Word: lashings
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...Lash, therefore, the balance of the Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan Macy story was more than history. "I guess if I were starting life all over again and realized the pleasure I got out of writing biography," he says, "I would do some very serious work in training myself in psychiatry." Dismissing the idea that psychobiography is junk, Lash believes psychoanalyzing his subjects--something he does occasionally in Helen and Teacher--can be a very helpful tool in unravelling mysteries...
Using evidence available on the surface, Lash says, most of the writers that trod the historical ground before him concluded that Helen was somewhat shallow. They preferred Annie to Helen. The reason is simple, he says. "Helen was almost too good." Her world was one of friends and enemies, black and white; those who cared for her were good; those who slandered her Teacher were not. As Lash quotes Alexander Graham Bell, there was a feeling among those who met her that "if God undertook to be represented on the earth, it would be in the person of someone like...
Annie, on the other hand, was much more complicated. She tempts writers, Lash believes, because "she had so many flaws and they were on the surface where you could get hold of them." Lash says he was "very conscious" of the natural bias toward Annie. Using the psychoanalyst's tools, he concludes in Helen and Teacher that Helen was forced into the position of drawing simple moral lines. "She knew how important Annie was to her," Lash explains. "She determined she would not allow any criticisms of Annie in her thoughts. That was the price she payed...
...three years ago. His seven-year-old granddaughter had come to Martha's Vineyard to visit him and when she learned of his latest project, she announced that she "knew all about Helen Keller." He asked her why. "Our teacher read us a book about Helen Keller," she responded. Lash says his granddaughter--and others like her--remember the story of Helen Keller because she ranks among a number of select historical figures that people can identify with. "It's very easy to understand why," he says. "Here is this woman deaf, dumb and blind and everyone has the same...
With Helen and Teacher, Joseph P. Lash introduces the first multi-perspective, carefully-documented and complete book about the life of one of America's genuine heroines. It is definitive; his book recovers old ground, unearths what others left behind and settles the dust on controversies about Helen Keller's life. He brings to his task an enormous talent for research, a kind and penetrating eye and, most importantly, humanity--a feeling for the influence that one person can have upon another...