Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
by Robert M. Pirsig
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| published
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1974
by Morrow Quill Paperbacks
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| binding
| Paperback |
| isbn
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0688052304
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| ebook |
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| date added
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12-19-06
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(showing 1-20 of 7978)
Read in December, 2007
recommends it for:
Everyone
I must start by saying that this is one of my favorite books ever. Although it is deep and complicated and takes a lot of focus to read, I feel that there are a lot of great messages here in the author’s search for Quality. This was my second time reading this book, and I liked it more this time.
Interlaced with stories from an across-the-west motorcycle trip with his son and some friends, Pirsig tells the story of his past in an almost former life before being admitted to a mental instituti...more
I must start by saying that this is one of my favorite books ever. Although it is deep and complicated and takes a lot of focus to read, I feel that there are a lot of great messages here in the author’s search for Quality. This was my second time reading this book, and I liked it more this time.
Interlaced with stories from an across-the-west motorcycle trip with his son and some friends, Pirsig tells the story of his past in an almost former life before being admitted to a mental institution after going crazy in his pursuit of Quality. He often uses the motorcycle as an analogy, as well as climbing mountains. With what many would see as too much depth and detail (but not me), he dissects the ideas of rhetoric, quality, the scientific method, technology and many ideas of the ancient Greek philosophers and tries to take down an entire academic department in the search of a unifying truth/god/connecting force.
I don’t really feel that there is a lot that I can say to do this book justice in a short review form like this. I’ll just write up a bunch of underlined quotes instead.
“…physical discomfort is important only when the mood is wrong. Then you fasten on to whatever thing is uncomfortable and call that the cause. But if the mood is right, then physical discomfort doesn’t mean much.”
“Caring about what you are doing is considered either unimportant or taken for granted.”
“That’s the first normal thing I’ve said in weeks. The rest of the time I’m feigning twentieth-century lunacy just like you are. So as to not draw attention to myself.”
“Nobody is concerned anymore about tidily conserving space. The land isn’t valuable anymore. We are in a Western town.”
“But to tear down a factory or to revolt against a government or to avoid repair of a motorcycle because it is a system is to attack effects rather than causes; and as long as the attack is upon effects only, no change is possible. The true system, the real system, is our present construction of systematic thought itself, rationality itself, and if a factory is torn down but the rationality which produced it is left standing, then that rationality will simply produce another factory. If a revolution destroys a systematic government , but the systematic patterns of thought that produced that government are left intact, then those patterns will repeat themselves in the succeeding government. There’s so much talk about the system. And so little understanding.”
“If the purpose of scientific method is to select from among a multitude of hypotheses, and if the number of hypotheses grows faster than experimental method can handle, then it is clear that all hypotheses can never be tested. If all hypotheses cannot be tested, then the results of any experiment are inconclusive and the entire scientific method falls short of its goal of establishing proven knowledge.”
“Sometimes it’s a little better to travel than to arrive.”
“You look at where you’re going and where you are and it never makes sense, but then you look back at where you’ve been and a pattern seems to emerge. And if you project forward from that pattern, then sometimes you can come up with something.”
“But what’s happening is that each year our old flat earth of conventional reason becomes less and less adequate to handle the experiences we have and this is creating widespread feelings of topsy-turviness. As a result we’re getting more and more people in irrational areas of thought – occultism, mysticism, drug changes and the like – because they feel the inadequacy of classical reason to handle what they know are real experiences.”
“The trouble is that essays always have to sound like God talking for eternity, and that isn’t the way it ever is. People should see that it’s never anything other than just one person talking from one place in time and space and circumstance. It’s never been anything else, ever, but you can’t get that across in an essay.”
“The allegory of a physical mountain for the spiritual one that stands between each soul and its goal is an easy and natural one to make. Like those in the valley behind us, most people stand in sight of the spiritual mountains all their lives and never enter them, being content to listen to others who have been there and thus avoid the hardships. Some travel into the mountains accompanied by experienced guides who know the best and least dangerous routes by which they arrive at their destination. Still others, inexperienced and untrusting, attempt to make their own routes. Few of these are successful, but occasionally some, by sheer will and luck and grace, do make it. Once there they become more aware than any of the others that there’s no single or fixed number of routes. There are as many routes as there are individual souls.”
“He was just stopped. Waiting. For that missing seed crystal of thought that would suddenly solidify everything.”
