2014.07 另一个海伦-凯勒

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另一个海伦-凯勒
一部不同寻常的历史小说

作者：安-胡尔伯特

第十二期
2014年7月/8月号
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当8岁的海伦-凯勒在这部不同寻常的历史小说的开篇来见她时，"他们居然称她为'第二个劳拉-布里奇曼'"，美国的统治性聋盲名人恼羞成怒地指出。这是1888年在波士顿的帕金斯学院，布里奇曼对被人抢了风头的恼怒是有先见之明的：一年后她就死了，享年59岁，而凯勒正在成为，正如她自己后来所说的，"世界上有史以来最该死的海报儿童"。但金伯利-埃尔金斯在重新想象布里奇曼那迷人的、现已被遗忘的故事时，给予了她挑衅的权利。这个女孩既凶猛又虚弱，她靠触觉导航生活（早期的高烧也让她失去了嗅觉和味觉），蔑视所有人的期望，包括她自己。

埃尔金斯躲在图书馆里，准备仔细研究现实生活中的杰出人物，探索意想不到的权力关系：把布里奇曼的教育作为自己事业的塞缪尔-克里德利-豪博士，努力驯服他的妻子、诗人朱莉娅-沃德-豪，以及他不安分的学生。埃尔金斯更大胆的壮举是摸进布里奇曼的 "大理石牢房，不受任何光线或声音粒子的影响"。查尔斯-狄更斯在1842年的一次访问中被12岁的劳拉惊呆了，他就是这样描述她的困境的。埃尔金斯在其中发现的世界并不安静。在有触感的散文中，她唤起了灵魂和身体的渴望（是的，有性），这是布里奇曼的指南中没有人开始想象的。

可见的东西》KIMBERLY ELKINS，12岁
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安-胡尔伯特是《大西洋》杂志的文学编辑，也是《离谱》一书的作者。美国神童的隐秘生活和教训》。



The Other Helen Keller
An unusual historical novel

By Ann Hulbert

Twelve
JULY/AUGUST 2014 ISSUE
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“they’re actually calling her ‘the second Laura Bridgman,’” America’s reigning deaf-blind celebrity is irked to note when 8-year-old Helen Keller comes to meet her on the opening page of this unusual historical novel. It’s 1888 at the Perkins Institution in Boston, and Bridgman’s annoyance at being upstaged is prescient: a year later she is dead at 59, and Keller is on her way to becoming, as she herself later put it, “the best damn poster child the world has ever known.” But Kimberly Elkins gives Bridgman her defiant due in reimagining her fascinating, now-forgotten story. As fierce as she is frail, the girl who navigates life by touch (an early fever left her without smell and taste, too) flouts everybody’s expectations, including her own.

Elkins holed up in the library, and emerged ready to scrutinize real-life eminences and explore unexpected power relations: the man who makes Bridgman’s education his cause, Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, struggles to tame his wife, the poet Julia Ward Howe, as well as his restless pupil. Elkins’s bolder feat is to feel her way into Bridgman’s “marble cell, impervious to any ray of light, or particle of sound.” That’s how Charles Dickens, who was awed by 12-year-old Laura on a visit in 1842, described her plight. The world Elkins discovers within is anything but muted. In tactile prose, she evokes a soul and a body with hungers (yes, there is sex) that none of Bridgman’s guides begins to imagine.

What Is VisibleKIMBERLY ELKINS, TWELVE
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Ann Hulbert is the literary editor of The Atlantic and the author of Off the Charts: The Hidden Lives and Lessons of American Child Prodigies.