Paul Kirchner-The Bus (BONUS)

This is going to be a unique one for me, and I may file it under "bonus content" simply because this is so unlike everything I've done before. I'd like to continue the "bonus" section of my page simply because I'd like to expand the horizons of what I do. If that goes into film and television, scripts, plays, and comic strips, all the better.

The bus, styled simply as 'the bus' was a comic written and drawn by Paul Kirchner from 1979-1985 in the magazine Heavy Metal. Described as an anti-story between a hapless commuter and a demonic bus in Kirchner's own words. The Bus is a surreal and unique experience. As much as their is to take at face value, there is more to gain from the small details. Kirchner uses things like signs to show the passage of time. Or simply tears down the set all its own for a joke. Paul Kirchner continued the strips in 2013 and these too have been collected into an omnibus by Tanibis Editions.

Paul Kirchner has his own claims to fame, he's also written the well known comic "Dope Rider" which was published in High Times, which is totally understandable. Reading both I was certain Kirchner was on something. Reading Kirchner's resume is also a trip. He's done pornographic covers for Screw, illustrations for the likes of The New York Times and Wall Street Journal. This man did the art, backstories, and comics for toys like Robo Force, Dino-Riders, Crash Dummies, and Spy-Tech. He worked on comics for He-Man, Go-Bots, the Thundercats, and even Power Rangers. He's written non fiction books that cover everything from dangerous individuals, the history of sword and pistol dueling, and Bowie knife fighting techniques.

The Bus is a comic, so it's kind of hard to describe what makes it so great without showing you some of the comics to peak your interest. There is an album on Imgur that comes close to having the complete first omnibus. The reason I like The Bus is the odd situations that The Commuter finds himself in. The world he exists in being some sort of personal Sisyphean Hell of non Euclidean reality. Too often the gag will be the non rules of this world. Such as when The Bus pulls up to the stop and instead picks up his reflection in a puddle rather than The Commuter himself. In fact these strips tend to be my favorites. For every odd comic where say, giant man eating spider crabs grab someone from an open window (I'm not kidding), there's a strip where The Commuter leaves The Bus onto the stage of a full auditorium, only to step back onto The Bus and it's a cardboard prop set.

It's difficult to review The Bus in the same way it's difficult to explain a joke. Since it's such an absurdist setting any comments on what it does so well is like letting air out of a balloon. My best advice is to go buy the two omnibuses, or if you're strapped for cash, go to the Imgur album, and sit down and read. Grab a cup of coffee, maybe a bagel, and read and re-read these strips in an attempt to understand the joke. Like a Magic Eye poster you have to squint at for it to all come together. Though I'll be honest that's a bad analogy. No matter how hard I squint or strain my eyes I can't make anything out of those things.

The ride doesn't end.

Peter Handke-A Sorrow Beyond Dreams

This review is very late. On the week that I covered Maupassant's Afloat, that was the Thursday that the Nobel Prize in Literature ceremony was held. Sharing the win for the Nobel Prize in Literature was Peter Handke, the subject of today's review. I had made plans to either write up this review the day after, but decided to wait my weekly period so that my review of Afloat would get enough traffic. However, due to family circumstance, I was unable to write up my review, and lost track of time. Before I knew it the local fall festival, Neewollah, had begun and with it responsibility. After that, a call for submission for plays for the Summer's theater festival, of which I am still writing and hoping to make the deadline for. Checking my calendar I realized it been three weeks since I had written a review and struggled with the depths of my consciousness to pull this forward. For mercy's sake, I decided to reread a short work by Handke so that the review I typed up could be swift but still poignant. I apologize for the slip but sometimes these things make us human. Do not be fooled at the short length of A Sorrow Beyond Dreams; what it accomplishes with its clean, non romanticized prose has haunted me these last few days and made me reflect on my own mental health, loss, and mortality.