“Any effort that has self-glorification as its final endpoint is bound to end in disaster… When you try to climb a mountain to prove how big you are, you almost never make it. And even if you do it’s a hollow victory. In order to sustain the victory you have to prove yourself again and again in some other way, and again and again and again, driven forever to fill a false image, haunted by the fear that the image is not true and someone will find out. That’s never the way.”
“The holiness of the mountain infused into their own spirits enabled them to endure far more than anything he, with his greater physical strength, could take.”
“Care and Quality are internal and external aspects of the same thing. A person who sees Quality and feels it as he works is a person who cares. A person who cares about what he sees and does is a person who’s bound to have some characteristic of quality.”
“They have patience, care and attentiveness to what they’re doing, but more than this – there’s a kind of inner peace of mind that isn’t contrived but results from a kind of harmony with the work in which there’s no leader and no follower. The material and the craftsman’s thoughts change together in a progression of smooth, even changes until his mind is at rest at the exact instant the material is right.”
“Or if he takes whatever dull job he’s stuck with – and they are all, sooner or later, dull – and, just to keep himself amused, starts to look for options of Quality, and secretly pursues these options, just for their own sake, thus making an art out of what he is doing, he’s likely to discover he becomes a much more interesting person and much less of an object to the people around him because his Quality decisions change him too. And not only the job and him, but others, too, because the Quality tends to fan out like waves. The Quality job he didn’t think anyone was going to see is seen, and the person who sees it feels a little better because of it and is likely to pass that feeling on to others, and in that way the Quality tends to keep on going.
My personal feeling is that this is how any further improvement of the world will be done: by individuals making Quality decisions and that’s all.God, I don’t want to have any more enthusiasm for big programs full of social planning for big masses of people that leave individual Quality out. These can be left alone for a while. There’s a place for them but they’ve got to be built on a foundation of Quality within the individuals involved. We’ve had that individual quality in the past, exploited as a natural resource without knowing it, and now it’s just about depleted. Everyone’s just about out if gumption. And I think it’s about time to return the rebuilding of this American resource – individual worth. There are political reactionaries who’ve been saying something close to this for years. I’m not one of them, but to the extent they’re talking about real individual worth and not just an excuse for giving more money to the rich, they’re right. We do need a return to individual integrity, self-reliance and old-fashioned gumption. We really do.”
“What is good, Phaedrus, and what is not good – need we ask anyone to tell us these things?”
...less
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bookshelves:
abandoned
Read in June, 2007
recommends it for:
masochistic philosophers
I started reading this book because i'd heard from a number of people, including comedian Tim Allen, that it was good. In fact i read an entire Tim Allen book ("I'm Not Really Here") which was kind of about his experience reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintainence. Tim Allen, although not exactly a respectable philosopher (maybe not even just respectable), had some of Robert Pirsig's philosophy without all his inane bullshit. At least Tim Allen's book was funny.
Admittedly, ...more
I started reading this book because i'd heard from a number of people, including comedian Tim Allen, that it was good. In fact i read an entire Tim Allen book ("I'm Not Really Here") which was kind of about his experience reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintainence. Tim Allen, although not exactly a respectable philosopher (maybe not even just respectable), had some of Robert Pirsig's philosophy without all his inane bullshit. At least Tim Allen's book was funny.
Admittedly, i enjoyed the book in the beginning. I could tell that the plot was going nowhere specific, but i like books like that. In fact i wrote one. But as i pressed on, page after page, chapter after chapter, i became first bored with it, then irritated. There are essentially three parts to this book, all of which are intertwined at irregular intervals:
1. The philosophy stuff. I really like this aspect of the book; all the time he spends talking about Phaedrus and Phaedrus's experiences was mostly fascinating to me. Phaedrus is the real star of the story and the only character i really liked.
2. The motorcycle maintainence stuff. Despite the fact that i had no idea what most of it meant, it's factual and to the point, and somehow intersted me just by the way it was written. At some point i even thought about buying a motorcycle, just from inspiration by this book.
3. The main story. It's a story about the narrator (Pirsig himself) and his son, Chris, on a motorcycle journey across the country with some friends. Chris is 11 or 12 and mostly just annoying, but the interactions between Pirsig and his son just make me think that Pirsig is a bad father. He always seems angry at Chris for no particular reason and Chris seems to cry a lot due to it. I wonder what Chris thought when he read this book. And it's no wonder to me that the guy's wife left him shortly after it was published (Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_P...).
