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This is the short story version, but I've read the book several times. It's not Tolstoy level literature, but I find myself drawn into this beautiful story of life, death, and compassion again and again.
This story hit me hard when I read it as a kid. When I was young, I read another story with a similar emotional texture that I've been trying to find again for years now. It had a mentally challenged boy who worked in a restaurant with a lobster tank in the front, and the boy loved the lobster as a pet and stopped the restaurant staff from killing and serving the lobster. But one day when the boy was gone the lobster…
Is this a short story that predated the full novel? Flowers for Algernon that I read was 300 pages or so... what am I missing?
Despite all my rational efforts; all the maths and research - there is a speck of insight that only poetry and literature can reach. It's irritating and comforting at the same time.
All the world’s combined poetry and literature won’t get you to the moon, or solve the world’s energy crisis. It’s all a bunch of tosh - don’t stop building.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Such contempt is not unique to "these days". And for what it's worth, there is no less contempt for the educated, never mind the intelligent, among those subcultures who praise and harvest ignorance.
>Such contempt is not unique to "these days" It certainly is among otherwise self-declared tolerant people. The Atlantic wrote a great piece a few years ago called 'The War on Stupid people', pointing out that in communities that have strict rules of conduct concerning just about any form of discrimination, you'll find people casually joking about 'darwin awards' when some stupid person dies a grueling death. Imagine…
There's something curiously American about Flowers for Algernon... our general popular culture tends to value physical achievement (the athlete) more than mental achievement (the nerd/geek). So here's the story of how the co-workers/peers of a mentally disabled individual, Charlie, (who they ridicule initially) react to the reversal of that disability (with suspicion and distrust) and then the re-imposition of that d…
That's, more or less, one of the first questions I asked in this site. Paul Graham answered with photos of the football team and the chess club. It seems there is a physical difference bigger than what I've observed in Spain and more on the side of athletes. I don't see that kind of massive teens over here in campuses.
I was first exposed to it in movie form, called Charly and starring Cliff Robertson. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062794/ It had a big impact on me and I immediately wanted it in book form after seeing the movie.
Ted Chiang wrote a short story inspired by Flowers for Algernon ("Understand") that explores what might happen if a guy just never stopped getting smarter: https://web.archive.org/web/20140527121332/http://www.infini... I love Flowers for Algernon, but Understand is my favorite short story of all time.
I adore most of Chiang's work, but Understand is one of my least favorites. Fun premise, yes, but it reads to me like much less mature sci-fi, like something written by a teen about what being super-smart would feel like.
Just kidding
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Words (or in their case, characters & the concepts) partially define culture, though. If you don't have an easy word for something, whether it's a personality or a color, it's a foreign idea to you. Sure, someone can translate it for you and tell you what it means, but it's not the same as having it be a part of your culture. Someone can explain "tea time" to me, but as an American, it will always be a Britishism eve…
I think that has been fairly heavily disproven. That language defines culture. I meant my anecdote to be that I grew up in America, and didn't see this behavior at large. Outside of movies. Completely agreed that it is an interesting topic.
I wonder how it got to the top of hn all of a sudden though.