Even the least self-aware person experiences an occasional moment of reflection on the meaning of life and what might happen when it ends. For those who want to dive more deeply into those topics, Alan Lightman's philosophical novel Preparing for Nothingness provides a stimulating roadmap for that sometimes-challenging journey.
The vehicle for Lightman's exploration is a fictional 2026 symposium at Sweden's Uppsala University, spearheaded by Ludvig Bergsson, a longtime professor of semiotics who's grieving the recent death of his father. The program features six speakers: an Argentine psychologist; an astronomy professor from the U.S.; a philosopher from the U.K.; a Catholic theologian from the Philippines; an Australian hospice worker; and a Tibetan Buddhist monk. Each, in turn, delivers a lecture on how an individual can live their life most meaningfully, and the implications of that decision as one considers the prospect of death and confronts the question of whether there is an afterlife.
In his 2014 essay collection, The Accidental Universe, Lightman wrote that "for me, there is room for both a spiritual universe and a physical universe, just as there is room for both science and religion." With a Ph.D. in physics and a long career as a professor of the practice of humanities at MIT, Lightman's eclectic background renders him singularly qualified to present his characters' diverse and sometimes sharply divergent viewpoints with intelligence and appropriate depth.
Straddling these worlds as he does, Lightman carefully avoids tipping the balance in favor of any of his imagined presenters. Similarly, he makes no effort to discredit opinions less sympathetic to his own, most notably those of the theologian--the scholar whose views seem most at variance with Lightman's--who makes a passionate argument for the existence of God and for a union of souls with that deity in an afterlife, or the monk, who offers a detailed description of the Buddhist belief in rebirth and reincarnation.
Lightman (Mr g: A Novel About Creation) intersperses the six talks with brief scenes in which Ludvig, serving as something of a surrogate for the reader, reflects on them as he recalls moments in his own life. Anyone approaching Preparing for Nothingness with firmly held ideas on its subject matter likely will find support for those beliefs somewhere here. At the same time, it won't be surprising if those with less fully formed convictions encounter material likely to spark some fruitful new thoughts. --Harvey Freedenberg, freelance reviewer
Shelf Talker: In this astute philosophical novel, Alan Lightman artfully relies on a sextet of experts for a thoughtful survey of perspectives on the meaning of life and the mystery of death.