From Wikipedia “the fount of all wisdom and knowledge”*:
Flowers for Algernon is a science fiction short story and subsequent novel written by Daniel Keyes. The short story, written in 1958 and first published in the April 1959 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, won the Hugo Award for Best Short Story in 1960.[2] The novel was published in 1966 and was joint winner of that year’s Nebula Award for Best Novel (with Babel-17).[3]
The titular Algernon is a laboratory mouse who has undergone surgery to increase his intelligence by artificial means. The story is told as a series of progress reports written by Charlie, the first human test subject for the surgery, and touches upon many different ethical and moral themes such as the treatment of the mentally disabled.[4]
I first read “Flowers for Algernon” way back when I was around 11 or 12. It was in an anthology of science-fiction short stories. Part of the story is when Charlie is beginning to lose his increased intelligence and tries to read some of his past journal entries – and can no longer understand what he wrote.
The last few years have experienced that a few times. When teaching the series on the book of Ecclesiastes went back to look at my exegesis paper on Ecclesiastes 7 – a rather difficult text.
Could barely understand half of it. Thought “wow this is brilliant! who wrote it?”
The post on the Septuagint and Masoretic Text – and Father Damick’s excellent reply – prompted me to look again at a presentation on the Samaritan Pentateuch I gave in Advanced Hebrew in 1998.
Scribbled notation for presentation: “did LXX and proto-Sam develop from this independently?”
Hunh?!?