A Sorrow Beyond Dreams is a memoir/semi-autobiography of Handke's mother. She had committed suicide by sleeping pills in 1971, and this is Handke giving us her story. Handke gives us the reason at the very start, that he had to write it down for his sake. To assuage his own feelings of mourning. Though it seems not to have done its job, as when the time comes to wrap up Handke says: "It is not true that writing has helped me. In my weeks of preoccupation with the story, the story has not ceased to preoccupy me. Writing has not, as I at first supposed, been a remembering of a concluded period of my life, but merely a constant pretense at remembering, in the form of sentences that only lay claim to detachment." I speak without exaggeration when I say that this novel destroyed me. I have witnessed death, both from friends and family who have chosen to take their own lives and in unrelated tragedies. In the descriptions of his mother's condition, I can see them in her, and I lose them again. The word "Depression" does not come up in Handke's text. Nor do the words "Mental illness" but in the prose as his mother worsens these things become apparent. An aching, ceaseless tiredness that breaks you down to something inhuman. A formless cancer that rips away at you until you are reduced to the disease itself. Constantly suffocating and in the dark. That is what depression is. And depression and ruin have wedged itself into the ink of the letters that she writes to Handke. The same lines, all to familiar to those who have contracted this illness. The words cast a shadow like death himself, calmly arching back their scythe, you beg Handke to relieve you. You want Handke to just tell you it happened, so that it can be over. So that Frau Handke's suffering can end and it turns yours as you relive your darkness. She writes;

I can’t stand it in the house any more, so I’m always gadding about somewhere. I’ve been getting up a little earlier, that’s the hardest time for me; I have to force myself to do something, or I’d just go back to bed. There’s a terrible loneliness inside me, I don’t feel like talking to anyone. I’d often like to drink a little something in the evening, but I mustn’t, because if I did my medicine wouldn’t take effect.

I’m not logical enough to think things through to the end, and my head aches. Sometimes it buzzes and whistles so that I can’t bear any outside noise. I talk to myself because I can't say anything to other people any more. Sometimes I feel like a machine. I'd like to go away somewhere, but when it gets dark I'm afraid of not finding the way home again. In the morning there's a dense fog and then everything is quiet. Every day I do the same work, and every morning the place is a mess again. There's never any end to it. I really wish I were dead. 

These letters write like anyone suffering from the constant gnawing of your existence tearing itself apart. I've heard these words myself. It's always the same. Like a script prepared for some actor, a final monologue before their character walks off stage, forever. I've heard these words so many times, and offered what I could. Sometimes it's enough. Sometimes not. It's a sobering thing to think that you're going to die but you never really consider that someone would want to. Even when you have that same gnawing infectious condition. That black spot, you don't really want to die. The rational part of you is very afraid. It is in reading A Sorrow Beyond Dreams, and watching Frau Handke grow from a young girl to a woman too tired and broken to live, that I realize my own mortality. The mortality of those around me. Death is not something that I gave no thought to as a form of bravery. Merely it was the thing that I absolutely could not think about. Not only for myself but for others. As I near by thirties my parents near their fifties and their parents their seventies. I do not wish to picture a future without them but one day that future will come. Inevitably, marching slowly with no particular hurry or malice. What of their trials and tribulations? Will I, like Peter Handke, simply receive a letter that it had been to much? That while I was busy with my own egocentric nonsense tragedy had struck? Will I return to that feeling of numbness that Handke so perfectly describes as "Being startled that I was still holding an object" in my disassociation?

Usually in my reviews I discuss the author and their history. I could talk about Handke, the Austrian born writer. I could talk about the controversy surrounding him. Such as his support of Milosevic. Peter Handke is an interesting subject, and Lord knows I'm no stranger to controversy, having reviewed the works of Knut Hamsun and Joseph Conrad before. Handke will have his time again however, as I feel the most important thing I took from A Sorrow Beyond Dreams  is not Handke himself but a change of consciousness. A shift towards awareness of a universal truth. For a moment I turned my gaze and met Death's eyes, and the chill up my spine made me blink. It's actually kind of hilarious. Handke mentions in the book that his mother would read literature and see herself in the characters. That is exactly what has happened to me here. I see myself in Frau Hanke, but also my friends. Those that continue to struggle and those that have given up.A Sorrow Beyond Dreams is simple in concept, the life story of an Austrian woman, but it awakened a primal fear within me that is still haunting me. Damn the controversy, Handke earned the Nobel, this is a masterpiece.

