flowers for Algernon

chapter 22: progress report 19 may 15

May 15 Dr. Strauss is very angry at me for not having written any progress

reports in two weeks. He's justified because the lab is now paying me a regular

salary. I told him I was too busy thinking and reading. When I pointed out

that writing was such a slow process that it made me impatient with my poor

handwriting, he suggested that I learn to type. It's much easier to write now

because I can type nearly seventy-five words a minute. Dr. Strauss continually

reminds me of the need to speak and write simply so that people will be able

to understand me.

I'll try to review all the things that happened to me during the last two

weeks. Algernon and I were presented to the American Psychological Associa-

tion sitting in convention with the World Psychological Association last Tues-

day. We created quite a sensation. Dr. Nemur and Dr. Strauss were proud of

us.

I suspect that Dr. Nemur, who is sixty-ten years older than Dr. Strauss

-finds it necessary to see tangible results of his work. Undoubtedly the result

of pressure by Mrs. Nemur.

Contrary to my earlier impressions of him, I realize that Dr. Nemur is

not at all a genius. He has a very good mind, but it struggles under the spectre

of self-doubt. He wants people to take him for a genius. Therefore, it is

important for him to feel that his work is accepted by the world. I believe that

Dr. Nemur was afraid of further delay because he worried that someone else

might make a discovery along these lines and take the credit from him.

Dr. Strauss on the other hand might be called a genius, although I feel

that his areas of knowledge are too limited. He was educated in the tradition

of narrow specialization; the broader aspects of background were neglected

far more than necessary-even for a neurosurgeon.

I was shocked to learn that the only ancient languages he could read

were Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, and that he knows almost nothing of mathe­matics beyond the elementary levels of the calculus of variations. When he

FLOWERS admitted this to me, I found myself almost annoyed. It was as if he'd hidden

FOR this part of himself in order to deceive me, pretending-as do many people
ALGERNON

I've discovered-to be what he is not. No one I've ever known is what he

appears to be on the surface.

Dr. Nemur appears to be uncomfortable around me. Sometimes when

I try to talk to him, he just looks at me strangely and turns away. I was angry

at first when Dr. Strauss told me I was giving Dr. Nemur an inferiority

complex. I thought he was mocking me and I'm oversensitive at being made

fun of.

How was I to know that a highly respected psychoexperimentalist like

Nemur was unacquainted with Hindustani and Chinese? It's absurd when you

consider the work that is being done in India and China today in the very field

of his study.

I asked Dr. Strauss how Nemur could refute Rahajamati's attack on his

method and results if Nemur couldn't even read them in the first place. That

strange look on Dr. Strauss' face can mean only one of two things. Either he

doesn't want to tell Nemur what they're saying in India, or else-and this

worries me-Dr. Strauss doesn't know either. I must be careful to speak and

write clearly and simply so that people won't laugh.