During a break in the writing, I read an article in Life magazine about an accident in an industrial plant that used radioactive isotopes. There were photographs of the technician who had been contaminated, and of his home where decontamination specialists had cut away parts of the rug and drapes because he'd unknowingly tracked particles of radioactive dust into his home.
I was saddened by the pictures of his wife, whose hair had to be cropped, and of the son, who had developed radiation sickness. Their expressions moved me.
In the winter of 1961, I put aside the Merchant Marine novel and began A Trace of Dust, a novel about the effects of an industrial radiation spill on Barney and Karen Stark, a young couple who—after many disappointments—are finally expecting their first child. How would the community react to having been contaminated? How would Karen endure her pregnancy, wondering if she would give birth to a mutant? This was long before it was possible to examine a fetus in the uterus.
Usually, as I work on a story, it crowds in on me during non-writing hours, and I compose and edit and revise. But once its published, I go on to other things—if I'm lucky, to other writing. But I discovered that something else was going on in my mind at the same time—Charlie Gordon was haunting me.
Although I had set aside the sea novel to sketch out the radiation novel, changing the title to The Contaminated Man, Charlie kept surfacing. I was recalling scenes from his childhood, memories of his parents, of his normal sister, other events during his growing up. I jotted down notes, and put them aside. I stayed with the radiation novel, now calling it The Midas Touch. I had already become wise to the tricks the writer's mind plays on itself. There you are, writing along, smooth sailing, and then you get another idea you're sure is better than the one you're working on. It feels so hot it demands to be written, but after you start that one, you get another idea, and then another, and before you know it you've got a chain of unfinished works. How do I know this? I've got dozens of them. Are they dead or just dormant in my root cellar? I won't know until I try to replant them.
I tried resisting Charlie Gordon, but he wouldn't let up. He demanded my attention. I remember sitting at my typewriter one summer's day, when I had an unexpected thought.
As a super-genius, Charlie would probably have total recall of scenes and events back to his childhood. But, I wondered, how would he have perceived his childhood world before the experiment? Blurred? Incomplete? And then, after his transformation, how would genius Charlie recall those gauzy visions?
That would be a writing challenge.
I wanted to write it, but I didn't want to set aside the radioactive contamination novel, now called The Touch.
I was already wondering with apprehension whether or not the child of Barney and Karen Stark would be born a mutant.
Finally, in desperation, I wrote an opening chapter of The Touch, and also a plan for work to develop the novelette "Flowers for Algernon" into a full-length novel.
Which should I do first?
I told myself, developing Flowers for Algernon shouldn't take too long. I had the idea, plot, main characters, point of view, and the narrative strategy of Charlie's progress reports. Since it was merely a matter of letting it grow, of filling in more details, I probably should do it first. Considering it had won the Hugo Award, I should be able to get an advance from a book publisher.
I put aside The Touch. On the basis of my plan to develop Flowers for Algernon, a publisher offered me a book contract with an advance of $650. If the manuscript was unacceptable, or if I didn't meet the deadline, I would have to return the full amount. I had never before written with a deadline, and I knew I would need free time to work on it.
I'd heard of published authors teaching creative writing at colleges and universities with only an MA degree. If I could find a position somewhere in higher education, it would mean giving up my regular New York teaching license and tenure, in exchange for a six- to nine-hour a week schedule.
I sent out a hundred inquiries to colleges across the country, seeking a teaching position, and I received one positive response. Wayne State University in Detroit offered me a four-year lectureship—nonrenewable, nontenurable—to teach literature and creative writing. I would have two classes a quarter, each meeting twice weekly for three hours, plus conferences.
As I struggled with the decision, I recalled Shakespeare's words:
There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat;
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.
Julius Caesar, act 4, scene 3
Shakespeare was right. The time was now. I had to take the risk. I assured myself, it shouldn't take long to flesh out the novelette to a full-length novel. Then I could return to The Touch.
I purchased an ancient car from a teaching colleague, and loaded it with most of our possessions. With my wife's encouragement, a grubstake from the movie option, and the publisher's advance, we set out—Aurea, three-year-old Hillary, and I.
As we drove through the Lincoln Tunnel, I thought of Mr. Ochs of the New York Times, and his advice to his son and me. "Westward Ho, Charlie!" I called out. "It's Flowers for Algernon or bust!"
16. Rejected Again
FOR THE NEXT TWO YEARS, while I taught at Wayne State, Flowers for Algernon was growing into a full-length novel. There was so much in Charlie's life I wanted to explore. Yet, I was apprehensive. The response to the novelette had been so strong that I feared people would resent my tampering with it. But I had no choice. Charlie was driving me.
Characters I'd merely named or briefly sketched in die novelette, because there hadn't been space or rime to show them in action, I now developed in scenes.
I was no longer satisfied with the setting of Charlie's job. I felt the paper box factory, where I had worked as a boy, was too dull. The novel needed a place where the sights and smells would be more vivid. It would have to be a place I knew well.
