Mark Twain & Helen Keller’s Special Friendship: He Treated Me Not as a Freak, But...

"Open Culture" ^ | 5/13/15 | "Josh Jones"

[9thLife]

Mark Twain & Helen Keller’s Special Friendship: He Treated Me Not as a Freak, But as a Person Dealing with Great Difficulties

Sometimes it can seem as though the more we think we know a historical figure, the less we actually do. Helen Keller? We’ve all seen (or think we’ve seen) some version of The Miracle Worker, right?—even if we haven’t actually read Keller’s autobiography. And Mark Twain? He can seem like an old family friend. But I find people are often surprised to learn that Keller was a radical socialist firebrand, in sympathy with workers’ movements worldwide. In a short article in praise of Lenin, for example, Keller once wrote, “I cry out against people who uphold the empire of gold…. I am perfectly sure that love will bring everything right in the end, but I cannot help sympathizing with the oppressed who feel driven to use force to gain the rights that belong to them.”

[9thLife]

Twain, Keller, socialists? Historical revisionism or misinterpretation?

[fieldmarshaldj]

It was pretty well known that Keller was a Marxist.

[nathanbedford]

Twain was certainly an iconoclast and rebel his entire life.

He was a deserter from service in the Confederate militia in the Civil War and fled to the far West. Even his earliest writings reflect an ability to see the mirror image of life. I think Twain was as he suggests a pessimist. Certainly, personal tragedies such as the death of his child deepened his darkest perceptions.

If one looks at Huckleberry Finn which is a searing indictment of slavery, its brilliance lies partly in the fact that Twain works his magic by writing the mirror image of his intended result. For example, Huck Finn's decision that he will commit a mortal sin and go to hell by being a friend to "Nigger Jim" leaves the reader to reverse the logic and in doing so penetrate the veil of rationalization which had sustained slavery and Jim Crow.

Huckleberry Finn is perhaps the great American novel as Hemmingway said (I agree) because Twain makes the reader really part of the process of grappling with America's original sin but he gives the devil every advantage yet still succeeds in making all of us believers.

The irony of modern race baiters agitating to remove Huckleberry Finn from libraries because it contains the word "Nigger" is very sad.

[carcraft]

I find it interesting that Twain could pen a book like “Reminiscence of Joan of Arch “.

[Craftmore]

If Im not mistaken,,And I may well be,,Didnt Helen Keller also say disabled people should be euthanized even tho she herself was disabled?
http://www.uffl.org/vol16/gerdtz06.pdf

[Crazieman]

Admirable personally, as a life story.

But yeah, I recall reading she was a complete fruitcake when it came to governance.

[Popman]

Twain took a more pessimistic, ironic approach, yet he thoroughly opposed religious dogma, slavery, and imperialism. “I am always on the side of the revolutionists,” he wrote, “because there never was a revolution unless there were some oppressive and intolerable conditions against which to revolute.”

Interesting position Twain took

I wonder what he would think of today's manufactured phoney oppressors and fake intolerable conditions pushed by the progressives...

[blaveda]

Thanks for sharing this curious piece if history.

[MuttTheHoople]

How did Helen Keller burn her fingers?

Trying to read the waffle-iron.

[fieldmarshaldj]

Yeah, I remember rifling through a “Truly Tasteless Jokebook” back in the ‘80s.

Another one was, “How did Helen Keller’s parents punish her ?”

“By stomping on her braille books with golf shoes.”

[fieldmarshaldj]

Yeah, she was a true believer in the Communist ideal, even helped to found the ACLU. Despite this, she was supposedly a Christian - although in the early part of the 20th century, there was a curious attempt to marry social justice leftism of the economic sort with Christianity, championed by William Jennings Bryan. Of course, you see little of that today, except the pseudo-Christian phoniness pushed by some Black churches (”Social Justice” being just thinly-veiled Marxism).

The stories about her tended to focus on her early life triumph while ignoring the later, more politically repugnant side that would tend to turn off a majority of folks (or at least used to).

[CrazyIvan]

Communism is idiocy. They want to divide up the property. Suppose they did it — it requires brains to keep money as well as make it. In a precious little while the money would be back in the former owner’s hands and the communist would be poor again.
- Mark Twain, a Biography

[miss marmelstein]

Helen Keller’s life was very curtailed; not only by her disabilities but by her family and Anne Sullivan. She was not allowed to marry although she was secretly engaged to a young man. She was very much affected by John Macy’s radicalism (Anne’s husband). She was tremendously naïve.

[9thLife]

The irony of modern race baiters agitating to remove Huckleberry Finn from libraries because it contains the word "Nigger" is very sad.

I think it's hilarious to watch wicked people "outsmart" themselves.

[A_perfect_lady]

It was pretty well known that Keller was a Marxist.

I actually never knew that, but it certainly explains why public schools have been shoving her down kids' throats for decades.

[fieldmarshaldj]

You can read her bio on Wikipedia. She did align herself with some truly unsavory elements, from the Socialist Party (Communists, really) to the terroristic, subversive Wobblies (IWW).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Keller

[minnesota_bound]

Back in her day you were pretty much left to fend for yourself. I understand her falling for socialist causes.

[miss marmelstein]

I was fascinated with Helen Keller as a kid. All the children’s books (including her autobiography) only emphasized her overcoming horrendous disabilities and the genius of Anne Sullivan. I was an adult before I knew about her political activities. She was pretty much a pawn of John Macy.

[miss marmelstein]

Mark Twain channels Rush Limbaugh - or is it the other way around?