Jean-Dominique Bauby

Bauby was born in the 14th arrondissement of Paris, and grew up in the 1st arrondissement of Paris, on Rue du Mont-Thabor, north of the Tuileries Garden, living in the building where Alfred de Musset had lived.{{Cite web|url=https://mediatheque.sainthilairederiez.fr/node/380394|title=Bauby, Jean-Dominique (1952-1997)|website=Médiathèque de Saint hilaire}}

He began his journalism career at Combat and then Le Quotidien de Paris. He received his first by-line the day Georges Pompidou died in 1974. At age 28, he was promoted to editor-in-chief of the daily Le Matin de Paris, before becoming editor of the cultural section of Paris Match. He then joined the editorial staff of Elle,{{cite news |last1=Tassel |first1=Fabrice |title=L'ultime clin d'oeil de Bauby. Le journaliste paralysé est mort juste après la sortie de son livre. |url=https://www.liberation.fr/medias/1997/03/11/l-ultime-clin-d-oeil-de-bauby-le-journaliste-paralyse-est-mort-juste-apres-la-sortie-de-son-livre_200319 |access-date=23 January 2020 |work=Libération |date=11 March 1997 |language=fr}} and later became the magazine's editor.

{{cite web|url=http://www.salon.com/2008/02/23/diving_bell_2/|last=Arnold|first=Beth|work=Salon.com|title=The truth about "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly"|date=23 February 2008|access-date=4 May 2014}}

Bauby was in a relationship with Sylvie de la Rochefoucauld for ten years. They had a son and a daughter together.{{cite web|url=http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/archive.mpl?id=1997_1425686|title='Locked-in' quadriplegic shares life|author=Leslie Sowers|date=20 July 1999|publisher=Houston Chronicle|access-date=4 May 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091002071112/https://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/archive.mpl?id=1997_1425686 |archive-date=2 October 2009 }}{{cite book|last=Bauby|first=Jean-Dominique|title=The Diving Bell and the Butterfly: A Memoir of Life in Death|date=23 June 1998|publisher=Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group|isbn=0375701214|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=qy6vf8agcVsC}}{{Cite web|url=https://entreprises.lefigaro.fr/bauby-s-75/entreprise-820869857|title=Bauby's (Paris, 75004) : siret, TVA, adresse...|website=entreprises.lefigaro.fr}} They separated when he began a relationship with Florence Ben Sadoun, also a journalist at Elle.

On 8 December 1995, at the age of 43, Bauby had a stroke while driving his son to a night out at the theatre.{{Cite web|url=http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2008/feb/09/familyandrelationships.family1|title=The real story behind The Diving Bell and the Butterfly|date=9 February 2008|website=the Guardian}} When he woke up in the hospital twenty days later, he could only blink his left eyelid. He had locked-in syndrome, in which the mental faculties remain intact but most of the body is paralyzed. In Bauby's case, his mouth, arms, and legs were paralyzed, and he lost {{convert|27|kg}} in the first 20 weeks after his stroke.

Before his stroke, Bauby had signed a contract to write a book.{{Cite web|url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-03-15-mn-38526-story.html|title=A Writer's Spirit Soared With a Blink of His Eye|date=15 March 1997|website=Los Angeles Times}} His speech therapist, Sandrine Fichou, arranged a 26-letter alphabet according to the frequency of use,{{Cite web|url=https://www.liberation.fr/vous/1997/03/06/vagabondages-immobiles-d-un-mort-toujoursvivant-totalement-paralyse-mais-lucide-jean-dominique-bauby_200659/|title=Vagabondages immobiles d'un mort toujoursvivant. Totalement paralysé mais lucide, Jean-Dominique Bauby a "dicté" son livre en clignant d'une paupière. ""Le scaphandre et le papillon"". Ed. Robert Laffont|first=Antoine de|last=GAUDEMAR|website=Libération}}{{Cite web|url=http://www.theguardian.com/film/2008/jan/27/2|title=Elizabeth Day interviews ghost-writer Claude Mendibil|date=27 January 2008|website=the Guardian}} so that he could dictate. Claude Mendibil, a ghostwriter and freelance book editor, was sent by his publisher Robert Laffont to take the dictation using a system called partner-assisted scanning. She recited the alphabet until Bauby blinked at the correct letter, and recorded the 130-page manuscript letter by letter over the course of two months, working three hours a day, seven days a week.

