The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Rating:
Summary: What a book.......
Review: I read a short article on Jean-Dominique Bauby a couple of months ago, on how a stroke had changed his life so devastatingly that he could only communicate by blinking his left eye. I tried to imagine what this would be like, but until I read his heart-rendering story I couldnt contemplate the nightmare in which he was living.

The book, although very short, held me in its grasp, I cried when I read the passage where he talked about playing hangman with his son, and how angry and sad he was that his condition had taken away his right to touch his own sons face. I laughed when he described his day trip out to the beach, just so he could smell the french fries, but mostly I stood back and admired this man who's body had been so cruely ravaged by a stroke, but who's mind remained alert.

This book serves as a testament that we should live life a day at a time, because you never know what is around the corner.

Teresa Mitchell ([e-mail]

Rating:
Summary: Beauty, love and the essence of life through tragedy.
Review:

The Diving Bell And The Butterfly
By Jean-Dominique Bauby

The stroke that put Elle magazine's editor-in-chief, Jean-Dominique Bauby, into a coma was a brutal twist of fate. Three weeks later he re-surfaced in a hospital bed in northern France locked within a body rendered immobile, save for the left eyelid. But despite the horror of his condition, he was determined to communicate his story and to dispel the irritating rumours circulating Paris that he had become a "vegetable". He set about "dictating" tracts of text pre-written in his head by blinking through each letter of the alphabet. Three arduous months later, The Diving Bell And The Butterfly was complete.

The book is a stunningly lucid collection of reminiscences, yearnings and descriptions made all the more moving by the knowledge that, a matter of days after it was published, Bauby died.

Although he lived his last year in a phantom-like state, a fly on the wall of his own shattered life, he did not descend into maudlin self-pity. Far from it. During his ordeal, he could not even reach out and touch his children or engage friends in conversation ("...my communication system disqualifies repartee: the keenest rapier grows dull and falls flat when it takes several minutes to thrust it home.") but his writings are more illuminating than depressing, more analytical than self serving.

With almost unearthly clarity he captures, as concisely as anyone before him, the true essence of life. The irrevocable confines of his near-useless body induce in him a heightened awareness of what it means to love, a tormented longing to perform the most simple physical acts and a continuous series of sanity-preserving flights of fancy.

"I am fading away. Slowly but surely. Like the sailor who watches his home shore gradually disappear, I watch my past recede. My old life still burns within me, but more and more of it is reduced to the ashes of memory."

Despite the tragedy of his story, Bauby has left something beautiful behind. We all have something to learn.

Rating:
Summary: Emotionally draining and heartwarming
Review: I could not put the book down. I ready it in one hour. If more people could take one hour out of their lives to read this, maybe we would have more compassionate humans in the worl

Rating:
Summary: A lyrical masterpiece...
Review: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly must be read aloud to be fully appreciated. But, beware... you will lose your voice in certain passages. Every emotion known to the human heart lies within these pages. Seldom do we find prose so poetic.

Bauby's affliction ("locked-in syndrome" brought on by a brain-stem stroke) necessitated the transmission of all he could muster in his unaffected mind by the blink of an eye. Using a special version of the alphabet coded into eye-blinks, Bauby dictated his carefully crafted and memorized words, sentences, and paragraphs to a dedicated and loving assistant.

The result is a tour-de-force that - affliction and impediments notwithstanding - stands a monument to the human song.

Only the heartless will be able to read this brief memoir in any but short takes

Rating:
Summary: A lyrical masterpiece...
Review: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly must be read aloud to be fully appreciated. But, beware... you will lose your voice in certain passages. Every emotion know to the human heart lies within these pages. Seldom do we find prose so poetic.

Bauby's affliction ("locked-in syndrome" brought on by a brain-stem stroke) necessitated the transmission of all he could muster in his unaffected mind by the blink of an eye. Using a special version of the alphabet coded into eye-blinks, Bauby dictated his carefully crafted and memorized words, sentences, and paragraphs to a dedicated and loving assistant.

The result is a tour-de-force that - affliction and impediments notwithstanding - stands a monument to the human song.

