Flowers For Algernon

Background of Author Daniel Keyes

      Daniel Keyes was born on August 9, 1927 in Brooklyn, NY, and died June 15, 2014 in Boca Raton, Florida. He was born to William and Betty Keyes. At seventeen, after a year of study at New York University, he joined the U.S. Maritime Service. As ship's senior assistance purser, he went to sea on oil tankers which carried cargo to Europe and the Middle East.

     Two years later, Keyes left the Maritime Service and went back to school. In 1950 he received his B.A. degree from Brooklyn College. Following graduation, he became an associate fiction editor for New York magazine-publishing service. "Here," Keyes says, "I began to learn the craft of writing."

     In 1953, Keyes left editing to go into fashion photography. He was co-owner of Fenko and Keyes Photography, Inc. When Keyes decided to leave business for teaching, he completed a circle by returning as an instructor to the high school from which he had been graduated ten years earlier.

     In the years that followed, he combined a life of teaching with writing. He returned to Brooklyn College to work towards his M.A. in English and American Literature. Keyes taught  days and wrote on weekends. In 1961, after receiving his M.A. degree, he accepted a position at Wayne University in Detroit, Michigan. During this time, he develpoed and completed the novel version of Flowers For Algernon. 

     The idea for Flowers For Algernon came to Keyes years before he wrote either the story or the novel. The idea came with the contemplation of what would happen if it were possible to increase human intelligence artificially. The idea for the character, Charlie, came four years later and is a composite of characteristics of many people. After a conversation with a mentally challenged young man, Keyes thought how wonderful it would be if intelligence could be increased to help the mentally challenged. Keyes states, "After a great many false starts, I discovered the technique of the progress reports. With these three elements, the idea, the character, and the way to tell the story, I was well on my way."

     The short story, winner of the Hugo Award, was published in 1959 in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. The short story has appeared in nearly twenty anthologies and has been translated into Italian, French, Spanish, German, Japanese, Dutch, and Hungarian. In 1961, an hour long television dramatization entitled "Two worlds of Charlie Gordon"appeared on the U.S. Steel Hour. Cliff Robertson won an Emmy nomination for his portrayal of Charlie Gordon.

      From 1962-1965, Daniel Keyes worked on the novel-length version of Flowers For Algernon .When asked what prompted him to expand the short story into novel length, Keyes r esponded, "I decided it wasn't finished. The short story is limited. It haunted me." The "finished"version was published in 1966. It has gone into seven printings totalling nearly a million copies. Flowers For Algernon was awarded  "Best Novel of 1966 Nebula Award" by the Science Fiction Writers of America. Soon the novel was converted into a film version entitled Charly from which Cliff Robertson won the 1969 Best Actor Oscar for the title role.

       In 1966 Keyes joined the faculty at Ohio University in Athens , Ohio, There he taught American Literature and Writing. It is there that he finished his second novel and begun work on the third. Daniel Keyes remained married to Aurea Georgina Vazquez, whom he married in 1952. They had two daughters. Keyes died at his home in Boca Raton, Florida where he retired on June 15, 2014.