Guy de Maupassant-Afloat

Here begins the trend of me reviewing books published by the New York Review of Books. I can confirm that the next few reviews will be under this publisher. Their covers are amazing and they offer great overlooked books and new translations and I've never been let down by the contents of their titles. Today we are going to be talking about Guy de Maupassant's Afloat. One of his very short travel novels.You could read this in an afternoon over coffee. Afloat is a travel diary of a man and two sailors going down the Cote d'Azur (The Azure Coast, or French Mediterranean). I'm very much a lover of travel and a Francophile, so this book struck several chords for me. I first heard of Guy de Maupassant through his short stories, of which he wrote hundreds but the most well known being Le Horla (itself an inspiration to H.P. Lovecraft's 'Call of Cthulhu') and The Necklace. Both of these short stories appeared in my High School English textbooks throughout the years.

Guy de Maupassant was born Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant in Tourville-sur-Arques, a township in the Normandy Region of France. He surname "de Maupassant" indicates nobility, as his mother had urged his father to get permission to style his name as such. His father was domestically abusive, and his mother left when Guy we eleven. This was a bigger deal than it was today because divorce was a social disgrace in the 19th century. His mother sent both Maupassant and his brother to boarding school for classical studies. Unable to stand this, Maupassant got himself expelled before he could graduate. When entering Junior High, Maupassant was encouraged by his mother to make himself known with Gustave Flaubert. The breakout of the Franco-Prussian war in 1870 had him move to Paris and worked for ten years as a clerk for the French Navy. Gustave Flaubert took him under his wing and encouraged Guy's debut in journalism and literature. He introduced him to several well known authors of the period, including Ivan Turgenev (who we will cover later). In 1880 Guy published Boule de Suif, what is considered the first of his masterpieces. From that point on, Guy was explosively productive. Producing two to four volumes annually. Guy become wealthy very quickly. To give you a measure of his success, his second novel, Bel Ami in 1885 that thirty-five printings in just FOUR months. Guy, despite being in the in circles of French celebrities, had little care for society, and was naturally more at home travelling, preferring solitude and meditation, a common theme in the novel we are reviewing today. Hilariously, Guy de Maupassant hated the Eiffel Tower, and ate frequently at the cafe at its base as it was the only place he didn't have to look at it. Sadly, Guy de Maupassant developed a deep fear of death and paranoia of persecution caused by worsening syphilis symptoms, which he may have had congenially. Trying to slit his own throat, Guy was put in an institution where he died in 1893. Guy wrote his own epitaph which reads; "I have coveted everything and taken pleasure in nothing". So really a dramatic guy.

Afloat is a travel novel, a roman a clef of sorts. It details a week long cruise down the Cote d'Azur on the yacht the Bel Ami, which was Maupassant's real life yacht that he named after his most famous novel. The narrator is unnamed, but is clearly a stand in for Maupassant. Afloat is not quite a proper title, as for most of the novel they are docked and waylayed by bad winds or weather. Each day is broken down by the towns they visit. Setting off from Antibes, to Cannes, Agay, Saint Raphael, and finally Saint Tropez. The real person Afloat is Guy himself. The novel quickly becomes a treatise on his philosophy on several subjects. It's surprisingly relevant too, as in Cannes he shows disdain for the celebrity culture there, everyone obsessed with being or being around French nobility. I found this interesting as a tie to our own celebrity worship culture in the New Tens, but hilariously Cannes is still this way. It's a hotbed for the rich and famous. Some things never change really. In Afloat Guy explores love, death, modern society, war, history, and poetry. Just as Guy waxes about these philosophical subjects of these towns, so too does he go into the actual histories of them. Reading Afloat is not only a treat for the introspection to Guy's mind, but also for the travel reader for the loving descriptions of the Cote d'Azur and her people, and for the historic Fracophile.

Guy de Maupassant was an extremely prolific writer. He wrote near three hundred short stories, six novels, three travel books (of which this is one), and a volume of verse. Still though, Afloat remains among my favorites for its true to life origins. Ernest Hemingway once said "All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you: the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was. If you can get so that you can give that to people, then you are a writer." That is certainly true of Afloat, as it brings with it not only the soul of Maupassant, but the soul of France as a whole. Leaving me nostalgic for a place that no longer exists as portrayed here. Afloat is a masterpiece of human consciousness, and, as its only a real life account of Guy's cruise down the French coast, a testament to his skill as a master of prose.

Robert T. Bakker-Raptor Red

This is something a bit different! With my schedule with work, school, and a 2 year old, I've decided to end daily reviews and move simply to weekly reviews. This gives us the added benefit of either reading new books or revisiting the ones I've read before. All the books I have reviewed I've done from memory and research into the author's themselves,a  trend I wish to continue. So I begin weekly reviews with something you wouldn't see in a High School or College Literature course. Robert T. Bakker's 1994 Raptor Red.

This book is interesting because Robert T. Bakker is actually a paleontologist. His nonfiction The Dinosaur Heresies goes into depth about his theories of dinosaur behavior, from habits to intelligence. Raptor Red is a similar vein. It is a work on xenofiction that in spite of advancements in paleontology is said to hold up. In this book we follow Raptor Red, a female Utahraptor just trying her best to survive in the Early Cretaceous. We follow her from the first breaths she takes out of the egg. From the death of her first mate, to a reunion with her sister, to travelling with a male consort and eventually having children of her own. The journey is wrought with peril and death. This isn't a disneyficition of dinosaurs, it's almost like reading an Attenburough documentary. Bakker uses his knowledge to transport you to Cretaceous.

The narrative is also interlaced with chapters dealing with prehistoric crocodiles, turtles, even rodents. It approaches them mechanically. Seldom applying human logic or empathy to these animals and instead focusing on the two primal instincts of all living beings. Food and the need to pass your genetic material on. For example, Raptor Red's consort has an extreme dislike or Red's sister and her chicks. It's brought up often that the consort would kill the chicks if he could to ensure his brood survives. The main conflict of the novel, if you can be said to have any, is Man vs. Nature. Red is doing what she is programmed to do, survive. Yet despite this robotic logic, Bakker pushes forward his ideas that raptors were social animals akin to wolves. There is surprising intimacy from Red towards her sister. She's very protective of her chicks, even if they are not Red's own. Even after attacking a prey foreign to them goes horribly wrong, Red risks dying by staying in a cold wintery cave beset by Dinonychus, simply to protect her. In spite of its lack of a human element this story is full of tension and bathos that will having you returning again and again.

Usually I mention why I consider a book a masterpiece. Raptor Red, while I don't think will hold a place in the canon, is a unique gem. Eschewing my usual moonlighting as an English professor, I'll just tell you this. Raptor Red deserves to be read, and if you haven't, devote an afternoon to this incredibly unique book. A cute story for you, I first read this book in High School, and when I got my wife to read it, it rekindled her love of dinosaurs and sparked an interest in prehistoric life in general. Then she stole my book. A trend that happens a lot. Maddie if you're reading this put my books back on my shelf. I remember buying her Prehistoric Life, The Definitive Visual History of Life on Earth, just so that she could read more about dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals. Raptor Red may not be considered high art, but you can't tell me that isn't magic.

