Flowers for Algernon

Im taking a cuple of books along and even if I cant reed them Ill practise hard and mabye Ill even get a littel bit smarter then I was before the operashun without an operashun. I got a new rabits foot and a luky penny and 215 even a littel bit of that majic powder left and mabye they will help me. If you ever reed this Miss Kinnian dont be sorry for me. Im glad I got a second chanse in life like you said to be smart because I lerned alot of things that I never even new were in this werld and Im grateful I saw it all even for a littel bit. And Im glad I found out all about my family and me. It was like I never had a family til I remembird about them and saw them and now I know I had a family and I was a person just like evryone. I dont no why Im dumb agen or what I did rong. Mabye its because I dint try hard enuf or just some body put the evel eye on me. But if I try and practis very hard mabye Ill get a littel smarter and no what all the words are. I remembir a littel bit how nice I had a feeling with the blue book that I red with the toren cover. And when I close my eyes I think about the man who tored the book and he looks like me only he looks different and be talks different but I dont think its me because its like I see him from the window. Anyway thats why Im gone to keep trying to get smart so I can have that feeling agen. Its good to no things and be smart and I wish I new evrything in the hole world. I wish I coud be smart agen rite now. If I coud I woud sit down and reed all the time.

Anyway I bet Im the frist dumb persen in the world who found out some thing inportent for sience. I did somthing but I dont remembir what. So I gess its like I did it for all the dumb pepul like me in Warren and all over the world. Goodby Miss Kinnian and dr Strauss and evrybody…

P.S. please tel prof Nemur not to be such a grouch when pepul laff at him and he woud have more frends. Its easy to have fiends if you let pepul laff at you. Im going to have lots of fiends where I go.

P.S. please if you get a chanse put some flown on Algernons grave in the bak yard.

The End

About the author

DANIEL KEYES was born in Brooklyn and received his B.A. and M.A. degrees from Brooklyn College. He has been a merchant seaman, ship’s purser, fiction editor and high school teacher. At the present time, Mr. Keyes is on the English faculty at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio.

Flowers for Algernon made its first appearance as a magazine story in 1960 and won the Hugo award that year for the best science novelette. It was then a television drama, is here enlarged to novel length, and is also the basis for a motion picture.

Mr. Keyes is the author of a second novel, The Touch, and of the nonfiction book, The Minds of Billy Milligan.