Daniel Keyes did an excellent job with the portrayal of a personality and a mind constantly in flux. One of the most important things it tries to convey is how the people around Charlie think about him, act around him, and relate to him, and how these things change as he does; assuming you-the-reader to be someone of average intelligence, the journey that you go through mirrors that of these people in a way that borders on the uncomfortable at times.
I am nowhere near as conversant in social justice and discrimination theory as it pertains to disability as I should be, I expect, but this book does a very good job of whacking you pointedly around the face with its Major Themes (which is, as with a lot of sci-fi, not necessarily to its detriment). It's even more interesting when reading it now, in the twenty-first century, to think about the particular Slippery Slope Of Humanity that this book is addressing: the drive to fix. The balance between lauding medical advances that can improve someone's quality of life, and adequate acknowledgment that perhaps a person's life is just fine without an external standard of normality being imposed upon it. But then, as someone whose medical school shoves a lot of ethics tutorials in her direction, I was interested by the detail that one of his family members had to sign off on the procedure because Charlie was not considered to have Capacity To Consent, even though Charlie's commentary shows you that he did indeed understand both the benefits and the risks as they were communicated to him.
A clear distinction is drawn between academic intelligence and emotional intelligence which is certainly not neurologically arbitrary, but comes across as...narratively so, I suppose? The fact that smart-Charlie is still devoid of well-developed social skills becomes more and more apparent, and more and more important, as does the fact that his personality becomes a lot less pleasant as a result. I wasn't entirely sure what I was meant to be learning from this -- it's better to be extremely nice than extremely clever? It's impossible to be both? Does extreme intelligence automatically lead to a disdain for the rest of humanity? This was the only point on which I was unwilling to be happily swept along in the story, because I didn't feel that was communicated with the clarity that illuminates the rest of the book.
I don't have much more to say about this one, really. It's clever and thought-provoking and I'm glad I read it. And unlike a high school essay, I can stop this review at any point I please, so let's leave it at that.
(Booklogging by Faye: fifty years behind the times! Next up: the Iliad.)
For those of you who, like me, didn't study this book at school, the premise is this: an intellectually disabled man called Charlie volunteers to be the first human subject of an experimental procedure which proposes to increase intelligence, and has been shown to do so in a mouse called Algernon. The book is made up of Charlie's progress reports, a diary which shows the gradual improvement of his intellectual power, and the consequences that this has for his life and happiness. As far as literary achievement goes, I think Daniel Keyes did an excellent job with the portrayal of a personality and a mind constantly in flux. One of the most important things it tries to convey is how the people around Charlie think about him, act around him, and relate to him, and how these things change as he does; assuming you-the-reader to be someone of average intelligence, the journey that you go through mirrors that of these people in a way that borders on the uncomfortable at times.
I am nowhere near as conversant in social justice and discrimination theory as it pertains to disability as I should be, I expect, but this book does a very good job of whacking you pointedly around the face with its Major Themes (which is, as with a lot of sci-fi, not necessarily to its detriment). It's even more interesting when reading it now, in the twenty-first century, to think about the particular Slippery Slope Of Humanity that this book is addressing: the drive to fix. The balance between lauding medical advances that can improve someone's quality of life, and adequate acknowledgment that perhaps a person's life is just fine without an external standard of normality being imposed upon it. But then, as someone whose medical school shoves a lot of ethics tutorials in her direction, I was interested by the detail that one of his family members had to sign off on the procedure because Charlie was not considered to have Capacity To Consent, even though Charlie's commentary shows you that he did indeed understand both the benefits and the risks as they were communicated to him.
A clear distinction is drawn between academic intelligence and emotional intelligence which is certainly not neurologically arbitrary, but comes across as...narratively so, I suppose? The fact that smart-Charlie is still devoid of well-developed social skills becomes more and more apparent, and more and more important, as does the fact that his personality becomes a lot less pleasant as a result. I wasn't entirely sure what I was meant to be learning from this -- it's better to be extremely nice than extremely clever? It's impossible to be both? Does extreme intelligence automatically lead to a disdain for the rest of humanity? This was the only point on which I was unwilling to be happily swept along in the story, because I didn't feel that was communicated with the clarity that illuminates the rest of the book.
I don't have much more to say about this one, really. It's clever and thought-provoking and I'm glad I read it. And unlike a high school essay, I can stop this review at any point I please, so let's leave it at that.
I haven't read this one, so I'll be joining you in the 50 years behind club. I'm glad someone I actually know thinks it's worthwhile. XD
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