Summary: The well-to-do editor of a magazine suffers a massive stroke, becoming paralyzed except for blinking one eye.
Rating & Recommendation: 5/5; recommend for the nostalgic and anyone who believes im miracles
Review: Read this one. The author dictated the entire book by blinking his left eye, which makes its 132 pages feel more like an epic tome. Each page is devastating in it's own way, because you realize how large the gap is between how long it took him to dictate the text and how quickly you were able to read it. You almost feel ashamed, like you're your motor skills for granted.
Bauby was clearly a brilliant and successful man before his stroke, but I would wager to say that the incident actually made way for him to showcase his mind. Someone once told me that things expand to fill the space available to them; it's called Parkinson's law, actually. It can be applied to all sorts of things - physics, sociology, politics. My friend and I were talking about wealth, in any case, something along the lines of "more money, more problems" and that somehow, as you acquire wealth, you similarly acquire more costly needs. An odd aside, I know. But this book is basically that theory manifest.
His body is essentially reduced to nothing, and he's left with only his memories and his imagination. But they start to expand. It's like all of his energy is spent moving his thoughts because he can't move his body, and they spread like poison to consume the hollow spaces in his limbs and his core.
I was fascinated by the medical mystery, but I was distraught by basically everything else. This dying declaration is literary perseverance. He writes about how, being unable to communicate, he misses humor in conversation. But this book is almost... funny? It’s comedic at some points, for sure. When I watched the movie, I was in a good place in my life, and I thought I might have conflated my then happiness with how much I loved the story. Now that I’ve read the book, I know I did not. I'm still impressed.
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