Imagine that you get lost while walking down a street one day. Then, when you ask for directions, a stranger instructs you to make four lefts and you’ll be there.
Being the gullible chap you are, you do just that and wind up right back where you started.
If this sort of situation would upset you, then please do not read the novel The Diagnosis. The book goes nowhere, and by the end you should be quite upset.
The Diagnosis is the latest work from author Alan Lightman. Lightman’s previous works include Einstein’s Dreams and Good Benito. According to the nifty paragraph under his picture in the front of the book, when Lightman is not writing books that go nowhere, he is an adjunct professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
So what is this circular book all about?
The plot revolves around Boston businessman Bill Chalmers. The information company that Chalmers works for has the motto: “The maximum information in the minimum time.”
Chalmers is clearly a man who lives by this motto and enjoys the everyday rat race to get ahead.
But then while riding the train to work one day, Chalmers loses his memory. He doesn’t know where he is going or who he is, but-sure enough-the company motto stays in his head. It would be like losing your memory and only recollecting, “For everything else there’s MasterCard.”
Chalmers eventually gets picked up by the fuzz and taken to the hospital. The doctors perform some tests, and the reader gets the feeling that they are somewhat experimental.
Lightman never expounds on this point, and Chalmers quickly escapes and wanders through the city. Eventually, his memory does come back but with some weird side effects, most noticeably numbness.
Chalmers tries to work through it with his dysfunctional family that consists of an emotionally plagued wife who likes to chat with an online beau and a son who sits in his room a lot and likes to bang away on the computer.
Then, there is the doctor who orders test after test and is unable to make a-guess what’s coming-diagnosis.
To top it off, Chalmers has some problems at work reacquainting himself with his job.
In all fairness to Chalmers, Lightman never fully describes what Chalmers does. Chalmers goes on and on like this, in a world that seems no longer his own.
Reading page after page, the book truly feels like it’s going nowhere. What is the matter with Chalmers? What is the intent of this book? What the reader gets is continuous doses of Chalmers’ numbness and the repeated worlds of work and home without the answers and excitement that he or she needs and wants.
Lightman does offer the reader a quick pace, but with all the craziness going on, it seems that he is also offering the reader a homage to Kafka.
But this is not the Metamorphosis, no matter how much Lightman wants it to be.
Another problem with the book involves the numerous paragraphs set up like e-mail messages between the characters.
Granted, many people do not use spell check in e-mails, but the characters in this novel should.
In an effort to capture realism, Lightman used misspellings many times. Examples included “tlk, pe3pration and leving.” At first, this interpretive way of writing was interesting, but it got old quickly. In this noncrime novel, the reader has to play detective with the e-mails.
The Diagnosis was a National Book Award Finalist, but who knows if the stamp on the cover stating this is as valid as the Oprah Book Club stamp. The Diagnosis is not a terrible book; it just needs to have some direction.
Nietzsche said that out of chaos comes order, but maybe the craziness in The Diagnosis is just too much to produce order.
