Helen And Teacher - The Story Of Helen Keller And Anne Sullivan Macy

Some people change the world by making speeches, leading revolutions or inventing something that nobody knew they needed. Others do it by teaching a stubborn little girl how to spell W-A-T-E-R into the palm of her hand. History, being rather fond of the spectacular, sometimes overlooks the extraordinary effort involved in the latter.

Helen and Teacher: The Story of Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan Macy (1997) by Joseph P. Lash tells the remarkable story of two women who refused to accept the limitations that the world, with its customary confidence in knowing what’s best for everyone, had thoughtfully imposed upon them.

Helen Keller, left deaf and blind by illness in infancy, might easily have been consigned to a lifetime of isolation. Enter Anne Sullivan, a young teacher with serious visual difficulties of her own, a formidable determination and apparently limitless reserves of patience. Well, perhaps not limitless. Helen was hardly a model pupil, and their early encounters were less a charming educational idyll than a battle of wills in which neither participant had the slightest intention of surrendering.

What followed was one of the most remarkable partnerships in modern history. Keller learned to communicate, pursued an education, graduated from college, wrote books, travelled widely and became an internationally celebrated campaigner. Sullivan, meanwhile, performed the rather less glamorous task of making much of this possible, often while contending with her own failing eyesight, exhaustion and the peculiar human tendency to applaud a miracle while overlooking the person doing most of the work.

Joseph P. Lash, a Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer, explores the complex relationship behind the familiar inspirational legend. This is not simply a story about overcoming disability, complete with uplifting music and a conveniently placed handkerchief. It is also about ambition, dependence, loyalty, frustration, intellectual discovery and two exceptionally strong personalities whose lives became almost inseparable.

There are triumphs, disagreements, sacrifices and enough emotional complications to satisfy anyone who suspects that the most interesting biographies concern people who were considerably less straightforward than their public reputations suggested.

Published by Addison-Wesley in 1997, this substantial biography offers a fascinating examination of an extraordinary friendship and an equally extraordinary educational achievement. It also provides a useful reminder that the people history celebrates rarely accomplish everything quite as independently as the commemorative plaques might suggest.

Condition: Good. A previously enjoyed copy, showing the ordinary evidence of having existed in the physical world rather than spending its entire life sealed in a climate-controlled museum. Still perfectly capable of delivering its considerable contents to another reader.

Offered by Crappy Old Books, where remarkable lives, forgotten histories and books with a little experience of their own are always welcome. After all, a book about overcoming obstacles hardly needs to look as though it has never encountered one.

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