by Daniel Keyes
I soon realized that part of my problem was that the story idea—the "What would happen if?..."—had come first, and now I was trying to cast an actor to play the role without knowing what he was like.
I decided to try working from the events that stemmed from the idea, and let the character evolve from the story.
The plot was developing through a sequence of connected episodes, the cause and effect chain of events, embodying what we call form or structure. But I was a long, long way from a story.
I tried starting later in the narrative, remembering Homers epic strategy of starting "in the middle of the action," as in The Iliad and The Odyssey.
Three days later they wheeled him into the operating room of the Institute. He lifted himself up on one elbow and waved to Linda who had supervised his preparation.
"Wish me luck, beautiful," he said.
She laughed. "You'll be all right."
Dr. Brock's eyes smiled down at him from behind his surgical mask.
The fragment breaks off there, but if I were the editor, I'd have blue-penciled this with a note to the writer: "'Smiling eyes?' Watch your clichés. 'From behind his surgical mask'?" If his eyes are smiling from behind the mask then he's going to operate blindfolded!
Still, part of that passage later found its way into the published novelette.
There are about twenty such attempts at beginnings, over several months. I had an idea I cared about And a story line, and a few passages. But I still didn't have the character I felt was right I was searching for a protagonist who would be memorable and with whom the reader and I could identify; someone with a strong motivation and goal who evoked a response from other characters; someone whose inner life gave him a human dimension.
Where would I find such a character? How could I invent and develop him? I hadn't the slightest idea.
Then, months later, he walked into my life and turned it around.
12. Charlie Finds Me
IT HAPPENED IN BROOKLYN. Aurea and I moved back there, across the street from my parents' apartment, on the street where I'd grown up. We were broke. Aurea did freelance fashion styling and I resumed writing scripts for Stan Lee. Hundreds of them.
I took courses at night for a master's degree in American Literature to prepare myself for a teaching license as a way to buy my freedom from scriptwriting. I passed the Board of Education exam for substitute teacher, then taught at the high school from which I'd graduated ten years earlier.
I wrote nights, during the Christmas break, and summers. In 1956 I finished "The Trouble With Elmo," a science fiction story about a chess-playing super computer created to solve all the crises in the world. But the computer has figured out that when there are no more problems to solve, it will be destroyed. So Elmo solves every problem, but embeds what we would now call a computer "worm" or "Trojan horse" containing a program that creates new world crises for it to solve. "The Trouble With Elmo" appeared in Galaxy magazine.
I passed the New York Board of Education exam for an English teachers license in June of 1957. With my higher salary as a regular teacher, Aurea and I were able to rent a one-bedroom house in Seagate, a gated community at the western tip of Coney Island. I loved strolling the beach, smelling the salt air, looking out at the ocean and recalling my seafaring days. I set up my typewriter and desk in a corner of the bedroom, confident I'd be able to write in this place.
The following school term, the chairman of the English department, impressed with my four published short stories, assigned me to teach two elective classes of creative writing. Each class was limited to twenty-five gifted students, all of whom loved reading and wanted to be writers. But many of them acted as if they deserved to have success handed to them because of their intelligence. When they groaned at the assignments and disdained revising their work, I told them, "There are those people who want to write, and others who want to be writers. For some geniuses, success comes without labor. For the rest of us, it's the love of writing that counts."
As if to compensate for these two "special classes," my other two classes were Special Modified English for low I.Q. students. For them, I was expected to concentrate on spelling, sentence structure, and developing paragraphs. Class discussions focused on issues of the day that might interest them. The key to teaching the "special" students in "modified classes," I was told, is to motivate them with things relevant to their own lives.
I will never forget my first day of teaching one of the Special Modified English classes. I can still see the boy, in the rear of the room near the window. When the school bell rings at the end of the 50-minute hour, students jump up and rush out—except that boy, who lumbers toward my desk He wears a black parka, with the orange letter J.
"Mr. Keyes ... Can I ask you something?"
"Sure. You on the football team?"
"Yeah. Linebacker. Look, Mr. Keyes, this is a dummy class, ain't it?"
I'm taken aback. "What?"
"A dummy class ... for stupid people..."
Not knowing how to react, I mumble, "No ... not really ... It's just special and modified. We go a little slower than some of the other—"
"I know this is a dummy class, and I wanted to ask you. If I try hard and I get smart by the end of the term, will you put me in a regular class? I want to be smart."
"Sure," I say, not knowing if I really have the authority. "Let's see what happens."
When I get home that evening, I try to work on a story I've started, but the boy keeps intruding. His words: "I want to be smart" haunt me to this day. It never occurred to me that a developmentally challenged person—in those days they called it retarded—would be aware of his or her limitations and might want to be more intelligent.
I began to write about him.
Short story of a boy in a modified class who begins to realize that he's a "dummy." Teacher's point of view. Donald ... Title: "The Gifted and the Slow."
