‘Flowers for Algernon’ author Keyes, 86, dies

Daniel Keyes, whose fascination with the workings of the mind drove a writing career that produced the classic 1966 novel “Flowers for Algernon,” died last Sunday at his South Florida home of complications from pneumonia, his family said. He was 86.

“Flowers for Algernon,” which Keyes initially wrote as a short story, goes inside the head of Charlie Gordon, a man with an IQ of 68 who is painfully aware of his mental limits and yearns to be smart.

The novel takes the form of Charlie’s journal entries or “progris riports,” which are filled with his spelling and grammatical mistakes until he undergoes an operation that enhances his intelligence, much as it had with Algernon, the lab mouse that had the surgery first. But when Algernon regresses, Charlie realizes that the same fate awaits him.

A remark by a slow-learning high school English student of Keyes’ helped spark the story that would become his first novel: “I want to be smart,” the student said. Those words “haunt me to this day,” Keyes wrote in his memoir.

“Flowers for Algernon” brought Keyes some of the highest honors in science fiction: the Hugo Award for the 1959 short story and the Nebula Award for the novel. It also inspired numerous adaptations, including a 1980 Broadway musical and a 2000 TV movie. The most famous adaptation, however, was the 1968 movie “Charly,” which starred Cliff Robertson in an Academy Award-winning performance.

Born in New York City on Aug. 9, 1927, Keyes married Aurea Vazquez, a fashion stylist and photographer, in 1952; she died last year. His survivors include two daughters and a sister.