Diagnosis: Technological Overl

Technology as an alienating force is the prevalent theme. He observes that the tools in-tended to advance communication are the very ones that cause isolation. Cell phones and e-mail tie executives to their work twenty-four hours a day, increasing the pressure on them to be constantly productive. The escapist aspects of the Internet are a threat to human relation-ships. Lightman explores its effect upon one man’s family and career, and as a diagnosis for his recent breakdown. In many instances, his thought-provoking points are put across through careful observation of modern society.

Bill Chalmers, a successful businessman, and the main character in the novel, is intro-duced to us in the Boston T subway one summer’s day at 8:22 in the morning. The exact time is carefully noted and this temporal documentation is kept throughout the novel. This por-t

Bill doesn’t exactly reconnect with his son through this conversation, but he does make both of them realize what his life has become, while simultaneously warning his son about his own future. After this, Bill and his son allow themselves to come to an understanding. Even his wife reconnects emotionally with him, as they plan for his internment at a residen-tial hospital. Lightman creates a semi-happy ending despite his feelings of an unhappy world.

There are various other points in the novel where Lightman engages in telling observa-tion. These moments can be funny, as when the doctors who are treating Chalmers stand in reverential awe before a new piece of medical machinery, a symbol of America’s greatness. However, more often, they are tragic, as when Bill’s wife, Melissa, engages in a passionate and typo-ridden love affair with a man over the Internet. “I imagine talking to you and I see the keyboard in my mind,” she says, “I can feel my fingers moving on the keys, typing the things I want to say to you. I can feel my fingers moving, honestly.” (37) It is a world in which contact with others is mediated by technology and the physicality of touching a loved one is replaced with the sensation of groping a keyboard. It is through such sly, understated references that Lightman’s social criticism shines.

The more veiled cause of Chalmers’ discomfort comes with a deeper level of symbolic meaning. Bill’s social life barely exists: his wife is having an electronic affair, while he and his son communicate mainly by email. Bill’s job is to process information of any sort, liter-ally, the more megabytes he processes, the greater his salary. His doctor, Dr. Petrov, was once able to make “definite diagnoses, and these were often quite correct. But with the vast increase in medical (and communication) technology, and with so many new considerations to take into account” (112) he

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