![]() Having not seen his father since before the stroke, he reflects “We are both locked-in cases, each in his own way: myself in my carcass, my father in his fourth-floor apartment.” When dealing with his children, the cruelty of age seems accelerated. Among the most heartbreaking of the book’s composite vignettes are those describing Bauby’s relations with his infirm elderly father and his two young children. Memoirs of illness are inherently plagued by pathos. ![]() After reconciling himself to the horrors of locked-in syndrome, he went on to produce “a memoir of life in death” chronicling the daily struggle of inhabiting two diametrically opposed environments, a sunken body and a soaring mind: the diving bell and the butterfly of his book’s title. His lone remaining means of communication was dictating letters one at a time by blinking his left eye. ![]() ![]() In 1997, at age 43 and at the height of both his personal and professional life, Jean-Dominique Bauby, the French editor of Elle, suffered a stroke that left him almost entirely paralyzed. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |