The Diving Bell and the Butterfly: A Memoir of Life in Death
by Jean-Dominique Bauby
List Price:
Our Price: $6.73
You Save: $7.27 (52%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $3.20 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: Jean-Dominique BaubyTranslator: Jeremy Leggatt
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1998-06-23
ISBN: 0375701214
Number of pages: 131
Publisher: Vintage
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780375701214
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
Book Reviews of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly: A Memoir of Life in Death
Book Review: The Diving Bell plumbs the depths of the human soul
Summary: 4 Stars
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (New York, 1997: Knopf) probes the delicate, sometimes permeable, line between a meaningful life and the meaning of life. Author Jean-Dominique Bauby, whose brain survived a cerebrovascular accident--a massive stroke--dictates the story to his amanuensis six months after the catastrophe.
In the blink of an eye, he lost the life he knew and loved; in thousands of blinks of his left eye-the only part of his body that still functions normally-he reclaims the beauty of his life and of life itself. By blinking, Bauby indicates the letters that make up the words that make up the story that describes the meaning of a meaningful life.
Bauby communicates in this way because he suffers from locked-in syndrome, the result of a rare stroke to the brainstem. After 20 days in a coma following the stroke, Bauby awoke to find that his rich mind, his wit, and his passion for life survived intact inside an immobilized body-a diving bell or carcass, by his own account.
He is fed by a feeding tube and lives at the mercy of the hospital staff and the attention of loved ones and friends who make their way to Berck, a seaside town disconnected from the highway system to Paris.
He is isolated in many ways, but he knows how to isolate himself even further. When his emotions overcome him, he can disguise the tears that flow as a mere watering of the eye. On one day, a small reminder of his life before the stroke can bring him to tears, but on another, he could laugh at it. His emotions are as distorted as his perceptions sometimes. The mere scrape of a shoe on the floor in the corridor can be deafening to him, but who can know that? The sight of his disfigured face reflected in window glass can horrify him, but who can know that? The indignity of being jostled about like a side-show freak for a quick sponge batch can depress him, but who can know that?
The editor-turned-author introduces the reader to his passion for life early in the book when he describes each new day: "My diving bell becomes less oppressive, and my mind takes flight like a butterfly. There is so much to do. You can wander off in space or in time, set off for Tierra del Fuego, or for King Midas Court."
Bauby,44, had been the well-traveled editor-in-chief of the French edition of the international fashion magazine Elle when he suffered the stroke in December 1995. More than that, he had been the father of a 10-year-old Theophile and 8-year-old Celeste, the connoisseur of fine food and high-end automobiles, the son of an adoring elderly father.
For all that, though, much of Bauby's story--what he calls "bedridden travel notes"--reminds the reader that ordinary things make life meaningful: loved ones' patient attendance to our needs, the respect of the people around us, a change of scenery now and again, a trip to the beach, the opportunity to read a good book, the smell of French Fries. Life is in many ways an illusion--or a sequence of illusions.
The Diving Bell is a sequence of 28 vignettes that capture Bauby's frustration with his condition and weave in details of his life before the stroke. He was about to have a "man-to-man" talk with Theophile about his moving out of the family home, to help the child understand the brokenness of their familylife, but then he suffered the stroke. In this moment Bauby brings the reader face-to-face with the unfinished business of his life--unresolved hurts, misunderstandings, confusion, dreams. reflections, memories. He is aware these things will stay in the amber with him.
The reader sees, too, that life is in the hospital, the wheelchair, and nowhere else, as Bauby points out in the final chapter. There is no indication of the lithe, dark-haired woman's being present in his life, though she occupies pride of place in the prologue. There is the hope, though, that friends returning from vacation will return to him with stories or send him letters. That his place in the world he knew is somehow still there. He holds onto that hope despite his awareness that his life is now the hospital and the strangers who work there and who may or may not attend to his needs depending on the degree to which his condition makes them uncomfortable.
This is perhaps one of the hardest truths of his experience, a truth that drives home the agony of his achievement with the speech therapist--his ability to grunt out the lines of a nonsense rhyme about a kangaroo. A miracle on one level, yes. On another, it is absurd, struggling to say words that bear no relationship to the truth of a complex and beautiful soul.
Bauby died two days after the French publication of The Diving Bell in 1997. Perhaps there was no more to say.
Summary of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly: A Memoir of Life in Death
In 1995, Jean-Dominique Bauby was the editor-in-chief of French Elle, the father of two young childen, a 44-year-old man known and loved for his wit, his style, and his impassioned approach to life. By the end of the year he was also the victim of a rare kind of stroke to the brainstem. After 20 days in a coma, Bauby awoke into a body which had all but stopped working: only his left eye functioned, allowing him to see and, by blinking it, to make clear that his mind was unimpaired. Almost miraculously, he was soon able to express himself in the richest detail: dictating a word at a time, blinking to select each letter as the alphabet was recited to him slowly, over and over again. In the same way, he was able eventually to compose this extraordinary book.By turns wistful, mischievous, angry, and witty, Bauby bears witness to his determination to live as fully in his mind as he had been able to do in his body. He explains the joy, and deep sadness, of seeing his children and of hearing his aged father's voice on the phone. In magical sequences, he imagines traveling to other places and times and of lying next to the woman he loves. Fed only intravenously, he imagines preparing and tasting the full flavor of delectable dishes. Again and again he returns to an "inexhaustible reservoir of sensations," keeping in touch with himself and the life around him.