The main thing that i think the book suffers from is the way he abruptly switches between the topics. I've no problem with a rapidly shifting story, if the transitions work. Here, Pirsig would get me going enthusiastically through a Phaedrus segment, and right at the climax...dump me back into him and Chris doing something boring. Then we'd trudge along through that for a while, and suddenly he'd see something that reminded him of Phaedrus, and we'd come to another Phaedrus segment which was not a continuation of the previous.
I gave up on the book shortly after the halfway point where Phaedrus began repeating everything over and over and going absolutely nowhere. Sure, i'd like to see what ultimately got him committed to an asylum, but i don't feel like reading any more of this repetitive and bland crap to get there. Ok, you can't put a definition on "quality," i get it, move on to something else. I feel like what Pirsig is saying to me is, "I've got a point...but i'll never tell you what it is!" and i hate being taunted. Especially while reading. If this were a movie, chances are i'd tough it out and wait for it to finish just because i know it'll be done soon. But reading, although often more enjoyable, is more time consuming and nobody can deny that. And after wasting weeks of my life reading Robert Jordan's "The Shadow Rising," i've learned my lesson. Life is too short to waste on crappy books. There's lots of good stuff out there, i'mma go get it....less
bookshelves:
contemporaryfiction
This book is extremely good and also important. It's a treatise on metaphysics as well as a compelling story which the author says is autobiographical. It's exactly right about the scientific method, and the way we go about discovering truth as a society and as individuals. The analogy of working on motorcycles is a good one. In my life it's been programming computers and figuring out how to get industrial machinery to work, but the same process works for all of the above.
The thing I f...more
This book is extremely good and also important. It's a treatise on metaphysics as well as a compelling story which the author says is autobiographical. It's exactly right about the scientific method, and the way we go about discovering truth as a society and as individuals. The analogy of working on motorcycles is a good one. In my life it's been programming computers and figuring out how to get industrial machinery to work, but the same process works for all of the above.
The thing I find most excellent in this book is that it points out the step where the mystery comes in, i.e. coming up with new hypotheses, the long sought "aha" that comes when you're working on a hard problem. Science has no method for how you get that. You just play with the problem, turn it over in your mind, try things, strive to understand, and then <poof> the answer sometimes appears in your head. It's a complete mystery. There are stories in the history of science, about Kekule who figured out the ring structure of Benzene from a dream about a snake swallowing its tail, about Einstein at age 13 picturing what it would be like to ride the crest of a light wave, and on and on. This book showed me that buried in the heart of science is something generative and alive that defies scientific explanation, simply because it's outside the system.
"The truth knocks on your door, and you say 'Go away! I'm looking for the truth!' so it goes away." That's such an exact description of how our preconceived ideas often keep us from finding the truth. (The truth in this context is completely knowable once we've found it. I mean if the motorcycle runs afterwards, then we've solved the problem. That's why I love applied science and engineering.)
The other great idea that I use all the time from this book is that the very cutting edge, the place where the tire tread hits the pavement, is always messy and confusing and just a place of floundering around in uncertainty. He makes the analogy of a train, with all the cars full of facts that we know, and the engine, where new track is being laid, is not contained in any of the cars. It's always murky up there, and never neat and well-defined. So that unpleasant feeling of uncertainty, of confusion, of floundering around, it's the VERY THING that we should cultivate in order to discover the truth. I tell myself that when I'm in that situation, that I should revel in this feeling instead of dreading it. (And, in fact, I mostly get paid because I can stick through that feeling to the payoff, the "aha" part. The most important thing I learned in college is that something utterly confusing and befuddling can come clear if I will invest the effort to play around with it and figure it out. So I get to do that all the time now. =))
What I have found in the years of figuring out why programs or machines don't work, and fixing them, is that really very little in life and the universe is well-understood. We have this large mental construct of scientific understanding, and it's indeed impressive. We can cure typhoid now and build bridges that stay up (conscious irony). But even in the areas that we would like to think are very well known, and neat and clear, there is so much that isn't understood. Otherwise, why would these questions come up continually? Why doesn't this program work? Why is my pulper feed system not working the way we expected? Why did my motorcycle engine run so badly in the mountains? What made this bridge suddenly collapse during rush hour?
This book explores all of those ideas and sheds a lot of light on them. I understand the universe far better because of having read this book. That's why I gave it 5 stars, a rating I reserve for books that changed who I am or how I see the world....less
bookshelves:
metaphysics,
spirituality
Read in August, 2006
Well, this book is not for everyone, and I have certainly heard people say that they found it overblown, pretentious, pointless, etc. but I loved it and found that what I read and my life experiences as I read it formed a didactic and interesting dialectic with the content of the book.
The book itself interstices Pirsig's account of a motorcycle road trip with his son and some friends with the story of his personal and professional struggles developing his philosophy of "the metaphysics ...more
Well, this book is not for everyone, and I have certainly heard people say that they found it overblown, pretentious, pointless, etc. but I loved it and found that what I read and my life experiences as I read it formed a didactic and interesting dialectic with the content of the book.
The book itself interstices Pirsig's account of a motorcycle road trip with his son and some friends with the story of his personal and professional struggles developing his philosophy of "the metaphysics of quality". There is also some history of philosophy, although this is to provide an exposition for Pirsig's arguments, so he cherry-picks the stories and interpretations that he tells. This is fine because it is not meant to be a primer on classical or any other kind of philosophy; I don't really have an extensive philosophy background but the little I did know helped I think.
Not that they have anything to do with the book, but I have a couple of stories about it. I figure that most people who have any interest in this type of book are already pretty familiar with it, so I won't say too much about it other than that I couldn't put it down and I wholeheartedly recommend it. While I don't agree with Pirsig's entire viewpoint, most of it rang true and even that which didn't was still an excellent impetus for introspection.
I got a copy at a used bookstore (I'm pretty sure it was this one) on a trip up to San Francisco with my girlfriend and a mutual friend. At first I had been browsing, and had found a cool coffee table book on phrenology which the lady at the counter chatted with me for a little bit. Encouraged by the chatting, I asked her if they had a book I had been looking for, The Secret Teaching of All Ages by Manly P. Hall, which is an encyclopedic reference about the occult, masonry, astrology, etc. (although it is reprinted in paperback, the original book had lots of charts, illustrations, etc that would not fit in the smaller paperback format and had to be abridged, so I was looking for the original, which I am told is something of a collector's item in certain circles).
At this point, the warmth drains from her face. There is an ominous, beginning-of-a-movie-like silence, and she informs me, "No. I don't sell that book. I'm a Christian." When I ask for further clarification, she says that the book contains "a secret spell to undo the universe" and that she didn't want any part in helping anyone undo the universe, so she would not sell the book even if she had it.
Well, things got kind of awkward at this point, and while trying to avoid eye contact with her, I saw a copy of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance in a stack of books waiting to be shelved, and tried to help myself. My friend Ian H had told me it was really good and I figured I'd check it out. She swatted my hand away and sent someone to get me a copy off the shelf. She told me that it was by far the most popular title that they sold.
I didn't get around to reading the book until almost a year later, when me and Vinny were on our rail trip to and through Hokkaido. The book got really water damaged during our ill-fated hike up and down Rishi-fuji-zan right around when I was reading Pirsig's mountain climbing allegory. A lot of the stuff about how when "you can't move forward, you move sideways" and etc. resonated with my at times aimless wanderings over the past couple of years.
So, in summation, you'll really like this book, unless you instead think it's interminable, rambling, and obtuse like this review....less
Read in January, 1997
Maybe it's unfair to give a poor rating to a book I read in high school. However, I like to think that I was wise beyond my years and knew a phony, self-congratulatory, pretentious buffoon when I saw one. On the other hand, I did wear baggy overalls with Birkenstocks every day back then and wondered why I didn’t have a boyfriend, so clearly I didn’t know everything.
But as I read through the reviews here, I am confronted with a rush of unpleasant memories about this particular reading exp...more
Maybe it's unfair to give a poor rating to a book I read in high school. However, I like to think that I was wise beyond my years and knew a phony, self-congratulatory, pretentious buffoon when I saw one. On the other hand, I did wear baggy overalls with Birkenstocks every day back then and wondered why I didn’t have a boyfriend, so clearly I didn’t know everything.
But as I read through the reviews here, I am confronted with a rush of unpleasant memories about this particular reading experience. The narrator did indeed seem like a dick. And he may have been okay with that, because I got the impression that he’s one of those guys who doesn’t care if he comes off as a dick, because his purpose in life is to Figure It All Out, and disseminate his impressive knowledge to the masses of sheep-like mouth-breathers who wandered into Waldenbooks and picked up a mass-market paperback copy of his masterpiece. Their lives will be changed! The narrator is too busy unraveling the mysteries of the universe to bother with being likeable. It’s a sacrifice, but someone has to do it. We should be thanking him!