Two children who grow up near each other—one clever and the other dull. A slow child's deterioration a reflection of the entire culture. Stuart who is struggling against the knowledge that he is slow—Donald who abuses his intelligence.
A boy in a modified class—in love with a bright girl who—up to this point—doesn't understand the differences in intelligence. As each one becomes aware ... He had been placed in this class after he became a behavior problem. He was in a gang of boys called the Cormorants.
His teacher is a new, beginning teacher who has ideals and aspirations—and who believes that Corey can be straightened out. Corey is a neurotic boy—very bright but very disturbed. Bright boy comes into conflict with dull boy over a girl. The dull boy kills the bright boy in a fight.
And so on ... and so on ... and so on ... It was going nowhere. I put the notes away and forgot about them.
I decided to write a novel based on my experiences in the fashion photography business with Aurea and the partner who, I felt, nearly drove both of us crazy. She suggested that I take a leave of absence from teaching, and write full-time while she freelanced as a fashion stylist in Manhattan.
It went well. I was a night writer in those days, and the sound of my Royal typewriter in the bedroom lulled Aurea to sleep. In fact, if I stopped typing for too long she would awaken and mumble, "What's the matter?"
We'd have breakfast together, and then I would drive her to the train station on the back of my red Cushman scooter. I'd come back to the apartment for my day's sleep. Then I'd pick her up in the evening. We'd have dinner together. She would go to sleep, and I'd sit down at the typewriter in a corner of the bedroom.
I don't recall how long it took me to write the first draft of that fashion photography novel, but I do remember that after I put it away for a few days and then reread it, I was sick to my stomach. It was so bad.
I became depressed, frustrated, and demoralized—on the verge of giving up writing altogether.
Then, in the summer of 1958, H. L. Gold phoned and asked me to write a second story for Galaxy to follow "
The Trouble With Elmo."
"I'll try, Horace. I've got an idea."
"Well, get it to me as soon as you can."
It's amazing how quickly depression, frustration, and demoralization can melt away when an editor asks a struggling writer for a story. I searched my files and notebooks.
There was that old, yellowed page from my first year at NYU with the line: "I wonder what would happen if we could increase human intelligence artificially?" I remembered my vision on the subway—the wedge that intelligence has driven between me and my family.
How often those thoughts have come back to me. I reread my notes and scraps about the operation to increase the I.Q., and the story idea, and the shape it might take—the plot of a classic tragedy.
Recalling Aristotle's dictum in his Poetics, that a tragedy can happen only to the highborn, because there can be a tragic fall only from a great height, I thought, let's test that. What if someone the world views as the lowest of the low, a mentally handicapped young man, climbs to the peak of Book Mountain, the heights of genius? And then loses it all. I felt myself choking up as I thought about it.
Okay, I've got the idea and the plot, I thought, but I still don't have the character with motivation.
I opened a more recent folder, turned several pages, and saw the note:
A boy comes up to me in the Special Modified English class and says, "I want to be smart."
Stunned, I stared at those pages, side by side. A motivation collided with a "What would happen if...?"
I glanced at Aurea, tossing restlessly in bed. I pushed my note folders aside ready to begin again. I needed new names. In the city she'd worked for the Larry Gordon Studio. Aurea's last boyfriend before we got married, my rival—his first name was Charlie.
I typed. Aurea sighed at the sound, and soon she was fast asleep.
Charlie Gordon—whoever you are, wherever you are—I hear you. I hear your voice calling out, "Mr. Keyes, I want to be smart."
Okay, Charlie Gordon, you want to be smart? I'll make you smart. Here I come, ready or not.
13. Getting There
I TYPED THE FOLLOWING opening pages in one sitting, pounding away on the keys with more excitement writing than I'd ever known before. Here is the unedited first draft:
"The Genius Effect"
by Daniel Keyes
"What makes Gordon, here ideal for the experiment," said Dr. Strauss, "is that he has a low intelligence level and he's eager and willing to be made a guinea pig."
Charlie Gordon smiled and sat forward on the edge of his chair to hear what Dr. Nemur would answer to that.
"You may be right, Strauss, but he's such a small, frail looking thing. Can he take it, physically? We have no idea how much of a shock it will be to the human nervous system to have the intelligence level tripled in such a short time."
"I'm healthy," offered Charlie Gordon, rising and pounding on his slight chest. "I been working since I was a kid, and—"
"Yes, we know all about that, Charlie," said Dr. Strauss, motioning for Charlie to reseat himself. "What Doctor Nemur means is something else. It's too complicated to explain to you right now. Just relax, Charlie."
Turning his attention back to his colleague, Dr. Strauss continued: "I know he's not what you had in mind as the first of your new breed of intellectual supermen, but volunteers with seventy I.Q. are not easy to find. Most people of his low mentality are hostile and un-co-operative. An I.Q. of seventy usually means a dullness that's hard to reach.