Joseph Conrad-Heart of Darkness

Values dissonance is a funny thing with art. Literature, music, and film that stands today as timeless and classical can bring up jarring problems to its modern audience. It's easy to read Heart of Darkness in what is going into the 2020s. It's a short novel, my edition clocks in at a very humble 92 pages. It's a book you could read in an hour. Yet the thing that makes Heart of Darkness so difficult is not the page count or prose, it's the setting. Set in the heart of the Belgian Congo, it is not kind to the Native Africans portrayal. Famed Nigerian author Chinua Achebe (who we will cover later of course) was very vocal in his criticisms of the work. He had an entire 1975 lecture dedicated to criticizing this book's handling of colonialism and racism. Achebe considered it a work of de-humanization of Africans. He saw Conrad as portraying Africa as the antithesis to Europe, ignoring the broader culture of the Fang people that lived in the Congo Basin where Conrad visited and was inspired to write the novel. He argued that Conrad promoted an image of darkest Africa that continues to depersonalize a portion of the human race, and did not consider it a work of art. It's actually interesting to me that Chinua Achebe would be so opposed to Heart of Darkness; not because of its contents, Achebe was an Igbo Chieftain himself. What interests me is how Achebe's novel Things Fall Apart, his masterwork, is a perfect antithesis to Heart of Darkness. Touching on many of the same themes, portrayed on the opposite side of the coin.

The thing about Heart of Darkness I feel a lot of people miss out on, even Booktubers on YouTube who review novels, is that Conrad is just as unfair to those who run the Belgian Congo. In fact, the novel was written in 1899. The fact the Belgians are portrayed as being in the wrong at all is an extremely progressive view. Conrad's novel and prose I do think show a prejudice of his own, and perhaps I am wrong, but a prejudice of the world he is portraying. There are no good characters in Heart of Darkness. The Congo is not portrayed as being better off with the white man. If anything, Conrad's story shows a brutality, narcissism, and sadism in the colonists. Conrad's point in writing Heart of Darkness is not to criticize Africa, but to criticize mankind at their worst.

Joseph Conrad himself (born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski) was born in Berdychiv, Russian Empire. The concept of his nationality is a bit of a headache but suffice that Joseph Conrad is Anglo-Polish. Berdychiv existed in what is known to the Poles as the Stolen Lands, in what is now Ukraine. These lands however, did belong to the Crown Kingdom of Poland at one point. Despite being populated mostly by Ukrainians and Jews, most of the countryside was still owned by the Polish nobility, to which Conrad's family belonged. Conrad's father Apollo was a revolutionary against the Russian Empire for independence of pre-partisan Poland. Because of this his family was often on the move and in exile, but Apollo did his best to educates his son. Giving him Victor Hugo and Shakespeare and most importantly the Polish romantic poets. Eventually Conrad was able to establish himself in the Austrian side of the former Poland-Lithuania Commonwealth. After his father's death, Conrad's Uncle attempted to obtain his Austrian citizenship but was denied due to Conrad not being released as a Russian Subject. Eventually Conrad was able to find a home in England. Granted British nationality in 1886, still a subject of the Russian Czar it took several trips to the embassy for the Russian Empire to release him as a Russian Subject to continue is life as an Englishman.

Conrad's journey as a writer does not quite begin here however. In 1874 Conrad journey to Marseille, France and joined the merchant-marine. Here he met Dominique Cervoni, who would inspire several characters of his words such as the title character in 1904's Nostromo (that's right Alien references Conrad). Four years later and Conrad is now a part of the British merchant-marine and for the next fifteen years served under the Red Ensign. Eventually obtaining the rank of Captain. Conrad's sailing career is as well known as his writing career, and the former greatly affected the latter. References to his friends, jobs, and posts can be seen in many of his novels. For example during a three year stint with a Belgian Trading Company he worked in part as Captain of a steamer on the Congo River, just like the protagonist of Heart of Darkness, Marlow. Conrad's last voyage was completed when the clipper ship Torrens docked in London and Conrad was formally discharged from service.a It was here that Conrad began his literary career. His life, friends, accomplishments and more are a book itself and worth looking into. Suffice to say, Joseph Conrad was considered a master of his art despite writing in English and only having become fluent in the language in his twenties. He wrote dozens of novels and short stories and essays. At one point becoming depressed and in debt, Conrad attempted suicide by shooting himself in the chest with a revolver. He survived this attempt and would die of what is believed to be a heart attack in 1924. He was mourned by many. If you can name a famous writer in English chances are Conrad knew them and befriended them.