Going through old notes and papers, I found the descriptive sketch of the bakery I'd written long ago, and I changed Charlie's job.
In the novel version, I used some—not all—of the bakery images from that sketch, but not the process of baking bagels. At that time, the early 1960s, bagels were not as ubiquitous as they are now. Anyway, a writer never uses it all. Just what's needed to tell the story.
In addition to remembered images, characters like the real Gimpy, with his clubfoot, and the flour in the seams of his shoes and on his hands and in his hair, came to life.
But something happens when a writer gives real memories to characters to make them come alive. Since emotions facilitate the transfer of scenes and images—along with their feelings—to long-term memory, I've discovered that when I transfer those moments to my fictional characters, I often lose the emotions connected with them. Like the heart-shaped locket and the real event behind it. Anyone who has read only the novelette may ask, "What heart shaped locket?" It's in the novel, but not in the novelette.
In the short version, I was primarily concerned with Charlie's intellectual growth. Now, probing deeper into his mind and his past, I needed to understand experiences that had shaped his emotional growth.
In the novel, Charlie remembers what happened at P. S. 13, and why they had to transfer him to another school. He had found a gold locket in the street. No chain, so he's tied a string to it, and he likes to see the locket twirl. On Valentine's Day, the other boys tell about the cards they're going to buy for a popular girl named Harriet. Since Charlie has no money, he decides to give her the heart-shaped locket.
He takes tissue paper and ribbon from his mothers dresser drawer, and asks his friend Hymie to print on a card: "Dear Harriet, I think your the most prettiest girl in the whole world. I like you very much and I love you. I want you to be my valen
tine. Your friend, Charlie Gordon."
But, unknown to Charlie, his friend Hymie writes something else—a "dirty note"—and says, "Boy, this will knock her eyes out. Wait'll she sees this."
Charlie follows Harriet home from school, and when she goes inside he hangs the locket and note on the outside doorknob, rings the bell, and runs away. He's happy because he thinks she will wear it to school next day and tell all the boys he gave it to her.
But she doesn't wear the locket, and the next day her two older brothers confront Charlie in the school yard.
"You keep away from my kid sister, you degenerate. You don't belong in this school anyway."
Oscar pushes Charlie over to Gus, who catches him by the throat. Charlie is scared and starts to cry. Oscar punches him in the nose, and Gus knocks him on the ground and kicks him and then both of them kick him. His clothes are torn and his nose is bleeding and one of his teeth is broken, and after Gus and Oscar go away he sits on the sidewalk and cries. He tastes blood....
That scene and the emotion behind it comes from my own boyhood. Once, as I walked home after visiting my aunt, I was surrounded by a gang of boys much older, much bigger than me. What was I doing in their neighborhood? they wanted to know. But before I could answer, I was beaten, tossed from one to another, punched and kicked and bloodied. Over the years, that memory surfaced often with emotions of fear and hatred.
I combined that memory with another one, and gave it to Charlie.
Earlier—I must have been eight or nine—there was a girl all the boys had a crush on. She was pretty and coy and she teased us.
I had a small heart-shaped locket I'd found, and I left it on her doorknob on Valentine's Day. I didn't get beaten up by her brothers—she had no brothers—but my mother and I were called to the principal's office the next day, and he reprimanded me.
I blended the beating and the locket memories, added my recalled image of a boy who used to stand in front of his parents' store playing with a string threaded with buttons and beads, twirling them, back and forth, back and forth.
These elements, and probably a few others, like my transfer to another school, I gave to Charlie to make him come alive.
Then something strange happened.
As I wrote that scene, the emotions connected to the memories began to drain away. I no longer felt the fear, the pain, the embarrassment I had experienced at the time. Ever since the writing, those memories and emotions have belonged to Charlie. They're no longer mine.
F. Scott Fitzgerald alludes to something like this in a self-revealing article called, I think, "Handle with Care." He describes the writer holding an empty rifle, suggesting that—in having given away parts of himself—he is finally empty. He speaks of having overdrawn his emotional bank account. The cost of creating living characters out of himself has drained him.
Because of my own experiences, I have often been troubled with that thought. But I reassure myself that as long as a writer is working, and open to new emotional experiences, he is restocking his memory's bank account.
For example, my visit to the place I fictionalized as the "Warren State Home and Training School."
At one point during the revision, I realized the novel needed something I hadn't dealt with in the story version: The genius Charlie would surely be concerned with his future as well as his past
Near the end of Progress Report 15, he says to Nemur, "I might as well know everything while I'm still in a position to have some say about it. What plans have you made for me?"
Nemur shrugs. "The Foundation has arranged to send you to the Warren State Home and Training School"
Charlie is upset at the thought and decides to visit the place. When Nemur asks why, Charlie says, "Because I want to see. I've got to know what's going to happen while I'm still enough in control to be able to do something about it..."
I hadn't imagined that idea before Charlie said those words on paper. It wasn't part of the original plan for work. But now that my character wanted to know what was to become of him, I had to know too.