The resulting book, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, was published on Friday, 7 March 1997.{{cite web|url=http://www.nationalreview.com/europress/boyles200310100902.asp|title=Pre-Mortuarial Medicine|last=Boyles|first=Denis|date=10 October 2003|publisher=National Review Online|access-date=4 May 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20050407230911/http://www.nationalreview.com/europress/boyles200310100902.asp|archive-date=7 April 2005}} It went on to become a number one bestseller across Europe and its total sales are now in the millions. At the age of 44, Bauby unexpectedly died from pneumonia, two days after the publishing of his book.{{cite web|last=Thomas|first=Rebecca|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7230051.stm|title=Diving Bell movie's fly-away success|publisher=BBC|date=8 February 2008|access-date=4 May 2014}}{{cite web|url=https://www.nytimes.com/books/97/06/15/reviews/970615.mallon.html|title=In the Blink of an Eye|first=Thomas|last=Mallon|work=New York Times|date=15 June 1997|access-date=4 May 2014}} He is buried in a family grave at the Père-Lachaise cemetery in Paris, France.{{cite web|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1998/04/26/travel/q-and-a-578258.html|title=Q and A|first=Paul|last=Freireich|work=New York Times|date=26 April 1998|access-date=4 May 2014}}

{{Main|The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (film)}}

A few days after Bauby's death, Bouillon de culture featured the book, and Jean-Jacques Beineix's short documentary, Assigné à résidence{{oclc|691949499}} about Bauby in the {{ill|Hôpital maritime de Berck|fr}}, with the writer and editor, Claude Mendibil, and Bauby's partner, Florence Ben Sadoun.

In 2007, painter and director Julian Schnabel released a film version of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly adapted for the screen by Ronald Harwood. It starred Mathieu Amalric as Bauby. Critically acclaimed, the film received the Best Director Prize at Cannes Film Festival, and Golden Globe Awards for Best Foreign Language Film and Best Director, as well as four Academy Award nominations.

The film was criticized by Bauby's closest circle of friends as not faithful to events and biased in favor of his ex-partner Sylvie de la Rochefoucauld. His late-life partner Florence Ben Sadoun was represented as shunning him after his stroke, although in reality she visited him frequently at the hospital in Berck-sur-Mer where he lived during his final days. Bauby notes her visits in his memoir.{{cite web|url=https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2008/nov/30/diving-bell-butterfly-florence-bensadoun|last=Di Giovanni|first=Janine|work=The Guardian|title=The real love story behind The Diving Bell and the Butterfly|date=29 November 2008|access-date=4 May 2014}} Beth Arnold of Salon.com notes:

The film is said to be "based on a true story," which, of course, is from Bauby's book. The problem is that mixing his factually accurate journey through locked-in syndrome with a personal life that has been fictionalized for film has affected real people who were intensely involved in Bauby's life before and after his accident. Now some of his closest friends feel the movie may forever obscure the truth of his life. They fear this collision between art and reality has created a revisionist history that is accepted by filmgoers around the world, and that this is what will remain in the collective cultural memory. For the first time, they are speaking publicly about it. As one of Bauby's friends says, "There's the Real Story. The Film. And the New Real Story."

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{{Wikiquote}}

• [https://web.archive.org/web/20071020043026/http://www.thedivingbellandthebutterfly-themovie.com/ The Diving Bell and the Butterfly - The Movie] ::: Kerosene Creative Services :: Miramax
• {{Cite web|url=https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/diving-bell-butterfly-158396/|title=Cannes festival screening review of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly |work=Hollywood Reporter |date=22 May 2007 }}
• {{Cite web|url=https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0337575/ |author= Jean-Jacques Beineix |title=Assigné à résidence (TV Movie 1997) |via=IMDb}}

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Category:1952 births

Category:1997 deaths

Category:20th-century French memoirists

Category:Burials at Père Lachaise Cemetery

Category:Deaths from pneumonia in France

Category:French magazine editors

Category:Lycée Condorcet alumni

Category:French male non-fiction writers

Category:Paris Match writers

Category:People with hypoxic and ischemic brain injuries

Category:French writers with disabilities

Category:20th-century French journalists

Category:20th-century French male writers

Category:Writers from Paris

Category:People with locked-in syndrome