And this is just an aside, but part of me always wonders if there is something wrong with me, or if I’m an elitist or delusional because I’ve never read a “life-changing” book. That’s right: a book has never changed me. I read as a kind of re-affirmation of what I think I already know, somewhere deep down. Or I simply read to experience the pleasure of a good story. I’ve put a book down and thought to myself, “Boy, that was a good book. I’m in such a pleasant/ponderous/gloomy mood now. Well done!” But never have I put down a book and thought, “Before I read this, I was wandering around on this thing we call Earth with the wrong ideas about life/people/religion/mechanical engineering, but now I have been enlightened. From this point forward, my life will be different. I will be a better person.” I don’t know. Maybe I just have a bad attitude, or think that I’m smarter than everyone else. Maybe I’m no better than our friend Mr. Pirsig. If you think that may be the case, I suppose you can just ignore this review completely and read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
But! If you think I’m just like Pirsig, you would want to heed my advice about this book and avoid it, wouldn’t you? Aha! You see, you can’t like us both, otherwise the universe will implode. Or will it? Perhaps it is no more than a conundrum I have devised out of sheer malice and a masturbatory sense of self-importance. Perhaps I am full of shit. You’ll never know for sure.
You can’t escape this philosophy-ninja’s intellectual trap. Don’t even try....less
Read in July, 2008
Zen had been handed to me to read twice. First by Mr. Ehrlich, my AP Literature teacher that seemed to think I would enjoy it after I presented a project for On the Road... so one day he handed me a copy, told me I'd enjoy it thoroughly, and said be sure to return it to him when I'm done. I never read it, nor returned it, but rather- lended it to Lori, who also never read/returned it. It was handed to me again, as more of a gift, at the end of the school year by Mr. Moore, my fantabulous creativ...more
Zen had been handed to me to read twice. First by Mr. Ehrlich, my AP Literature teacher that seemed to think I would enjoy it after I presented a project for On the Road... so one day he handed me a copy, told me I'd enjoy it thoroughly, and said be sure to return it to him when I'm done. I never read it, nor returned it, but rather- lended it to Lori, who also never read/returned it. It was handed to me again, as more of a gift, at the end of the school year by Mr. Moore, my fantabulous creative writing teacher. I figured it was his kind of book, but would it be my kind, too? I guess fate forced me to read it. Now, as I mentioned, I put this book down to read the Tao of Pooh, partially because this book was vexing the hell out of me. And I hate to say it, but reading Tao made returning to its pages even more terrible, because I found within its words anti-taoism, just in how much this man drove himself crazy ranting about slightly useless philosophy for pages, and very pretentiously. So I read this book slowly. The first 300 pages took me a while, (I didn't pick it up for a good month, though), and then I finished most of it up quickly on the plane ride home from Israel, because it suddenely became tolerable and interesting. I may be a bit harsh on the book- Here's credit to Pirsig- he did have some refreshing philosophical ideas, he did craft the novel in a refreshing manner, he did make me absolutely glued to the pages at various points within the book (but mostly the last portion), he did explain complicated philosophies eloquently and logically, he was a mental case (which, as a psychology dork, I love.) Negatives- He was unfair to his son throughout most of the book, even if maybe that WAS the point (a lot that I hated about the book came together at the end, improving it..), even so, there were times where I just thought, "Are you kidding me? Does any of this matter? Are you really that brilliant and deep and unique? Are you as smart as you pretentiously tell your son you are?" The lingering question after reading Tao of Pooh AND reading (and actually enjoying) a very philosophy-heavy early part of the book, then witnessing someone have a terrible seizure in the same room as me, in the same time...was, "Is this really as important as you make it seem?" I suppose Pirsig closes the book with the slight realization that it really isn't all that important and just drives people crazy...but why did I have to sit through 540 pages of it, then? I did cry reading the Afterword, so the book has certainly touched me in ways.
...less
bookshelves:
literature
Read in May, 2001
(written 5/01)
I had heard a lot about this book, so I decided to actually read it. Now that I have, I ask people about it but no one seems to have read it. I can see why -- it's intimidating and takes a great deal of thought to understand. Introduced me to philosophy and conflict between West and East, classical and romantic, and the Church of Reason. I love how the plot, the flashback and the thesis paarallel each other, reaching a high point at the top of the mountain. I learned so mu...more
(written 5/01)
I had heard a lot about this book, so I decided to actually read it. Now that I have, I ask people about it but no one seems to have read it. I can see why -- it's intimidating and takes a great deal of thought to understand. Introduced me to philosophy and conflict between West and East, classical and romantic, and the Church of Reason. I love how the plot, the flashback and the thesis paarallel each other, reaching a high point at the top of the mountain. I learned so much from this book that relates to my life. It's hard to choose which passages to keep in my journal...
"The truth knocks on the door and you say, 'Go away, I'm looking for the truth,' and so it goes away. Puzzling." p.5
Like Huxley's reduction theory:
"From all this awareness we must select, and what we select and call consciousness is never the same as the awareness because the process of selection mutates it. We take a handful of sand from the endless landscape of awareness around us and call that handful of sand the world." p.69
"The trouble is that essays always have to sound like God talking for eternity, and that isn't the way it ever is. People should see that it's never anything other than just one person talking from one place in time and space and circumstance. It's never been anything else, ever, but you can't get that across in an essay." p.153
"Along the streets that lead away from the apartment he can never see anything through the concrete and brick and neon but he knows that buried within it are grotesque, twisted souls forever trying the manners that will convince themselves they possess Quality, learning strange poses of style and glamour vended by dream magazines and other mass media, and paid for by the vendors of substance. He thinks of them at night alone with their advertised glamorous shoes and stockings and underclothes off, staring through the sooty windows at the grotesque shells revealed beyond them, when the poses weaken and the truth creeps in, the only truth that exists here, crying to heaven, God, there is nothing here but dead neon and cement and brick." p.357
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bookshelves:
currently-reading
So I accidentally put this in a comment instead of the review, where it belongs.
After about a month I'm about 2/3 of the way through. Not a good sign, and it would usually mean the book only deserves no more than about 2 stars, but admittedly I've been pretty unsettled this month in that I have had a couple of weddings in the family, had a sick wife and kid, started a new job, and am about to move into my 8th residence in just under four weeks.
So about the book, parts of it are really i...more
So I accidentally put this in a comment instead of the review, where it belongs.
After about a month I'm about 2/3 of the way through. Not a good sign, and it would usually mean the book only deserves no more than about 2 stars, but admittedly I've been pretty unsettled this month in that I have had a couple of weddings in the family, had a sick wife and kid, started a new job, and am about to move into my 8th residence in just under four weeks.
So about the book, parts of it are really insightful, parts of it offend me because the Lord's name is taken in vain, and parts are too philosophical to hold my interest. But tonight I came across a paragraph I like, so I'll copy it here. The narrator's son, who is eleven, wants to write a letter to his mother (the narrator and his son are on a motorcycle trip across the country--that's the whole story) but after writing the date and "Dear Mom," the kid is stuck and asks his dad for help. This is the dad's response.
"'Okay,' I say. I tell him getting stuck is the commonest trouble of all. Usually, I say, your mind gets stuck when you're trying to do too many things at once. What you have to do is try not to force words to come. That just gets you more stuck. What you have to do now is separate out the things and do them one at a time. You're trying to think of what to say and what to say first at the same time and that's too hard. So separate them out. Just make a list of all the things you want to say in any old order. Then later we'll figure out the right order."
I may have to use this with my freshman composition students next fall. Earlier in the book he spends a few pages explaining how his own fresham English students ran into this problem and how he helped them through it. I thought he had some effective teaching strategies.
I'll update this comment when I finish the book, or sooner if I feel like it.
Update, June 5--really getting bogged down and losing interest. Funny, though, I'm losing interest in reading generally. It's like I've decided, "Hey, I've read plenty. It's time to start living."...less
recommends it for:
someone who likes to torture himself.
