The Diagnosis

Rating:
Summary: Lightman sees the light
Review: This is a rare accomplishment indeed. A surreal, at times mystical, revelation of modern times. A man witnesses his growing helplessness within the framework of a society which not only fails to discover his "illness," but is smug, self-satisfied, and all but divorced from their own humanity. Lightman's visual portrayals and his incredibly delicate imagery are profound indications of his sensitivity to the dehumanizing influences that surround us. He has no quick fixes, even though in one passage his character, Bill Chalmers, strikes out at the crass materialism which tempts his teen-age son. This is far from being an unrealized novel--it is most certainly one of the most honest and cogent portraits of our society that I have read.

Rating:
Summary: Don't misdiagnose this novel!
Review: Since the characters and plot of "The Diagnosis" have been more than adequately addressed by other reviewers, let me just add a few comments that might serve to encourage others to read this book.

First, Lightman's style this time around is not florid and lovely. There is much beauty in his writing, but it's beautiful in the way a desert landscape is beautiful -- stark and haunting, but also full of life in unexpected places.

Second, this book is NOT A MURDER MYSTERY! Some readers seem to be caught up in questions like "did Bill's wife poison him?" and the like. Those kinds of inquiries are not even remotely what this book is about. (It's like reading "To Kill a Mockingbird" and obsessing about Boo Radley's haircut.) Also, I seriously doubt that Alan Lightman is suggesting that Anytus and Chalmers are both responding irrationally toward the evolution of their culture's respective communication revolutions. If that were the case, he would be favorably comparing the Socratic method with the nightmarish, soul-destroying technocracy of our postmodern world, which he is most definitely not doing.

There is, in fact, nothing in this book, not a single word, that praises or supports our sickeningly self-important, insanely paced postmodern lifestyle. "The Diagnosis" is filled to overflowing with disconnected people acting out in appalling ways we have come to view as normal. When you see yourself in the pages of this book, and realize how perverse "normal" has become, that's the diagnosis.

Rating:
Summary: Metropolis Meets Babbitt, Done Fresh
Review: I was really torqued when I finished this book, but that was my own fault. I'd decided where I wanted the author to go and had a quiet tantrum when he didn't. I guess I've just got to grow up.

The more I thought about this book, the more I liked it. The characters were rich, in the sort of intentionally caricaturish way of Sinclair's Babbitt. And although our lead character sometimes kicked on his line like a tuna at sea, the reel drew steadily in through his superficial, plastic world to a thought-provoking conclusion.

I guess the author thought a few of the dangling things he opened the story with weren't necessary for the flavor of the finish. In retrospect, I guess he's right.

Rating:
Summary: Sat·ire: trenchant wit used to expose and discredit folly
Review: I fell in love with the writing of Alan Lightman upon reading A Modern Day Yankee in Connecticut Court.

The Diagnosis is a delicious, darkly comedic, satire.

You will find it easy to enjoy this book if...
- you believe your worth as a person does not relate to your perceived corporate and/or financial worth
- you are comfortable with your ability to feel and express emotion, particularly with your spouse/partner
- you have ever waited in a doctor's office for over an hour
- you enjoy metaphor (the numbness) and allegory (the story of Anytus)

You may find it difficult to enjoy this book if...
- your sense of self is dependent on your status within your corporation
- the majority of your communication with your spouse/partner and offspring is done through e-mail
- you frequently remodel your suburban home or otherwise usurp your spouse/partner's income for selfish pleasure
- you are a medical professional without a sense of humor
- you are looking for a light story with a happy ending

Rating:
Summary: A TERRIFYINGLY EFFECTIVE DEPICTION OF TENSION IN OUR LIVES
Review: While I didn't enjoy this book as much as I did Lightman's earlier EINSTEIN'S DREAMS, I thought it was a very effective rendering of the terror that tension can inject into our lives. Many of us work at jobs that keeps us costantly on edge -- demands are made of our time and our intellect that, decades ago, would have seemed unthinkable.

Lightman's prose and plot bring these tensions to life in a very real way. His frequent transcriptions of e-mails sent and received by the characters (even utilising, at times, the 'junk' e-mails with which all of us are plagued) can get a little annoying -- but I think that's the point. The lives of many in our modern society are seemingly spinning out of control -- and the toll this takes is a serious and frightening one.

The malady suffered -- with increasingly restricting intensity -- by Bill Chalmers, the protagonist of Lightman's story, is a horrifying one. One day, on his way to work on the subway, he suddly forgets not only where he's going, but many of the details of his life. He sees the faces of those around him and wonders if he should recognize them. After a harrowing day of riding the subway and hoping to recognize his stop -- which never happens -- he winds up without his briefcase, without any ID, without much of his clothing, hospitalized as a street lunatic. He manages to escape the hospital, and, his lost memory returning slowly, makes his way home -- but he is plagued with a numbness in his hands and feet, a numbness that, over the course of the next few weeks and months, spreads througout his body and incapacitates him. His attempts, at first, to hide his condition from his family and coworkers are portrayed in such a way that we can feel his sense of helplessness and panic, his feeling of the 'unfairness' of being stricken in such a way.

