27 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Changing Nature of the American Dream, September 24, 2000
It could happen to anybody, anytime, anywhere. You take the same train to the office as you have done every working day for the past nine years. Then suddenly you lose it.
Your mind becomes a blank. You cannot remember which stop to get off at, or even where you work. Then the panic attack starts. You begin to sweat, imagining all the other commuters are looking at you. Finally reduced to a gibbering, naked wreck crouched on the floor of the train carriage, you are escorted by police out of the station to the nearest psychiatric hospital.
What happens next to Bill Chalmers, the protagonist of Alan Lightman's brilliant new novel, is even more frightening. Mistaken for a worthless vagrant headcase, he is subjected to illegal, invasive experiments, from which his brain emerges irreparably altered. He escapes, only to be mugged.
Somehow he finds his way back home and picks up the pieces of his life, his experiences a fractured, elusive memory. Like Lester Burnham in the film American Beauty, Chalmers goes into free fall from society as he knows it. Unlike Burnham, he is not given a chance to re-invent himself.
He has it all, or so he thinks: nice house in an affluent area of Boston, swish car, good job, loving family. But the price of his success means communicating with his son via e-mail - even when they are both home. It also means long hours at the office, which pushes his wife into a cyber love affair.
The similarities to American Beauty don't end there, though Lightman adds an unusual twist by cleverly working into the story the fate of Greek philosopher Socrates, a paragon of virtue in a corrupt society. Chalmers loses his job as he degenerates physically and mentally, but comes to realise there is more to life than trying to live the dream.
This is a dark story about the erosion of moral values and the high cost individuals pay for information overload in the workplace today. Erudite and philosophical, Lightman is also a skilful storyteller who captures the reader's attention from the opening paragraph. Provocative and challenging, The Diagnosis shows the fallibility of humans in the pursuit of greed and ambition.
Socrates reasoned that to "know thyself" was the key to existence in society. For Bill Chalmers, it's a voyage of discovery that proves to be a tragedy waiting to happen.
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27 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Metamorphosis Lite, October 2, 2000
By A Customer
Lightman has been praised for using this novel to take a hard look at the technological dystopia that our world seems to increasingly resemble. Unfortunately, the look amounts to little more than a glance: Lightman doesn't make much of an effort to explore the ramifications of such a world. Rather, he presents a fairly straightforward narrative which is initially absorbing but eventually frustrating. It's like Kafka without heft, Orwell sans allegory.
As for the fictionalized Dialogue by Plato, I think the Amazon.com reviewer had it right: "I never did fully figure out exactly what the Socrates story and Bill's decline have to say about each other..." That's because Lightman provides no real thread between the stories, leaving a rather large metaphoric gap for the reader to bridge. It's as if the author has excused himself from his *own* Dialogue in the face of truly difficult questions -- leaving both his characters and us none the wiser for it.
According to Lightman, _The Diagnosis_ is: figure it out for yourself.
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20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
An Angry, Intelligent Attack on Our Culture, September 30, 2000
I want to begin on a note of cynicism -- if, in fact, we live in a morally bankrupt society that becomes less intelligent each year, why is the market for highly-literate novels, plays and films about our corporate dystopia so sizeable? "American Beauty" was a surprise hit and it seems that every young novelist in America has been influenced by Don DeLillo. For all the talk about our smothering popular culture, we seem to have ample wriggle room to escape into intelligent critiques of that culture. Is it that we cultural elitists just want to tut-tut those who can't see through the most shallow features of our culture?
I hold none of this against Alan Lightman or his fine book. "The Diagnosis" begins with, in my opinion, the best first chapter of the year, a Kafka-esque nightmare of lost identity amid technological chaos. From there, the book deftly changes tone several times, alternating between medical drama, corporate satire, domestic soap opera and philosophical treatise.
"The Diagnosis" lives in the same moral universe as Don DeLillo's "White Noise" and even includes two veiled references (one would have been sufficient) to that book. It falls short of DeLillo's greatness because it lacks his humor and keen social insight. Lightman's anger at contemporary America is sometimes suffocating -- every character in the book becomes a victim of his wrath.
But taken as a work of philosophy and a snapshot of our times, "The Diagnosis" is effective and (in a strange way) entertaining. Lightman gives no easy payoffs and is completely willing to leave his reader on a down note. But somewhere in this jungle of despair is a glimmer of hope ... if we can just see, feel and hear the real world beneath our virtual creation, there is salvation.
Maybe we, the great anti-consumer consumers, are the hope. Even if we aren't, thinking so makes us feel good.
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