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[Mark-O]

I'm not too far off finishing the much-hyped 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance' by Pirsig.

Is it just me or is the book seemingly opaque? Ok, I admit that I haven't quite finished it yet but the underpinning road trip he embarks on with his son appears to be of almost no relevance whatsoever to the philosophy he is considering.

He takes great pains to describe the philosophy field of Esthetics i.e. what exactly is Quality?, which I largely comprehend (until he goes off on one about his double personality - Phaedrus), though I feel his delivery is somewhat superfluous, inconcise and ambiguous at times. But nonetheless this book is hailed as some profound statement of 'modern problem solving'. Sorry, I just don't see where this stems from.

I'm hoping that everything will fit together in the last pages and all will be revealed. But right now, as it sits, this doesn't deserve the accolades and hype it attracts. Has anyone had similar or contradictory experiences with this "milestone" of a book?[/i]

[johnslat]

Dear Mark-O,
Opaque is one adjective I'd use. Pretentious is another. Poor guy, driven mad because he thought too much. Strange how others, such as Socrates, Aristotle, Kant, etc. didn't have that problem. Well, there's a moral for you: Stop thinking.
Regards,
John
P.S. And WHERE is the "Zen"?

[Echo]

No, but Alain de Boton's "How Proust Can Change Your Life", similarly touted, hit me much the same way.

I've found that when I read the same book at different stages in my life it effects me differently, though, so I might give it another try in five or six years.

[Mark-O]

Hi John,

I was hoping (and more than half expected!) that you'd read this book and would give me your perception. Your view is reassuring at least. As I mentioned, I was worried that it was me who had been missing the point of this book.

Just to reaffirm this, I've spoken to my friend who studied a philosophy degree at one of the UK's top red bricks, and he has a similar view to us. He thinks that the content isn't too taxing, but the author manages to cloud the waters with his unorthodox delivery. He commented that he found it frustrating how just as the author cuts to the chase he goes off on a tangent and starts eluding to his road trip or son or other irrelevance. I must say I'm in full agreement with him.

Yes, he did go insane didn't he? The book is meant to be more or less factual. The 'Zen'? Well, he weakly eludes to Buddha a handful of times but I don't think that is sufficient to warrant inclusion in the book's title!

[khmerhit]

I read it twenty-five years ago, when I was 13.

I hate the book.

I hate the mere recollection of it.

I hate the exaltation of mental illness.

I hate its self-centredness.

I hate the self-regarding tone.

I hate the selfish narrator who keeps droning on.

I hate the elaborate and tortuous self-pity.

I hate the motorcycle conceit--keeping the 'self' in trim and in tune, like some kind of mental jogging. "Self-help", more like, as in "I think I'll help myself to that moribund company, strip its assets bare and sell it off."

I hate the mid-western ethno-centrism.

I hate the pseudo philosophy.

I hate the California liberalism (whatever that means).

I hate the obsession with quality and freedom from corporate strictures enunciated at a time hwn the Vietnamese had lost 1.5 million people to quality made aircraft. Ask them about quality.

I hate the journey trope. Since when did one have to take a motorcycle journey to discover that fatherhood was important?

I hate the presumption that all solutions must come from within the individual, not from others in society: Ideological possessive individualism, ie Colonel Sanders and Co.

I hate the amazed discovery of chaos and contingency. Ask the Vietnamese about those.

I hate the happy house in the hills at the conclusion.

I hate the pseudo-educational mystique around the book.

I hate the crap about lateral thinking.

I hate its hippy origins.

I hate its yuppy progeny, and I hate their landrovers.

It makes me puke.

Yours sincerely,
khmerhit

http://www.moq.org/

http://www.google.ca/search?q=cache:Iz4RTc0NIEcJ:www.psybertron.org/zammreview.html+zen+motorcycle+maintenance+critics&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

http://www.wvu.edu/~lawfac/jelkins/pmpl99/imagine/pilot1.html

[johnslat]

Dear khmerhit,
So, is it safe to assume you didn't like it, then? Seriously though, that's a great list of what I also see as the book's defects. I'll make a confession: I read it twice. The first time was when I was much younger, when it came out, back in the early '70s, I believe. As I recall, it irritated me then. The second time was just a couple of years ago. I came across an old copy of it and decided to give it a second chance. It REALLY irritated me that time, so much so that I actually finished it again - but did do mostly to pick out the parts that were SO DARN phony and (yes) pretentious. There were a lot of those.
I see that he wrote a couple of others:

"Lila: An Inquiry Into Morals"

and

"Lila's Child: An Inquiry into Quality"

Great - anytime I want to get really irritated, I'll know what to get.

