Alan Lightman's new novel sends its hero on a black-comic descent into the modern maelstrom

Any student of the physical world will testify to a certain elegance of form, applicable across the entire spectrum of natural law: that poetry, for instance, can possess an internal structure similar to that of a fine building or a cloud.

What happens, then, when you go mucking about with time and matter, manipulating them with industrial progress and split attention and the heretical demands of 24/7? Does the world, insistently entropic, simply dig in its heels and refuse to budge? Does human consciousness, taxed beyond its biological premise or capabilities, scatter into chaos?

If infinity times zero will always equal zero, what does that tell us about the less quantifiable components of output and desire? Alan Lightman, to his credit and ours, cares mightily about such things. A writer and physicist who teaches both subjects at MIT, he charmed a great number of readers with his 1993 fiction about time and possibility, "Einstein's Dreams." That fully imagined work brought the notion of a parallel universe further into the vernacular: perhaps each one of us was living out a mere fraction of a larger puzzle, where history went on performing a greater dance than any of us could see.

"The Diagnosis" is neither so eloquent nor as open-ended as "Einstein's Dreams"; it is instead a darkly allegorical novel about the human costs of a meaningless, high-tech work world run amok. Medical specialists (including psychiatrists) communicate with their patients by cell phone or e-mail; faced with the clock-breaking labyrinths of voice mail and information-processing services, time itself has pretty much collapsed. Trying to navigate this new order is a kind of Route-128 Everyman: Bill Chalmers, who just turned 40, loves his wife and son and home in Lexington, and who can't seem to find his way to work one ordinary morning.

Chalmers's story begins with terrifying authenticity, when the normal stresses of the toiling masses seem to converge into a chaotic underworld at Alewife Station. Cell phone in hand, briefcase bulging, Chalmers looks around him at the digitalized frenzy and just stumbles into circuit overload -- he forgets who he is and where he's going. By the end of a commuter nightmare in which the Red Line never looked scarier, he winds up in the ER at Boston City Hospital (he's headed for the psych wing until he steals a pair of pants and escapes). With his memory returning in fragments, Chalmers finds he's losing something else: He has no feeling beyond an inexplicable tingling in his hands and feet. As the condition progresses, it takes on the pathology of a carpal tunnel syndrome of the soul; instead of pain or pleasure, he feels nothing at all.

So unfolds a hellish little odyssey through modern life, with poor Chalmers trying valiantly to stay upright as his world collapses. While he's lost on the Red Line, his wife, Melissa, is lolling about having a cyber-affair at her laptop computer; Alex, their son, has long since resorted to reaching both parents by e-mail, even when they're all at home. Now faced with Chalmers's deteriorating health and job status, the family hunkers down -- Melissa disappearing into a bottle of Scotch, Alex going on-line to research his dad's conditions. Doctors and lawyers come and go, signifying nothing. Paychecks mostly go, Chalmers having blown it at his high-pressure company (a mysterious place where worthless information and deals get processed, toward mysterious ends). A phalanx of medical teams consult, subjecting the patient to invasive and useless tests. One kind but dotty psychiatrist plays Chalmers a background CD of waterfalls, then sends him home with Prozac.

Well, what we have here is the breakdown of the modern world, personified by a wounded anti-hero who never asked for what he got, deserved it no more or less than anybody else. But this is pretty much a one-trick pony of a plot: We know the cell phones will get louder, the corporate response more outlandish, the physical symptoms worse. Because "The Diagnosis" is a black-comic, surreal descent into the maelstrom, its focus is less on character development or emotional credibility than it is on dark symbolism; while Chalmers's alienation is a tale of anguish, its rendering through the inhuman flotsam of technospeak (e-mail chatter, nonsensical dialogues) becomes tedious after a while. More compelling and telling both are the fleeting moments when Chalmers's memory triumphantly displays its lifetime of treasures: the sound of Chopin, the pleasures of pizza with a beloved son, the riveting beauty of a leaf. These are the pastoral exceptions to Chalmers's present life, and to the absurdist milieu that "The Diagnosis" has chosen to present.

Woven throughout Chalmers's descent is a series of fictionalized chapters from Plato (downloaded by Alex!), concerning the trial and death of Socrates and the inner torment of one of his accusers, Anytus. Bill Chalmers has similarities to both men: Like Socrates, he has become a martyr to the cause of truth; like Anytus, his silence and anger may have cost him his son. Or perhaps the point belongs to Socrates, who, having been condemned in Plato's "Apology," asks his accusers to trouble his sons after he is gone: "If they pretend to be something when they are really nothing, then reprove them, as I have reproved you, for not caring about that for which they ought to care."

The intention behind this device seems more commendable than its execution. The Anytus passages don't really fit in the novel, but you can sense Lightman's passion for their story, and that makes them discretely compelling. But their inclusion here points to a larger problem in "The Diagnosis": it's a novel of ideas whose creator seems more comfortable with the ideas than with the imaginative elements that surround them. Because Lightman has made his Chalmers someone who once understood the sorrows of Chopin, his protagonist is a tragic figure -- a man defeated by life who nonetheless remembers its beauties. And because Lightman himself casts his vote with Chopin and Joyce, you can't help wishing he had given them the background score. Until its final pages, though, "The Diagnosis" isn't governed by such melodic laments. Instead, relentlessly exposing the techno-hell of the modern age, it must surrender to the squawk of cell phones, the ominous beep of cyber-cues, and those recorded waterfalls -- falling softly and softly falling, in stereo.