by Alan Lightman (Pantheon)
Review by Dan Eldridge
Resonance, 02/01/01
A preaching-to-the-choir indictment of the electronic age, Alan Lightman's chastising turns a critical eye on our speed-obsessed, information-rich society. His protagonist, Bill Chalmers, is an upper-middle-class businessman with an office job. One morning on the subway, Chalmers experiences a frightening, sudden bout of total amnesia. As The Diagnosis progresses, endless references allude to the fairly obvious fact that Chalmers's breakdown was a consequence of his busy lifestyle. Absorb too much information at too fast a speed, in other words, and you'll crash faster than a Macintosh. It's a terribly important message, to be sure, and one that hasn't been fully explored in literature until now. Important or not, though, it seems like a bit of a stretch to devote more than 350 pages to a warning that no one seems to be arguing against. The only real flaw in this book's sense or urgency is that most proponents of the digital age are just as critical of their lifestyles as they are dependent upon them. Then again, who knows how large an influence The Diagnosis may one day command? The New York Times' famously cranky reviewer Michiko Kakutani gave it a rare thumbs-up, and the work recently garnered a National Book Award nomination. With any luck, Lightman's book will stick around for awhile and manage to influence the future generation that will need it the most: our children.
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