"Charlie has a good nature and he's interested and eager to please. He knows that he's not bright, and he's begged me for the chance to serve as the subject of our experiment. You can't discount the value of motivation. You may be sure of yourself, Nemur, but you've got to remember that this will be the first human being ever to have his intelligence raised by surgical means."
Charlie didn't understand most of what Dr. Strauss was saying, but it sounded as if he were on his side. He held his breath as he waited for Dr. Nemur's answer. In awe, he watched the white-haired genius pull his upper lip over his lower one, scratch his ear and rub his nose. Then finally it came—a nod.
"All right," said Nemur, "we'll try him. Put him through the personality tests. I'll want a complete profile as soon as possible."
Unable to contain himself, Charlie Gordon leaped to his feet and reached across the desk to pump Dr. Nemur's hand. "Thank you, Doc, thank you. You won't be sorry for giving me a chance. I'll try hard to be smart. I'll try awful hard."
The first of the testers to encounter Charlie Gordon was a young Rorschach specialist who attempted to get a deeper insight into Charlie's personality.
"Now, Mr. Gordon," said the thin young man, pushing his glasses back on the bridge of his nose, "just tell me what you see on this card."
Charlie, who approached each new test with tension and the memory of many childhood failures, peered at the card suspiciously. "An inkblot."
"Yes, of course," smiled the tester.
Charlie got up to leave. "That's a nice hobby. I have a hobby too. I paint pictures, you know they have the numbers where you put the different colors—"
"Please, Mr. Gordon. Sit down. We're not through yet. Now what does it make you think of? What do you see in the inkblot?"
Charlie leaned closer to the card and stared at it intently. He took it from the tester's hand and held it close up. Then he held it far away from him glancing up at the young man out of the corner of his eye, hoping to get a hint. Suddenly, he was on his feet, heading out the door.
"Where are you going, Mr. Gordon?"
"To get my glasses."
When Charlie returned from the locker where he had left his glasses in his coat pocket, he explained. "I usually only have to use my glasses when I go to the movies or watch television, but they're really good ones. Let me see that card again. I'll bet I find it now."
Picking up the card again, he stared at it in disbelief. He was sure that he'd be able to see anything there with his glasses on. He strained and frowned and bit his nails. He wanted desperately to see what it was that the tester wanted him to find in that mass of inkblot. "It's an inkblot..." he said, but seeing the look of dismay on the young man's face, he quickly added, "but it's a nice one. Very pretty with these little things on the edges and..." He saw the young psychologist shaking his head and he let his voice trail off. Obviously he hadn't gotten it right.
"Mr. Gordon, now we know it's an inkblot. What I want you to tell me is what it makes you think of. What do you visualize—I mean what do you see in your mind when you look at it?"
"Let me try again," pleaded Charlie. "I'll get it in a few minutes. I'm not so fast sometimes. I'm a very slow reader too, but I'm trying hard." He took the card again and traced the outline of the blot for several minutes, his forehead knit in deep thought. "What does it remind me of? What does it remind me of...?" he mused to himself. Suddenly his forehead cleared. The young man leaned forward expectantly as Gordon said, "Sure—of course—what a dope I am. I should have thought of it before."
"Does it make you think of something?"
"Yes," said Charlie triumphantly, a knowing smile illuminating his face. "A fountain pen ... leaking ink all over the tablecloth."
During the Thematic Apperception Test, in which he was asked to make up stories about the people and things he saw in a series of photographs, he ran into further difficulty.
"—I know you never met these people before," said the young woman who had done her Ph.D. work at Columbia, "I've never met them either. Just pretend that you—"
"Then if I never met them, how can I tell you stories about them? Now I've got some pictures of my mother and father and my little nephew Miltie. I could tell you stories about Miltie..."
He could tell by the way she was shaking her head sadly that she didn't want to hear stories about Miltie. He began to wonder what was wrong with all these people who asked him to do such strange things.
Charlie was miserable during the non-verbal int
elligence tests. He was beaten ten times out of ten by a group of white mice who learned to work their way out of a maze before he did. It depressed him to learn that mice were so smart.
I remember typing that opening fragment. I saw myself writing my homework, the ink dripping from my pen, making an inkblot on the white paper, my mother's hand coming over my shoulder and ripping out the page. I laughed out loud as I saw it happening to Charlie, saw his reaction, heard his words. There was no thinking ahead. It was as if the sentences were flowing from my fingertips to the typewriter keys without passing through my brain. Something inside told me I had it. I finally had it.
Henry James wrote of the donnée—"the given"—as being the heart of the work given to the writer. Well, a boy had walked up to me and given me what I needed to spark the story, and, in return, I would give him some of my own memories to bring his character to life on the page.
Charlie's story had begun to tell itself. It felt right. It felt good.
Yet, the next evening, when I sat down to work, I couldn't go on. Something was blocking me. What? I knew the idea was original; I felt it was important; it had stayed with me over the years and demanded to be written. What was wrong?