Only the heartless will be able to read this brief memoir in any but short takes

Rating:
Summary: Amazing and profound
Review: This book is nothing short of amazing. The way it was written and dictated, his touching observations on his condition and surroundings, and the charming style in which he wrote are all incomparable. I'll save this book and read it again often

Rating:
Summary: A perfect little book, worth every penny -- and I'm tight!
Review: From within what must be one of the deepest lonelinesses of all, Bauby has written an exquisite and heartbreaking testament about what it means to be human. The book itself, as well as its matter, is both heroic and discomfiting -- and it's written with a grace and an understanding that will make you change your life

Rating:
Summary: A wonderful example for the human love for life.
Review: This is a book about the essential, perceived in a world of silence and motion-less. A book about ourselves and the ultimate values. A book about love and life when they became memories

Rating:
Summary: "Diving Bell and Butterfly" A Tribute to Mind and Spirit
Review:
"The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" would be one of literature's achievements if only for how it came to life. Former Elle editor Jean-Dominique Bauby dictated it letter by letter to his assistant Claude using an alphabet variation he describes (and one hard to master as Bauby acknowledges in one vignette.) Its 129 pages consist of one to two page episodes describing piece by piece how "locked-in" syndrome, caused by a brain stem accident, transformed Elle editor Bauby's cosmopolitan life to one of memories and fantasies within the "diving bell" of his body.

Within that "diving bell," Bauby holds the irony and humor of any sophisticate or executive. His stories are never cloying or mawkish even when telling of his heartbreaking day at the beach with his children or his dread of Sundays without visitors or even staff. Rather, his sardonic humor allows him to see personal and professional foibles (staff members striking Elvis poses, nurses waking him for a sleeping bill, colleagues finding it hard to see him as he is now) in a new light.

But the book is best when Bauby's mind travels the world above his bed to fantasies and an outside life slipping from him. He races Formula One cars, recreates scenes from the "Count of Monte Cristo" and other books and films, savors his remaining senses to smell and taste foods he loves even while fed through a tube. (Sounds aren't lost to him either; his daughter's singing and even classic Beatles tunes play heavily into Bauby's memories and new life.)

"The Diver Bell and the Butterfly" is as powerful a pro-life argument as has been written. It examines the frustration and resilience of any one who lost their ability to command their bodies. Enthusiastically recommended, but I'd also welcome an expanded version with those knowing and working closely with Bauby until his death.


Rating:
Summary: "My mind takes flight like a butterfly."
Review: In 1995, Jean-Dominique Bauby was a vigorous man of 43 when he suddenly had a massive stroke that left him in a coma for twenty days. When he awoke, Bauby found himself a victim of "locked-in syndrome," a state of paralysis in which a person's mind functions while his body is frozen.

Bauby was the father of two young children and the editor-in-chief of a major magazine. He had traveled extensively and was blessed with many friends. After the stroke, his active and exciting life was no more. As a quadriplegic, Bauby had to be bathed, fed by a gastric tube, and moved by nurses and attendants. He could not speak at all. What was there left to live for?

It turns out that Bauby's mind provided him with the spiritual and emotional fuel to keep him from falling into despair. He did not become bitter or cantankerous, and he never lost his humor, imagination, or the wonderful memories that he cherished. Finally, he began to compose this book in his head, and through a system in which blinks of an eye indicated letters of the alphabet, he "dictated" this book to his secretary.

"The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" is witty, lyrical, and poignant. Bauby notes that since he could no longer eat in the normal way, he had to dine in his head, imagining himself enjoying beef bourguignon, apricot pie, or even a simple soft-boiled egg. Since he could not speak to his ninety-three year old father, Jean-Dominique's father called him on the phone and spoke to him. When he was finally able to sit in a wheelchair, Bauby was taken to the sea where he admired the colorful umbrellas, the beautiful seascape, and the lovely sailboats. He was destined to live the remainder of his life one step removed from reality, but, in his mind, this was better than not living life at all. Jean-Dominique Bauby lived to see his book published before he died in 1997. "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" is an inspiring testament to the indomitable spirit of a very remarkable man.