The only sure cure

In "Extraordinary Comebacks", we present the story of author Stephen King's recovery from a devastating accident. Work, he said, was the only remedy for pain -- it was much better than morphine.

Now, in a new book about the esteemed author Saul Bellow, he seconds that emotion. NPR reviewed the new book of his letters.

Excerpt:

The only sure cure, he writes in 1960 from his house in Tivoli, New York, to young San Francisco writer Alice Adams, the only sure cure for everything that ails you is to write a book. I have a new one on the table, Bellow says, and all the other misery is gone.

His devotion to his work is instructive for all writers, especially the young. The years go by, letters flow. Admiration and awards and sales replace adversity, and one marriage yields to another, but the wit sparks up all the same, even as Bellow shifts from aesthetic critiques of books by friends into writing their eulogies - eulogies for Bernard Malamud, Robert Penn Warren, Ralph Ellison among them.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

In collecting stories of Extraordinary Comebacks, occasionally, we say to ourselves, 'nothing can top this.' Then, along comes The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. It's a true story. Our protagonist, Frenchman and free spirit Jean-Dominique Bauby, 43, was in the prime of life, editor of Elle, with a sports car, three adoring children, a mistress, a forgiving (divorced) spouse, and the world by the proverbial tail. In one instant, he suffers a stroke and is submerged in a world where he can understand but not communicate, a victim of "locked-in syndrome" -- as the author states, "a hellish trap as likely as being caught in as winning the lottery."

Reduced to these abject and terrifying circumstances, he says he would be the happiest man if all he could do was swallow. But he can't.

So -- with an active mind that is disconnected from his entire bodily function with the exception that he can blink his left eye -- what does he do? He honors a previous contract to write a book the only way he can.

By blinking his left eye.

A translator painstakingly repeats letters of the alphabet in order of most frequent use. When the letter he wants comes up, Jean-Do blinks. And so goes the "dictation." And so through this tiny, pinprick-sized hole, his imagination can trickle forth -- one letter at a time: essays on life in the hospital in his new condition, imaginings of his children, gourmet food, events of his past life. Regarding the latter, forever gone in physical reality, but persistently alive in his spirit.

This story is all at once horrifying, uplifting, numbing, life affirming. And finally, heroic. Bauby died just 10 days after his book was published -- it was his mission to communicate, to affirm life itself, that kept him going.

Made into a film by artist and now director Julian Schnabel. Not for the squeamish, but also, not to miss.

Update J.K. Rowling

In "Extraordinary Comebacks: 201 Inspiring Stories of Courage, Triumph, and Success", we featured the story of Harry Potter author and billionaire J.K. Rowling, who in her early days, was broke, living with her sister and husband, unemployed, divorced and the mother of a young child.

As you might expect, she was also depressed.

How bad was it?

Turns out very bad, she considered suicide, she told a student journalist from Edinburgh University, and sought medical help. (Source TIME, April 7, 2008.)

Good thing.

Proves no matter how dark one's feelings, the reality is that a victory beyond imagination might be "just around the corner." What story better proves the old saw about suicide being the 'permanent solution for the temporary problem?'