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The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is a memoir about French journalist Jean-Dominique Bauby, who wrote the book by blinking with his left eye after suffering a cerebrovascular attack. The book became a bestseller and was made into a film.
The memoir The Diving Bell and the Butterfly tells the harrowing story of French journalist Jean-Dominique Bauby, who suffered a cerebrovascular attack in 1995 and fell into a three-week coma. When the former editor-in-chief of Elle magazine finally awoke, he was mentally aware of his surroundings, but physically paralyzed except for some head and eye movements. Undeterred, Bau wrote about his situation, communicating single letters to spell out words by blinking with his left eye. Writing the book took about 10 months, with Baue his transcriber working four-hour days. It took about 200,000 blinks to finish, and an average word took about two minutes to spell. On March 9, 1997, two days after the book’s publication, Bau died of pneumonia.
Writing a book, letter by letter:
Using partner-assisted scanning, a transcriber repeatedly recited the letters of the alphabet until Bau blinked to choose the letter.
The memoir recounts the day-to-day events of a person suffering from what is known as “stuck syndrome”.
The French edition of the book has become a No. 1 bestseller across Europe. The memoir was made into an acclaimed film in 2007, starring Mathieu Amalric as Bauby.
