The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

This mini memoir makes me want to skydive, sing badly at the top of my lungs, eat the richest chocolate cake, drink the richest hot cocoa, and basically, indulge in life, just because I can.  Jean-Dominique Bauby, the successful, flamboyant, and extravagant editor of France's Elle Magazine, fell victim to a stroke and woke up from a coma 20 days later.  The good news - he's alive.  The bad news - he's afflicted by locked-in syndrome and his body is basically paralyzed with the exception of his left eyelid.  In one of the chapters, he describes how his right eyelid failed to blink and hydrate itself, so the doctor came in to sew it shut (to prevent infection), while he was fully conscious. 



Jean-Do (as he is called in the book) literally composed this memoir in a blink of an eye, with the help of Claude Mendibil, who recited letters of the alphabet over and over again until he blinked a confirmation.  The Diving Bell and the Butterfly was the result of 4-hr "dictation" sessions every day, over the course of 10 months.  Right off the bat, out of fear of looking like a jerk, I would give this book 5 stars out of 5.  I owe him that, at least for effort.  However, if I rated it based on technicality, pacing, etc and the fact that he is ridiculously self-absorbed, but that's what makes it a memoir, it would be more of a 3, so I'm throwing it all out the window.


The feat of writing a book under these circumstances is nothing short of miraculous, and I expected a story of triumph, of encouragement, and of strength.  Instead, he spends the majority of his precious time dictating short anecdotes on the worldly things he misses - the luxury of fine food, the fine ladies he encountered in his trip to Hong Kong, his hot mistress, and his even hotter BMW.  There's something refreshing about reading an honest memoir, I suppose.  He doesn't feign altruism and kindness, and he certainly doesn't make himself out to be noble.  He was once a worldly man and is now trapped, as if in a heavy diving bell underneath the sea.  His intact mental abilities allow him to dream, to yearn and to wander from the diving bell (as the title denotes) like a butterfly.  Jean-Do flutters from memory to memory, each chapter being haphazard and without continuity, like a butterfly's path.  One particular story that made me tear up was one where he fondly recalls gently shaving his aging father's beard, hearing his weathered voice, and sadly notes that they are now both prisoners - one to his syndrome and the other to the fragility of his aged body.

We have not seen each other since.  I cannot quit my seaside confinement.  And he can no longer descend the magnificent staircase of his apartment building on his ninety-two-year-old legs.  We are both locked-in cases, each in his own way: myself in my carcass, my father in his fourth-floor apartment.  Now I am the one they shave every morning, and I often think of him while a nurse's aide laboriously scrapes my cheeks with a week-old blade.  I hope that I was a more attentive Figaro.  

[EDIT]: watched the movie last week, and I was really impressed with the adaptation.  The cinematography brought out the gorgeous green and azure of the sea surrounding the hospital, and the scenes of Paris made me so nostalgic!  I only had two gripes, but they didn't really detract from the quality of the movie: 1) I was looking forward to seeing how they would show his business trip to Hong Kong, but it wasn't even mentioned, and 2) the book barely mentions his wife, but in the movie, she's the one who is standing by him the whole time instead of his lover. okay, and a third one: Jean-Do only had 2 kids, but the movie had 3 - artistic license and all that, I guess?