So now he's written about "values, morals and quality". If I want my philosophy disguised as a novel, I'll reread "Sophie's World". In my opinion, Pirsig is to philosophy as Rod McKuen is to poetry.

Regards,
John

[dmb]

I have read it. I think I enjoyed it. I can't remember why though.

[lozwich]

[ls650]

I enjoyed maybe the first half of the novel where Pirsig sticks to talking about his motorcycle trip. When he wanders off into discussing his head wounds the book becomes very boring.

[Aramas]

I borrowed it from my school library when I was 13 (it was in the motorcycle section). I was confused at first, then disappointed and finally bored out of my mind.

A few years later I noticed a friend reading it and asked him what he thought. He said it had nothing to do with zen or motorcycles, and didn't seem to have much to do with anything else either. I was reading Castaneda at the time, which imo is a much better example of pretentious, quasi-mystical hippy drivel

[rossiter joe]

Read it in high school and it puzzles me. Read it at 25 and I understood a lot more of what he was saying (or trying to say). I wouldn`t recommend it or read it again, but for what it was it wasn`t bad.
What was that book about 10 years ago; Celestine Prophecies (sic) ? Now that was complete drivel !!!

[rossiter joe]

Read it in high school and it puzzled me. Read it at 25 and I understood a lot more of what he was saying (or trying to say). I wouldn`t recommend it or read it again, but for what it was it wasn`t bad.
What was that book about 10 years ago; Celestine Prophecies (sic) ? Now that was complete drivel !!!

[Mark-O]

Khmerhit, your post was like a check-list for me!

John, the edition I bought was really touting the sequel, especially when it featured a self-fellating dialogue with the author in the back in which he managed to name-drop the book in reply to every question.

So we seem to have a pretty tight consensus here on this book. But a dichotomy remains - why is this such a celebrated book?

[guest of Japan]

I liked the book, mostly.

I have to admit that I rapidly skimmed everything to do with motorcycle repair.

I enjoyed the continuous socratic debate on the subject of quality and the historical perspective on Western logic.

I enjoyed the irony of the fact that the road trip was utter heaven for the rider but pure hell for his son.

I enjoyed the cloudiness of the writing.

I enjoyed the struggles of the symbolic climbing of the mountain and the apathy felt at finally reaching the summit.

I read the book shortly after university and at the time I was a bit directionless myself. The book put me into an analytical state of mind and enabled me to make some choices I was facing. (I made all the wrong choices).

Everyone keeps asking what Zen has to do with the book. My answer is that it is seen in the constant perfectionism of the writer. The difference in his perfectionism during his two stages of life is that in his earlier life he set about a task with only the goal of achieving it. In later life the doing of the task became of paramount importance. The means outweighed the goals. If you spend a few months in Japan you will still see this trait embodied in the arts, working world and social society.

Zen Buddhism has very little to do with Buddhism. Some of the ceremonies and scriptures were adopted, but devoutness to the belief is not. Zen Buddhism would more correctly be described as an assimilation of cultural ideologies. The Japanese took the parts of Buddhism which they felt would strengthen their culture and give meaning to their idiocyncracies and ironies.

Obviously I am not a professional scholar or monk, but that is my interpretation.

[sidjameson]

I have just become very depressed. I loved this book. For the reasons that Guest just wrote, but what I am really struggling to deal with is the fact that I have read this book at least twice, maybe 3 times but I can barely remember what it is about. I certainly couldn't have given my reasons as others have done. The last time was about 8 years ago, but still. Btw the philosphical dialogue is the book IMO the road trip is the orchestra, the Socratic debate the voice.
Khimer I think you miss the point on quality. The intellectual achievment that was expressed in the invention of a nuclear bomb has real quality don't you think? Of course the use of that weapon almost certainly wouldn't.
Oh and just to alieniate myself further from nearly all the good posters on this thread I thought Lila( the follow up) was just as good. But can't remeber much about that book either