The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Here, Bauby recounts his childhood friend Olivier. Olivier was a pathological liar with a talent for delighting his schoolmates with fantastical tales about his life: “If he had not spend Sunday with Johnny Hallyday, it was because he hadgone to London to see the new James Bond, unless he had been driving the latest Honda” (115). He would confabulate endlessly: being an orphan by morning and having four sisters by mid-afternoon. On any given day, his father, who was in reality a civil servant, could be the inventor of the atom bomb, the Beatles’ manager, or General de Gaulle’s unacknowledged son. Bauby recounts that Olivier grew up to work in the advertising agency, where he “wields his inexhaustible faculty for gilding every lily” (116).

Bauby remarks that he should not feel morally superior to Olivier—and that he in fact envies him for his mastery of the art of storytelling. Bauby muses that he is unsure whether he will ever have Olivier’s gifts, although he is “beginning to forge glorious substitute destinies for [himself]” (117). He can make himself a Formula One driver. He has cast himself as a soldier in a TV series that documents histories great battles. He has fought alongside Vercingetorix against Caesar, helped Napoleon secure victory, been wounded in the D-Day landings, and is a “Tour de France long shot on the verge of pulling off a record-setting victory” (117).