Heart of Darkness is considered one of his masterworks but ironically when it was published, it was bound with two other novellas. These two novellas received much more praise than Heart of Darkness did and Conrad himself did not consider it much. Which is hilarious due to the the critical backlash it receives today. Heart of Darkness follows Marlow, as mentioned a steamer Captain in the Belgian Congo. Marlow is recounting this time to his fellow sailors while anchored on the River Thames. What follows is ninety pages of brutality as Marlow walks among worked to death and diseased Africans forced to build the railroad along the Congo, or is beset by arrows on his boat by the Natives, or when he finds the severed head of natives on spikes outside the trading post of the novel's antagonist, Kurtz. Kurtz spends most of the novel as a ghost, being talked up to Marlow as a man among men, a champion who the natives worship as a God. A man who produces more ivory than any of the other trading posts combined. Deeper conversations reveal that Kurtz may not be as well liked as presumed. Kurtz was also tasked with writing up a report, which he did well with the added handwritten postscript of "Kill all the brutes!". When they finally reach Kurtz he is a sick and dying man and as they take him from his Trading Post down the river, he dies. His last words are "The horror! The horror!" to Marlow, and he is buried in a hole without much fanfare by the crew of the boat. Marlow returns to Europe contemptuous of the civilized world and withholds the papers Kurtz had given him. Eventually giving them to a journal to publish as seen fit. Marlow later visits Kurtz' widow who pressures him for his last words. Marlow lies, instead telling her that Kurtz' last word was her name. Sheltering her from the heart of darkness that had consumed Kurtz and enveloped Marlow. 

Heart of Darkness is a masterpiece for its on the nose political commentary and criticism of the Belgian Congo, its analysis of the human psyche, and the question it raises on the goodness of humanity as a whole. The theme of the civilized world and the true primal humanity found in the Congo are given several foils throughout the novel. As Marlow is exposed to the horrors of the Congo he becomes more and more like Kurtz, a man consumed by savagery. His lie to Kurtz' widow also proving that the civilized world is not ready for the true horrors of the human psyche lurking just below the surface, ready to consume any who linger for too long. In context of its racist overtones, the novel was written in a time where these aspects of society were common. The fact that Conrad even thought to call the colonists out for being no better than the 'savages' they brutalized was extremely progressive. Heart of Darkness had a film adaptation that updated the setting the the Vietnam War. That film was Apocalypse Now. Whether you see the setting update as putting the brutalization and innate horror of the human mind into perspective or simply see the colonialism replaced with American imperialism against Communism, and the blacks of the Congo with the Vietnamese is your interpretation. I feel the film helps drive home that black or white, we all have the capability for evil.

Daniel Keyes-Flowers For Algernon

-Apologies for the absence Constant Readers! I had the flu and had to take a few days off!-

In the world of reviewing literary fiction, genre fiction is often pushed to the wayside as not being highbrow. Flowers for Algernon, a 1966 novel by Daniel Keyes, expanded from his short story of the same name, is an exception to this rule. Flowers for Algernon is not the first science fiction story I have reviewed, and I find this elitist divide between literary fiction and genre fiction to be asinine. Flowers for Algernon was first published in the 1959 issue of "The Magazine of Fantasy and Science", and won the Hugo award 1960. Expanded into a novel in 1966, it was the joint winner for that year's Nebula Award for Best Novel. It deals with Algernon, a mouse given a surgery to give it super intelligence, and the same procedure given to a man named Charlie Gordon. Charlie Gordon is mentally disabled, and the novel touches often on the themes of societal acceptance of the disabled. This book was on the 100 most challenged books at number 43. Reasons given are not for it's portrayal of the mentally disabled, but because of scenes where Charlie explores his sexuality as he gains intelligence. Nothing scares America more than a vagina, or maybe communism. A communist vagina.

