During this time, he supported himself selling direct mailing advertising and selling encyclopedias. But he lost interest in journalism and started pursuing psychology instead. He then enrolled at New York University for a course in journalism and after graduating, he proceeded to Brooklyn College. While he had some money, it was not so easy getting published as more than a dozen publishers rejected his manuscript. Keyes used the money he saved working on ships to live on while he wrote “Flowers for Algernon” his debut novel. iN 1946, he worked as an untrained ship’s doctor and purser on a number of vessels.

Shortly after turning eighteen, Daniel Keyes joined the US Maritime Service and hopped on a converted liner that was ferrying troops to France during World War II.

When he was sixteen, he took a waiting job and it was the money he saved from that job that he paid most of his first year college tuition at New York University as a medical student. He used to take the 4am till 7am shift before the driver dropped him off at school. As a fourteen year old boy, he used to work as an assistant for a delivery man working for a bagel bakery in New York City. While he was just a boy, he used to work in factories and deliver sandwiches. He was born in 1927 and hence he grew up during the Great Depression. Daniel Keyes was an American fantasy, science fiction and literary fiction author that was best known as the author of “Flowers of Algernon.” The author was born in Brooklyn to American Jewish parents William and Betty.

Daniel keyes