le scaphandre et le papillon

After a devastating stroke, the author dictated this memoir using only his left eyelid …

… the new book recommended by MVR … looks rather intriguing:

.. the remarkable tale of Jean-Dominique Bauby (Mathieu Amalric), the world-renowned editor of French ELLE magazine, who suffered a stroke and was paralyzed by the inexplicable “locked in” syndrome at the age of 43. Bauby’s only way of communicating with the outside world was by blinking with one eye, and after several dedicated helpers–a string of impossibly beautiful women (Emmanuelle Seigner, Marie-Josee Croze, Olatz Lopez Garamendia, Anne Consigny)–helped him to speak through this seemingly irrelevant gesture, he began to produce the words that would form his memoir.” (Rotten Tomatoes)

I found a wikipedia page and the movie site too. There have also been many blog entries in English and in French about the book and in French and the man himself.

- cd