Radix; A.A. Attanasio; 1981

Another Nebula finalist.  I finally gave up halfway through and read the foreword (I've got the second edition), which explains:

Radix began with an insight from ... Lives of Ancient Philosophers: "Diogenes the Cynic lit a lamp in broad daylight and said as he went about, 'I am looking for a man,'" He says nothing about "the man" being honest.

...and about how Radix follows a man "to represent our polluted age" who is transformed.  Attanasio notes that:

Writing Radix confronted me with the literary challenge of fitting the motive of the novel, which is Diogenes' quest for a man, into a story that most readers would accept as a narrative and not a manual about self-transformation.

This is a noble goal, and the elements are here for a great novel, but I'm afraid that for me it reads like a manual about self-transformation.