“Thank God for books and music and things I can think about."

Here's the latest in my apparently continuing series of people who deserved better obituaries than one paragraph in the entertainment section.  It was in this morning's paper that author Daniel Keyes died.

Keyes is best known for the novel Flowers for Algernon, the story of a mentally challenged man who undergoes experimental surgery to improve his intelligence.  You could describe it - as the newspaper did - by repeatedly mentioning that it's often used in high school English classes and then leave it at that without further insight. But I'd just like to add that it's a brilliant examination of how intellect shapes human interaction, and so often ends up holding us apart.