Daniel Keyes himself was born in New York City to a Jewish family in 1927. He attended New York University before joining the United States Maritime Service. He returned in 1950 and obtained his Bachelor's of Psychology from Brooklyn College. In the perfect example of "it's a small world after all", this happened. A month after graduation, Keyes joined publisher Martin Goodman's magazine company, Magazine Management. He eventually became an editor of their pulp magazine Marvel Science Stories (from Nov. 1950 – May 1952) after editor Robert O. Erisman, and began writing for the company's comic book lines Atlas Comics, the 1950s precursors of Marvel Comics. After Goodman began to focus on men's adventure books and paperbacks, Keyes became an associate editor at Atlas Comics, under none other than the legendary Stan Lee as his editor-in-chief. After Marvel Science Stories folded, Goodman offered Keyes a job under Lee. To quote Keyes;

"Since my $17.25-a-month rent was almost due, I accepted what I considered a detour on my journey toward a literary career. Stan Lee ... let his editors deal with the scriptwriters, cartoonists, and lettering crew. Writers turned in plot synopses, Stan read them, and as a matter of course, would accept one or two from each of the regulars he referred to as his "stable." As one of his front men, I would pass along comments and criticism. ... Because of my experience editing Marvel and because I'd sold a few science fiction stories by then, Stan allowed me to specialize in the horror, fantasy, suspense, and science fiction comic books. Naturally, I began submitting story ideas, getting freelance assignment, and supplementing my salary by writing scripts on my own time."

One story idea that Keyes came up with did not go to Lee for consideration. This piece was called "Brainstorm" and would go on to become the novel "Flowers for Algernon". The synopsis read ""The first guy in the test to raise the I.Q. from a low normal 90 to genius level ... He goes through the experience and then is thrown back to what was." Keyes thought the idea did not fit a comic book format. A favorite thing for me is the prose. At the beginning of the novel, Keyes writes in broken sentences and misspelled words. As Charlie's mental faculties improve so does the prose. Once he begins to regress and lose himself the prose returns to its original broken form. While this can be distracting for some it's a stylistic choice I really enjoy and really immerses you into what Charlie has to gain and is missing.

Flowers for Algernon follows the first human patient of an experiment to increase intelligence. The procedure was previously given to a mouse named Algernon. We follow this man, named Charlie Gordon, as the procedure changes him and his relationships with his peers. Charlie, whose previous co-workers at his job at a bakery used to mock and tease him for his low intelligence now fear and shun him out of envy and have his boss fire him. He confronts the scientists behind the experiment, saying that they did not see him a human before the procedure, as just another lab rat. Through the novel, Charlie is charged with writing up progress reports of Algernon, the mouse given the surgery before him. He notes a flaw in the operation, one that could cost him his new gifts. His theory is broken true as Algernon breaks down and slowly dies. Facing this fact, Charlie does his best to mend his broken relationships with his friends and family before he fully regresses. He manages to succeed with his sister Norma who hated him before his operation, but tragically finds his mother who wanted him institutionalized a dementia victim who only recognizes him once. His father who had cut ties to the family does not recognize him at all. As Charlie slowly regresses completely he remembers only that he used to be a genius, and intolerant of the pity of his circles decides to move into a State Home for the mentally disabled. He leaves instructions to leave flowers on the grave of Algernon in the postscript of his writings.

Flowers for Algernon is a masterpiece for how it handles the subject matter it does and for several other reasons. It shows the societal dismissal of those not considered "nuerotypical" and even with his newfound intelligence makes it clear Charlie is a victim to a system he cannot control. Charlie is now intelligent enough to realize the people using them for their own gain, and his only true friend through the novel is his teacher Alice Kinnian. Kinnian put him up for suggestion on the procedure based on his desire to change and learn. Through the novel Charlie works through his issues with his mother and her abuse to fall in love with Alice, and it's all the more tragic as he regresses and forgets everything about their relationship. Flowers for Algernon shows not only the darker side of society's obsession with intelligence, but the darker side of consciousness as a whole. It is said that there are things worse than death. As you see Charlie struggle and fight to maintain what he's earned, to have his happy ending, you are hostage and witness to a man who's mind is literally falling apart. In a twisted parallel to both Algernon the mouse, as Charlie is seen by his mentors and arguably himself, and his dementia ridden abusive mother. She who had scorned him for his mental faculties is herself prisoner to her own deteriorating mind. It's one thing to lose everything. It's another kind of existential fear to be fully aware of what's missing.