THE most insane writing method?

The story of one man’s incredible dictation, James Joyce’s peculiar writing posture, and, as always, great book recommendations.

Blink and You’ll Miss It

Did you ever have to do ‘dictations’ in school? They’ve kind of fallen out of fashion, but as a child – specifically a child at school in France – they cropped up all the time. Basically, the shtick is that a teacher reads a passage from a book and you, the student, have to transcribe it, losing marks for spelling mistakes, grammatical issues, messy handwriting, you get the picture. Well, today’s newsletter subject was definitely familiar with the dictation concept, and boy did it serve him well.

In December 1995, Jean-Dominique Bauby, editor in chief of Elle magazine, was driving along the coast near the northern French town of Berck-sur-Mer. He had taken his young son for a drive and was on the way back from the beach when he suddenly began to feel unwell. He pulled the car over. Moments later, he lost consciousness. He had suffered a massive stroke. He fell into a coma and was later diagnosed with Locked-in syndrome (LIS), which is about as gnarly as it sounds. His cognitive function was left intact but all voluntary motor control was gone. Think, being fully paralyzed and therefore unable to speak, but also fully conscious. The only physical movement he could manage was the ability to blink one eyelid.