The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
This brief memoir tells the horrific story of Jean-Dominique Bauby. The editor-in-chief of Elle magazine, in 1995 Bauby was stricken by a kind of stroke at the age of 43, leaving him in a condition medical science refers to as “locked-in syndrome.” He is essentially paralyzed, able only to blink his left eye in order to communicate. Bauby’s book (which was made into a film in 2007) makes little reference to the situation of his illness and instead focuses on what it is like to experience a world in which one is unable to respond. The nurses frustrate him, visitors sometimes anger him, but Bauby somehow lives on . . . but only for a short while. He passed away two days after the French publication of the book.
Jean-Dominique Bauby. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. New York: Vintage, 1997. 144 pp. $12.95. 0007790155.
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