The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Found an old book review of "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" while dredging through old files. It reminded me of what a lovely story it was, so here it is again.

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The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Jean-Dominique Bauby
Harper Perennial 2004

I heard of “The Diving Bell” the film before I heard of the book. The film was an adaptation of a memoir by a "locked-in" patient -  someone who is paralyzed but lucid. The author, a former fashion editor, dictated the entire memoir by blinking his left eyelid - the only part of his body he could still control. A therapist would point to each letter of the alphabet one by one (A to Z) until he blinked at the one he wanted. The process was repeated again, and again, to form words and sentences.

The film, like the book, is a collection of stories, memories, sounds and images. It was stunning and bewildering to watch – the whole film was shot through the perspective, literally and visually, of the memoirist, Jean-Dominique Bauby or “Jean-Do”, as his friends called him. Each blink, each tear was replicated, down to the frightening moment when his limp right eyelid was sewn up.

Reading the memoir years later was something else altogether. For one, the words themselves bear witness to the labour that had gone into producing them. It is as if words formed so painfully carry an exaggerated meaning, more love, more sorrow, than mere “love” and “sorrow” would imply. In the least they merit a second, perhaps third and fourth reading; and certainly a slower one.

I have always been drawn to narratives of the voiceless – like the fictional Fish Lamb in “Cloudstreet”, retarded in life, but in an act of literary resurrection, revealed as the novel’s lucid and omniscient narrator. So too Jean-Do in “The Diving Bell”.

I often find it difficult, when reading a memoir, to separate the writing from the circumstances in which it was written, so that you are left wondering whether you are marvelling at the life lived, or the life as presented on the page. In the case of “The Diving Bell”, there is a further dimension – it is the life imagined, the life Jean-Do would have liked to have lived, but could not.

It is in this realm of imagination that the memoir truly gets me – say for example, his private joke with the Empress Eugene, the hospital’s patroness whose marble bust inhabits the main hall. I love the humour and delicateness with which Jean-Do describes these flights of fancies – and the fact that these flights of fancies were born of an absolute stillness.

Sadness is rare in this memoir. Even though Jean Do mentions his past life, the memoir is very much about the present – petty annoyances like his inability to change TV channels and pleasures like the simple foods he imagines himself lovingly prepare, salivates over, and eats. Funny things happen. He has a keen sense of irony and can be endearingly sarcastic. He speaks of the richness of everyday emotions that are often neglected by ordinary, busy people who tend to focus on the activities rather than the meaning behind them.

It is tempting to draw moralistic conclusions about quality of life in suffering but I believe Jean-Do never intended to, nor should I regard this book as anything other than a story about himself, an expression of that which he cannot voice, a gift to his children and ultimately, a thing of beauty.

6 March 2010