Jean-Dominique Bauby died two days after the French publication of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.
This book is a lasting testament to his life.
We've all got our idiosyncrasies when it comes to writing--a special chair we have to sit in, a certain kind of yellow paper we absolutely must use. To create this tremendously affecting memoir, Jean-Dominique Bauby used the only tool available to him--his left eye--with which he blinked out its short chapters, letter by letter. Two years ago, Bauby, then the 43-year-old editor-in-chief of Elle France, suffered a rare stroke to the brain stem; only his left eye and brain escaped damage. Rather than accept his "locked in" situation as a kind of death, Bauby ignited a fire of the imagination under himself and lived his last days--he died two days after the French publication of this slim volume--spiritually unfettered. In these pages Bauby journeys to exotic places he has and has not been, serving himself delectable gourmet meals along the way (surprise: everything's ripe and nothing burns). In the simplest of terms he describes how it feels to see reflected in a window "the head of a man who seemed to have emerged from a vat of formaldehyde."
Self-Help Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in Self-Help Books
Communion: The Female Search for Loveby bell hooks
William Morrow Paperbacks; Published: 2002-12-24; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.49
Price in other shops:
Your Erroneous Zones: Step-by-Step Advice for Escaping the Trap of Negative Thinking and Taking Control of Your Lifeby Wayne W. Dyer
William Morrow Paperbacks; Published: 1991-05-23; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.71
Price in other shops:
Positive Addiction (Harper Colophon Books)by William Glasser
Harper Perennial; Published: 1985-05-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.89
Price in other shops:
Woman Power: Transform Your Man, Your Marriage, Your Lifeby Laura Schlessinger
Harper; Published: 2004-08-03; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $0.75
Price in other shops:
The Zen Path Through Depressionby Philip Martin
HarperOne; Published: 2000-03-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $1.00
Price in other shops:
All You Need Is Love and Other Lies About Marriage: A Proven Strategy to Make Your Marriage Work, from a Leading Couples Therapistby John W. Jacobs
Harper; Published: 2004-03-02; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $3.90
Price in other shops:
If You Had Controlling Parents: How to Make Peace with Your Past and Take Your Place in the Worldby Dan Neuharth
Harper; Published: 1998-09-09; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $8.89
Price in other shops:
super Sexual Orgasmby Barbara, Ph. D. Keesling
Harper Collins; Published: 1997; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $2.57
Care of the Soul: A Guide for Cultivating Depth and Sacredness in Everyday Lifeby Thomas Moore
Harpercollins; Published: 1992-05; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $3.30
Price in other shops:
Verbal Judo: The Gentle Art of Persuasionby George Thompson
William Morrow Paperbacks; Published: 2004-03-02; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.51
Price in other shops:
Similar Books and other products
Amadeus: A Play by Peter Shafferby Peter Shaffer
Harper Perennial; Published: 2001-08-07; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.48
Price in other shops:
Emptying Beds: The Work of an Emergency Psychiatric Unit (Comparative Studies of Health Systems and Medical Care)by Lorna A. Rhodes
University of California Press; Published: 1995-11-18; Paperback; Book
Best price: $21.23
Price in other shops:
Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Scienceby Atul Gawande
Picador; Published: 2003-04-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.98
Price in other shops:
A Single Manby Christopher Isherwood
Univ Of Minnesota Press; Published: 2001-04; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.37
Price in other shops:
LaFleur Brooks' Health Unit Coordinating, 6eby Elaine A. Gillingham AAS BA CHUC, Monica Wadsworth Seibel BS MEd CHUC
Saunders; Published: 2008-02-28; Paperback; Book
Best price: $50.00
Price in other shops:
Uncle Tom's Children (P.S.)by Richard Wright
Harper Perennial Modern Classics; Published: 2008-04-29; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.92
Price in other shops:
The Pastoral Clinic: Addiction and Dispossession along the Rio Grandeby Angela Garcia
University of California Press; Published: 2010-06-08; Paperback; Book
Best price: $22.47
Price in other shops:
Death and the Maidenby Ariel Dorfman
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 1994-12-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.58
Price in other shops:
Autobiography of a Faceby Lucy Grealy
Harper Perennial; Published: 2003-03-18; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.93
Price in other shops:
The Diving Bell and the ButterflyRelease date: 2011-06-07; DVD
Best price: $2.95
Price in other shops: