Talk:The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

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While I appreciate having learned the word "amanuensis", wouldn't this article convey its own information more efficiently if it just used "assistant"?

[edit] Numbers don't seem plausible

The article states that it took 200,000 blinks at 2 minutes each to dictate the book. After his stroke, Bauby regained consciousness on December 28, 1995 (according to the Jean-Dominique Bauby page.) The book was published on March 6, 1997. Assuming that Bauby dictated every day in that interval (435 days), he must have worked an average of more than 15 hours a day, which seems unlikely, especially for someone in a dire medical situation. (Of course, he can't have dictated for all those days because his publisher would take at least a week or two to prepare and distribute the book, and he most likely didn't start dictating the book immediately on regaining consciousness.) Tom Duff 18:48, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

The article states that it was 2 minutes per word, not 2 minutes per blink :) -Senaiboy (talk) 23:33, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Indeed. The book looks to be about 30,000 words. If so, the time involved would be about a factor of 7 less than my estimate. Tom Duff (talk) 02:23, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Discrepancy

There's a discrepancy on the author's date of death (9 March, 1997) and "The book was published on March 6, 1997. Ten days after the French version of the book was published, Bauby died." I've taken the liberty to change it to "two days" (sources on the author's article's talk page) and also changed the date of publication (which cannot be confirmed). -Senaiboy (talk) 23:27, 29 December 2007 (UTC)