Flowers for Algeron by Daniel Keyes
November 14, 2024
I raced through this book, it only took me about 3-4 hours to finish which consisted of 2 days. I even woke up thinking about the experience that Charly Gordon had. It's been a while since I read a fiction book (that was not a collection of short stories), probably about 5 years, maybe even closer to 7, since I don't remember how much spark notes I used in high school. I enjoyed the experience. I wouldn't say that this will turn me into an avid reader, but I felt like it added a new dimension to my life that I needed. I thought about the difference between fiction and non fiction books and put together that reading fiction is comparable to listening. Listening to someone allows you to be a part of their world, and see experiences through their eyes, without having to experience those things by yourself. On the other hand, reading non fiction books like like talking. Talking requires more mental energy to formulate sentences and turn blurbs of memories, opinions, emotions, and everything else that thoughts consist of into a structured grammar, just like understanding some of the complexities that non fiction explains. I think it's important to listen and talk, so I'll be trying to do a little bit of both by diversifying my reading selection - if, of course, I stay motivated to read.
Now to actually talk about the book. It was good. Like really good. The grammar was unique as it started with the narrator being legally retarded (with lots of mispellings and a naive outlook on the world) and then gaining intelligence (where the grammar became polished and the narrator grew resentful). The shift when you began to see words being spelled correctly, and then later the demise of the narrator's intelligence, slowly bringing in the mispellings, was interesting and well done. I don't necessarily see a deep underlying message to this story. The main theme includes treatment those we see as inferior intellectually, and the other follows the allegory in Plato's The Republic about the light blinding those who come out of the cave. However, that was pretty explicitly alluded to, even including snippets from the work. It was upsetting seeing the narrator regress back into his original state, it made me cry.
Another reason I enjoyed this book, is because I have come to realize I am interested in intelligence. While, I never really wanted to admit this, I strongly focuse on becoming the smartest I can possibly be. I have a hard time gauging where I am though on the scale on intelligence. Growing up, I did well in school and got placed in advanced classes, including gifted and talented in elementary and middle school followed by a bunch of AP classes in high school, but I see that people who grew up naturally intelligent at a certain point realize that they didn't develop a work ethic. I never encountered an issue where I felt like things started to get hard and my work ethic was lacking. I have always felt that the effort I put in is equivalent to what is needed to succeed. Another aspect of this is, is that I enjoy learning so I never felt like I had to work hard since I enjoyed the task. However, this disconnect of not experiencing this lack of work ethic, makes me conclude that my work ethic was stable from the start and what I achieved wasn't because of intelligence, just work ethic. Which begs the question, how can you measure intelligence? With the election, I have seen a lot of discussion on news channels where the commenter will condescendingly report that an uneducated population voted for a specific party. This rubs me the wrong way, because I do not see the people I see on television to be intelligent, despite having whatever degree they have and the people they are looking down on, most certainly are smarter than them, despite not having a formal education. I don't see having a college education as a measure of intelligence. What part of intelligence is effort? The book seems to suggest that memory and knowledge retention indicates a high IQ. I don't know if I 100% agree with that, because you don't need to have a good memory to have a high problem solving capability. And I think people with good problem solving skills are intelligent. I wish I could answer these questions to gauge if I'm intelligent. But then I questoin, would knowing really change my life in any way? Probably not, for now I just keep learning what I'm interested in and hopefully as I learn more, I can make better connections about the world around me at a pace that is comfortable for me.