The novel deals in great detail with his struggle to understand what is happening to him, and with his infuriating dealings with the health-care systems, with doctors that are so afraid of making a wrong diagnosis -- or so greedy that they want to prolong the process as long as possible -- that he is subjected to test after test, specialist after specialist, in a seemingly endless road to a dignosis that MIGHT allow him to begin to actually receive treatment for his condition.

Lightman intersperses his storyline with flashbacks to ancient Athens, to the time of Socrates -- we see the drama around the great thinker's 'trial' and execution unfold through an on-line educational program that Chalmers' son is taking. There are many parallels between the two stories -- both of them, obviously, fights against the hard wall of short-sighted bureacracy and mindless preservers of the status quo.

My main complaint about the book was that, for all of its amazingly vivid depiction and re-creation of the tension in the lives of its characters, it was a bit tedious and a struggle to get through. I know this added to the effect somewhat, but it made it -- for me, at least -- a little less enjoyable a read than if it had been more succinct. Lightman is a talented writer, however -- and I certainly wouldn't dismiss this work for these reasons.

Rating:
Summary: I'll never visit a mall again...
Review: Disturbing, unsettling, and unresolved---and that's the way it was meant to be! I disagree with other reviewers who found Chalmers' wife and son to be uncaring and shallow; I believe they were simply other symptoms of societal estrangement. Love seemed to be the sole redemptive option, and the final scenes between father and son were poignantly touching.

I value this book because of the way it has influenced my thoughts over the past few weeks. I think of the man in the story who is panicked because he will be out of cell phone contact for two minutes while his subway passes through a tunnel---not so different from those who must talk while speeding down the highway between meetings. The Diagnosis? An unbearable sense of inflated being.

Rating:
Summary: Diagnosis: Magnificent
Review: "The Diagnosis" effectively captures the paralysis of the modern information overload. From the main characters initial breakdown of forgetting who he is and where he's going, to his final drooling wheelchair-bound self, nothing escapes him as he's forced to watch the rest of the world go about it's daily routine and forsake taking part.

Alan Lightman's ability to bring into sharp focus all of things we are required to remember, all the things we are supposed to do, and all the things that others consider a part of us. You're even given the idea that the main character's problem may all "be in his head."

When the wife asks "Why is this happening to me?" it's almost eerie in it's realism. It wasn't about his body failing him. It was the impact on her life.

While the middle of the book does get a little overly long, I wouldn't trade it for anything. It makes the conclusion all the more fitting.

Rating:
Summary: Save your time
Review: The premise of the book sounded cool but I was disappointed overall. Technology is suffocating society ... the point was made but I found myself lacking much compassion for Bill. The book left me feeling, well, numb (and I suppose that was the whole point).

Rating:
Summary: Boring
Review: I gave up in the middle of this book. I'm oddly reluctant to do that with a book, but slogging through this one just wasn't worth it. No, people don't make that many typos in their emails, and even if they did, the typos here are a distracting device that misses its mark. It's true that Einstein's Dreams is exquisite, and that maybe people are harder on his lesser works. But acknowledging that doesn't make this a better book, nor does it dispel the downward trend in quality in Mr Lightman's novels.

Rating:
Summary: Special reason to read this book
Review: I'll get to the very special reason to read this book in a moment...

If you're familiar with what DiLlilo tried to do in his novel White Noise then you're ready for a better example of that effort here. This is a much more readable and entertaining story of modernity (post-modernity?) overtaking life. If there's anything annoying about the novel it might be the sense that it was written hastily by someone just getting out of a postmodern theory course. You can talk about fragmented identity, hyperreality, hypertexts, intertexts, pastiche, white noise, simulacra and all that. But it works here. Don't think too much while you're reading this book. You're supposed to feel a jostled and displaced from time to time. You should also find a somewhat predictable narrative running through it all. It's part of the experience.

The story of Anytus? Just a foil to Chalmers, don't you think? The protagonists in the Anytus segments face some disconcerting options in their lives just like Chalmers and his gang do. Compare and contrast. How do the slaves in Athens compare to the corporate slaves in 21st century Boston? Compare father-son relationships. Etc.

Ok...Now the real special thing about this novel: Unlike every flipping novel that I've read that has been written in the last 10 years, this novel does not -- DOES NOT -- include the word condom once! Hurray for Lightman! I am not kidding...there's no mention of condoms. That's enough for a star. This book is five stars if you've had it with condoms, 4.5 stars if condoms matter not a whit to you.