Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values (urspr publ 1974; utgåvan 2006)

I was kind of dreading starting this, because I had a feeling I wouldn't like it. I was totally wrong - this was absorbing and thought-provoking in a way that a book hasn't been in a long time for me. I don't think I totally parsed everything Pirsig put in here, but I think this is something I am going to return to again (and again?) in the future. The only way I can describe it is how I described it to a friend earlier - as a different lens to see the world through. ( )

Robert Pirsig tells a story of how one man tried to live a life of reason while dealing with everyday physical routines and activities, juxtaposed with a spiritual search for the universal truth to the meaning of life.

That man was the author, Pirsig himself. Born with the exceptionally high IQ of a genius Pirsig traveled a lonely road of isolation, repelling most ordinary people. After a life-long journey of studying chemistry and philosophy, several jobs, marriage and having a son, suffering a nervous breakdown, being institutionalized in a mental facility and receiving electroshock therapy, he writes this compelling autobiographical tale.

It is an adventure of a father and son traveling across the USA on a vintage motorcycle. It did not turn out to be a warm bonding vacation of joyful experiences, fatherly advice, and affectionate camaraderie that you would imagine. Pirsig’s intellectual gift comes with a heavy price; a depth of thought that prohibits him from easy communication with anyone, especially a young boy.

Pirsig does a lot of internal self examination and philosophizing during the hours of riding and shares those thoughts with the reader. His search for the meaning of a quality life leads to reflecting on the ideologies of the philosophical pioneers: Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Kant, and Hume. While some people may find the content dry and almost indecipherable, it is actually intensely fascinating. Not just his views (from the perspective of a genius), but his interpretation of different philosophical theories, his analogies, and descriptions of events.

Pirsig’s quandary - is it more important to state the truth, or just go along with popular opinion for the sake of peace an harmony? Which is more harmful in the long run? We all suffer occasions in life that test our integrity. Pirsig was so determined to live a life of truth that he nearly destroyed himself. And by the way, what is Quality? Do we really need to define it philosophically?

"Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" was written in 1974 and the manuscript was turned down by 121 publishers before Pirsig stumbled across William Morrow and Co., who was willing to take the risk on this very unique, powerful story. And here it is 46 years later, 5 million copies have been sold, and I was fortunate enough to discover it listed as No. 73 on the Modern Library list of top 100 books selected by polled readers. ( )

https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/3523811.html

I'd read this many years ago, of course, and what seemed to me like deep philosophical insights in my early twenties now seem like charmingly enough told philosophy lectures framed as a road trip. It's mostly a good read; I think it's still kind of grounding and helpful.

The difference between reading it now and reading it in the 1980s is that there is a whole host of internet fandom around the book that you can browse, including (in several places) photographs from the 1968 trip on which the story is based.

The journey itself was way longer than I had realised, basically two-thirds of the way across the lower 48. (I still find it weird to think that Chicago is only a quarter of the way from East to West coasts.)

Bob and Gennie DeWeese, who the group stayed with in Bozeman, Montana, were very much real people who left a huge impression on the local artistic community. So were Jack and Wylla Barsness, who come to the DeWeese's party. John Sutherland died only recently but kept playing music to the end.

There are some references which are darker than the author first intended. I was struck by the description of the Church of the Minorites:

"But the print, Feininger’s “Church of the Minorites,” had an appeal to him that was irrelevant to the art in that its subject, a kind of Gothic cathedral, created from semiabstract lines and planes and colors and shades, seemed to reflect his mind’s vision of the Church of Reason and that was why he’d put it here."

But the sad fact is that by 1968, it was more than twenty years too late to see it in real life; the Barfüßerkirche in Erfurt was reduced to a shell by Allied bombs in 1944. I think Pirsig would have loved to use that metaphor if he's been aware of it, so I guess he just didn't know.

Pirsig's son Chris, as we are told in a sad afterword, died in 1979 just before his 23rd birthday, stabbed in the street in San Francisco.

Anyway, this was a good return journey. ( )

I was expecting so much more from this book. It was one of the most tedious reads I ever had, but I kept pushing, counting on reaching some kind of payoff in the end. But I haven't found any.

There were good moments, some really good setups - the road trip and its influence on travelers, the father-son relationship, and the whole motorcycle stuff. But it all gets bogged down in a very intricate and completely bogus internal dialogue of the narrator as he tries to understand himself and the whole world around him. It is poorly constructed, repetitive, and apparently, the author has zero doubts about it being a 100% correct description of reality (while I had many).

But I had my disbelief suspended, wanting the whole thing to make a sudden turn and deliver some payoff. But it has never happened. The conclusion leads nowhere, the big reveal is rather underwhelming, and it doesn't make any more sense than at the first impression. There are parts of good writing and inspirations from Greek philosophy but in the end, it all feels like a waste of time. ( )

A really thoughtful and evocative book that works well as fiction. The philosophy is doubtful. If you can't explain it then you don't understand it and if you don't understand what you have come up with yourself then you haven't really come up with anything. ( )