AUDIOBOOK
About
Alan Lightman's first novel, Einstein's Dreams, was greeted with international praise. Salman Rushdie called it "at once intellectually provocative and touching and comic and so very beautifully written." Michiko Kakutani wrote in The New York Times that the novel creates "a magical, metaphysical realm . . . as in Calvino's work, the fantastical elements of the stories are grounded in precise, crystalline prose." With The Diagnosis, Lightman gives us his most ambitious and penetrating novel yet.
While rushing to his office one warm summer morning, Bill Chalmers, a junior executive, realizes that he cannot remember where he is going or even who he is. All he remembers is the motto of his company: The maximum information in the minimum time.
When Bill's memory returns, "his head pounding, remembering too much," a strange numbness afflicts him, beginning as a tingling in his hands and gradually spreading over the rest of his body. As he attempts to find a diagnosis of his illness, he descends into a nightmare, enduring a blizzard of medical tests and specialists without conclusive results, the manic frenzy of his company, and a desperate wife who decides that he must be imagining his deteriorating condition.
By turns satiric, comic, and tragic, The Diagnosis is a brilliant and disturbing examination of our modern obsession with speed, information, and money, and what this obsession has done to our minds and our spirits. In Praise of The Diagnosis
"The Diagnosis is packed with dark power and awful humor. Lightman's intelligence, imagination, and clarity of style mark him as one of the most brilliant contemporary American writers."
--Annie Proulx
"I know of no novel that captures the technological horror and pervasive spiritual poverty of our wildly prosperous land in so powerful a way as The Diagnosis. It is haunting."
--Norman Mailer THE DIAGNOSIS
ON THE SUBWAY
People must have been in a great hurry, for no one noticed anything wrong with Bill Chalmers as he dashed from his automobile one fine summer morning. Earnest and dressed in a blue cotton suit, he was immediately swept up by the mass of commuters also galloping from their cars toward the elevators and down to the trains of the Alewife Station, a cavernous structure of concrete and crisscrossed steel struts, one end of the Red Line through Boston. At the ground floor, Chalmers presented his pass and rushed through the turnstile. He was halfway down the stairs to the platform when he heard the taut string of electronic beeps and the doors began sliding on train Number One. A woman groaned. Another commuter, a tall nervous man with squeaky shoes, lunged ahead and ran alongside the train, shouting and slapping his magazine against the red paneled doors. But the train was already in motion, its steel wheels scraping and squealing so fiercely that several people had to turn up their head sets. The tall man swiveled and shot Chalmers an accusing stare, as if his lack of sufficient speed through the turnstile had caused a half-dozen people to miss their trains. What a jerk, Chalmers thought to himself and looked down at his watch. It was 8:22. Twenty-three minutes to his stop, a nine-minute walk to his building, two minutes on the elevator, and he'd be sitting at his desk by 9:00. Assuming the train on Track Two arrived and departed within four minutes, as it should. With some satisfaction he reminded himself that, unlike the ridiculously agitated man with the magazine, he had calculated his morning commute so that he could miss the first train and still arrive at the office on time. Abruptly, he began worrying that the train on Track Two might be late. Never had that happened when he'd missed train Number One, but it was certainly a possibility. Stroking his mustache, he continued down the stairs and looked again at his watch. He mustn't waste the four minutes. However, he slowed his descent to drop fifty cents into the cup of a homeless woman sprawled on
While rushing to his office one warm summer morning, Bill Chalmers, a junior executive, realizes that he cannot remember where he is going or even who he is. All he remembers is the motto of his company: The maximum information in the minimum time.
When Bill's memory returns, "his head pounding, remembering too much," a strange numbness afflicts him, beginning as a tingling in his hands and gradually spreading over the rest of his body. As he attempts to find a diagnosis of his illness, he descends into a nightmare, enduring a blizzard of medical tests and specialists without conclusive results, the manic frenzy of his company, and a desperate wife who decides that he must be imagining his deteriorating condition.
By turns satiric, comic, and tragic, The Diagnosis is a brilliant and disturbing examination of our modern obsession with speed, information, and money, and what this obsession has done to our minds and our spirits. In Praise of The Diagnosis
"The Diagnosis is packed with dark power and awful humor. Lightman's intelligence, imagination, and clarity of style mark him as one of the most brilliant contemporary American writers."
--Annie Proulx
"I know of no novel that captures the technological horror and pervasive spiritual poverty of our wildly prosperous land in so powerful a way as The Diagnosis. It is haunting."
--Norman Mailer THE DIAGNOSIS
ON THE SUBWAY
People must have been in a great hurry, for no one noticed anything wrong with Bill Chalmers as he dashed from his automobile one fine summer morning. Earnest and dressed in a blue cotton suit, he was immediately swept up by the mass of commuters also galloping from their cars toward the elevators and down to the trains of the Alewife Station, a cavernous structure of concrete and crisscrossed steel struts, one end of the Red Line through Boston. At the ground floor, Chalmers presented his pass and rushed through the turnstile. He was halfway down the stairs to the platform when he heard the taut string of electronic beeps and the doors began sliding on train Number One. A woman groaned. Another commuter, a tall nervous man with squeaky shoes, lunged ahead and ran alongside the train, shouting and slapping his magazine against the red paneled doors. But the train was already in motion, its steel wheels scraping and squealing so fiercely that several people had to turn up their head sets. The tall man swiveled and shot Chalmers an accusing stare, as if his lack of sufficient speed through the turnstile had caused a half-dozen people to miss their trains. What a jerk, Chalmers thought to himself and looked down at his watch. It was 8:22. Twenty-three minutes to his stop, a nine-minute walk to his building, two minutes on the elevator, and he'd be sitting at his desk by 9:00. Assuming the train on Track Two arrived and departed within four minutes, as it should. With some satisfaction he reminded himself that, unlike the ridiculously agitated man with the magazine, he had calculated his morning commute so that he could miss the first train and still arrive at the office on time. Abruptly, he began worrying that the train on Track Two might be late. Never had that happened when he'd missed train Number One, but it was certainly a possibility. Stroking his mustache, he continued down the stairs and looked again at his watch. He mustn't waste the four minutes. However, he slowed his descent to drop fifty cents into the cup of a homeless woman sprawled on