Since I'd never seen a state facility for what is now referred to as the developmentally challenged and knew nothing about them, I wrote letters to several institutions giving my background, explaining my purpose, and asking for permission to visit.
I was invited. I spent the day. Then I wrote the scene.
JULY 14—It was a bad day to go out to Warren—gray and drizzly—and that may account for the depression that grips me when I think about it.
From that opening line, the seven-page episode in Progress Report 16, during which Charlie tours Warren, is a record of my own emotions during that visit.
The people Charlie meets, the sights Charlie sees, are what I discovered that day. He meets Winslow, the young head psychologist, with the tired look on his face, but the suggestion of strength behind the youthful expression; the sympathetic nurse with the wine-colored birthmark on the left side of her face; the stuttering teacher of the woodworking class of deaf mutes he called his "silent boys"; the motherly principal.
But I was most moved when I saw one of the bigger boys cradling an older, more severely handicapped boy in his arms.
Thinking through Charlie's mind as he tries to imagine what it will be like walking through these corridors as a patient, I gave him my emotional responses.
Progress Report 16:1 visualized myself in the middle of a line of men and boys waiting to enter a classroom. Perhaps I'd be one of those pushing another boy in a wheelchair, or guiding someone else by the hand, or cuddling a smaller boy in my arms.
Winslow, the head psychologist, says he didn't hire a psychiatrist because: "...at the price I'd have to pay I'm able to hire two psychologists—men who aren't afraid to give away a part of themselves to these people."
"What do you mean by 'a part of themselves'?"
He studied me for a moment, and then through the tiredness flashed an anger. "There are a lot of people who will give money or materials, but very few who will give time and affection. That's what I mean." His voice grew harsh, and he pointed to an empty baby bottle on the bookshelf across the room.... "How many people do you know who are prepared to take a grown man into his arms and let him nurse with the bottle? And take the chance of having the patient urinate or defecate all over him?"
As I drove out of Warren, I didn't know what to think. The feeling of cold grayness was everywhere around me ... I may soon be coming to Warren to spend the rest of my life with the others ... waiting.
This is what I mean by restocking a writer's memory banks. I visited the place, met the people, experienced the emotions, and then gave them away. Now, it's Charlie's voice, Charlies thoughts, Charlie's feelings. Although I had them first, they're no longer mine.
Development of the novel didn't go as quickly as I had expected. It took a year before I was ready to send it to the publisher. Yet, I made my deadline, and I felt good about my work.
The editor didn't.
I'll omit his name, and say only that he's no longer an editor. He's become a well-known literary agent.
He returned the manuscript, saying, it wasn't acceptable in its present form. He felt the book suffered from expansion. He said it was a remarkable short story, and a great deal of the quality remained. But no new elements had been added, he wrote, to give it a new dimension.
He had other criticisms: He found the sections about Charlies sister, and some of the other dreams, "disturbing and much too strong stuff for this category." He complained about the lack of confrontation between Charlie and the professors. He insisted that the reader would expect a real duel between them and would be disappointed without one. Besides that, he said, it really needed more drama in the present—a new plotline. He suggested that Charlie and Burt the tester might both be in love with Alice Kinnian.
All he was asking me to do was to rewrite it completely, changing it into a formula love triangle superimposed on the plot of a hero/villain "duel."
And, most cutting of all {pun inte
nded), he thought the manuscript needed to be cut substantially. Déjà vu.
Luckily, my experience with H. L. Gold's suggestions for making it a great story by having Charlie keep his intelligence, marry Alice, and live happily ever after, had strengthened my resolve to protect what I had created.
There's no point in trying to describe my despair. I taught my creative writing courses in a daze for the next week. I wanted my novel published, but I had no intention of making those changes. I picked my emotions up off the floor, wiped the blood off my psyche, and went back to work.
I would revise, but only what I felt Charlie and the story itself demanded.
17. Of Love and Endings
UP TO THAT POINT in the writing, the form of the story had been a single curve, tracing Charlie's intelligence rising to a peak, and then falling as he deteriorates.
Perhaps the novel did need a second curve, an emotional curve. And, of course, it would lag behind his intelligence curve, creating a different kind of conflict between himself and Alice. But not a love triangle!
It had to start with adolescent romantic yearnings, and I didn't have to dig too deep into myself to give Charlie those shy and awkward moments in my youth. Since their roots were in my memories, I felt they would find resonance with most young people awakening to love.
When Charlie takes Alice to a concert, he is unsure of himself:
I had no way of knowing what she expected of me. This was far from the clear lines of problem-solving and the systematic acquisition of knowledge. I kept telling myself that the sweating palms, the tightness in my chest, the desire to put my arms around her were merely bio-chemical reactions ... Should I or not? Was she waiting for me to do it? Would she get angry? I could tell I was still behaving like an adolescent and it angered me.
Following Alices rejection of Charlie's fumbling attempts to show affection, I created a new scene to reveal their emotional interaction: