Jean-dominique bauby biography of christopher columbus
•
The small book, “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” caught my eye recently in a bookstore. It is very short – only 134 pages in the paperback edition. The title intrigued me and I checked the book out of the library (the e-edition).
Jean-Dominque Bauby was a French writer. At the age of 43 he had two children and was the editor of Elle Magazine. On December 8,1995 at the age of 43, Bauby suffered a massive stroke. When he woke up twenty days later, he found he was entirely speechless; he could only blink his left eyelid. His mouth, arms, and legs were paralyzed but his mental faculties remained intact, a condition called locked-in syndrome.
Despite his condition, Bauby found a way to write. He wrote “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” by blinking when the correct letter was reached by a person slowly reciting the alphabet over and over again. Bauby composed and edited the book entirely in his head and dictated it one letter at a time. The book was published in France in 1997 and Bauby died suddenly from pneumonia two days after the publication.
I started the book hesitantly because I was afraid it would be depressing. But it was a powerful statement about the human will to survive and to create. Bauby struggled with depression and
•
Bradley, Katherine; Craftsman, Edith. Ed(S): Bic...
- Format
- Hardback
- Publication date
- 2008
- Publisher
- University pay money for Virginia Multinational United States
- Edition
- Illustrated
- Number of pages
- 336
- Condition
- New
- SKU
- V9780813927510
- ISBN
- 9780813927510
Hardback
Condition: New
Book details
•
37. Christopher and Columbus by Elizabeth von Arnim
I am very grateful to Erica Brown for giving a paper on Elizabeth von Arnim’s excellent novel Christopher and Columbus (1919) at the conference I attended recently, as it was the incentive I needed to read it. Not that I needed a lot of incentive – I loved both The Enchanted April and The Caravaners, as clicking on those titles will attest. The former was very sweet, almost sentimental, in its depiction of the changing powers of a beautiful place; the latter was a bitingly ironic first-person account of an unpleasant, war-mongering German on a caravanning trip in England. It would be difficult to think of two more different novels coming from the same author, and I wondered where my third von Arnim experience could possibly take me. As it turned out, right in between the two – Christopher and Columbus is often very cynical, in an incredibly funny way, and yet also very endearing. And it has twins in it. So obviously it goes straight onto my 50 Books You Must Read But May Not Have Heard About. (We’re getting quite close to the end now, aren’t we?) Prepare yourself for a fairly long review, since I got carried away…
Christop