I was going to go to the Harvard Film Archive last night for the kick-off to their Shohei Imamura retrospective, and was particularly looking forward to seeing A Man Vanishes (Ningen johatsu), which you can't get on DVD (at least not with English subtitles), but when I stepped outside early in the evening it was so bitter cold, I couldn't  summon the courage to face the weather when it came time to leave the house.

I take this cold snap personally.  When I left the house yesterday, I was thinking, Jaysus, is this really necessary?  I mean, we get the idea: it's cold.  Why press the point?  Why does everything have to be so in-you-face these days?  Can't we all just get along?

So instead of going out I curled up with a good book.  I was in the basement at our local Goodwill the other day, and the Thrift Shop Gods saw fit to toss me a copy of The Diving Bell and The Butterfly...


Of course, Bauby's story, which he wrote after suffering a catastrophic stroke, has just been made into a movie by Julian Schnabel.  The book is the first first-hand account that I am aware of "locked-in syndrome," where the individual is aware and awake, but more or less completely paralyzed.  Bauby could blink his left eye, and that was about it.

The story appealed to me immediately, not mainly because it is basically a "locked-in" version of Rocky, but because (to totally trivialize Bauby's condition) we all feel this way to some extent.  Bauby's state is one aspect of the human condition writ large, and his triumph here is another.

I mean, who of us can't relate to this:

I need to feel strongly, to love and to admire, just as desperately as I need to breathe.  A letter from a friend, a Balthus painting on a postcard, a page of Saint-Simon, give meaning to the passing hours.  But to keep my mind sharp, to avoid descending into resigned indifference, I maintain a level of resentment and anger, neither too much nor too little, just as a pressure cooker has a safety valve to keep it from exploding.

When we are able to move about in the world, we have the privilege of daily distractions.  The insights here come from Bauby's no longer having them.

I'm looking forward to seeing the movie, because the book is frankly not as sensorial an experience as the condition seems to call for.  Because Bauby's personality and inner voice are perfectly intact, you get more butterfly than diving bell in the end.  And that is not a bad thing.  but he narrates his story with such wit and élan that you could easily forget that he is stuck inside what he himself calls a dead-weight carcass.

From what I've read about Schnabel's film, you get a more visceral sense of what "locked-in syndrome" is like.  The book, at a breezy 132 pages leaves you with a sketch of a life locked-in, and a sense of extreme admiration for Bauby and those around him who had the spirit and dedication to help him tell his story.  I hope the movie will do the same, and then some.