OK, maybe I'm being a little too harsh. I actually enjoyed the idea of the cross-country motorcycle ride, the details about motorcycle mechanics, and especially the portrayal of the narrator's relationship with his son. The son was the best part of the whole book. Unfortunately, there wasn't much space for sonny, because dad was too busy advertising the author's brilliant philisophical insights. Even more unfortunately, the insights weren't brilliant, and consumed hundreds of tedious pages....more
OK, maybe I'm being a little too harsh. I actually enjoyed the idea of the cross-country motorcycle ride, the details about motorcycle mechanics, and especially the portrayal of the narrator's relationship with his son. The son was the best part of the whole book. Unfortunately, there wasn't much space for sonny, because dad was too busy advertising the author's brilliant philisophical insights. Even more unfortunately, the insights weren't brilliant, and consumed hundreds of tedious pages. It occured to me to wonder whether the author was trying to make the point that the narrator was a pompous idiot; however, the intent seemed to be for the reader to be blown away by the brilliance of the narrator's philosophical insights, and hence by the brilliance of the author who conceived of the narrator and the philosophical insights. I can't believe I made it through 380 pages of this....less
recommends it for:
Those tolerant of shallow philosophy (e.g. Matrix fans)
There are three threads weaving through this book (none of which, as is pointed out, has much to do with either eastern philosophy or with motorcycle maintenance.)
The first is a straightforward narration by a man riding across the country with his young son and two friends (a married couple). This evocative travelogue is by far the most enjoyable aspect of the novel.
The second element is a sort of mystery as that man struggles with his memory; it's gradually revealed that he's on the roa...more
There are three threads weaving through this book (none of which, as is pointed out, has much to do with either eastern philosophy or with motorcycle maintenance.)
The first is a straightforward narration by a man riding across the country with his young son and two friends (a married couple). This evocative travelogue is by far the most enjoyable aspect of the novel.
The second element is a sort of mystery as that man struggles with his memory; it's gradually revealed that he's on the road both to escape his past and to attempt to remember it.
The last thread is where the book just falls apart. Through the narrator's dialogue with himself, Pirsig puts forward his ludicrous "philosophy of quality," which essentially holds that "quality," whatever that might be, is somehow the fundamental reality of the universe. If that sounds like nonsense then you understand it perfectly.
When we find out why the narrator had lost his memory in the first place, the answers don't live up to any expectations we might have been unfortunate enough to have developed....less
bookshelves:
reread
Plans are deliberately indefinite, more to travel than to arrive anywhere...We want to make good time, but for us now this is measured with emphasis on "good" rather than "time" and when you make that shift in emphasis the whole approach changes.
Sometimes it's a little better to travel than to arrive.
So we move down the empty road. I don't want to own these prairies, or photograph them, or change them, or even stop or even keep going. We are just moving down the empty...more
Plans are deliberately indefinite, more to travel than to arrive anywhere...We want to make good time, but for us now this is measured with emphasis on "good" rather than "time" and when you make that shift in emphasis the whole approach changes.
Sometimes it's a little better to travel than to arrive.
So we move down the empty road. I don't want to own these prairies, or photograph them, or change them, or even stop or even keep going. We are just moving down the empty road.
The sun is bright, the air is cool, my head is clear, there's a whole day ahead of us, we're almost to the mountains, it's a good day to be alive. It's this thinner air that does it. You always feel like this when you start getting into higher altitudes.
A finely tempered nature longs to escape form his noisy cramped surroundings into the silence of the high mountains where the eye ranges freely through the still pure air and fondly traces out the restful contours apparently built for eternity.
Mountains should be climbed with as little effort as possible and without desire. The reality of your own nature should determine the speed. If you become restless, speed up. If you become winded, slow down. You climb the mountain in equilibrium between restlessness and exhaustion.
Any effort that has self-glorification as its final end-point is bound to end in disaster.
Phaedrus wandered through this high country, aimlessly at first, following every path, every trail where someone had been before, seeing occasionally with small hindsights that he was apparently making some progress, but seeing nothing ahead of him that told him which way to go.
"Where should we go?"
"I don't know. How should I know?"
"I don't know either," I say.
"Well, why don't you!" he says. He begins to cry.
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bookshelves:
autobiography,
philosophy,
religion
Read in January, 1985
It is not right to have to list "the date I read this book" and then only be allowed to choose 1 year. I have re-read this book approximately 15 times, typically at Christmas time... when I ponder the excessive consumerism that is supposed to make us happy.
"Zen and the Art..." is one of the finest books ever written.
Does that need qualification? I suppose I like the philosophy heavy, almost lecture like quality that some areas of the book contain. I thoroughly enjo...more
It is not right to have to list "the date I read this book" and then only be allowed to choose 1 year. I have re-read this book approximately 15 times, typically at Christmas time... when I ponder the excessive consumerism that is supposed to make us happy.
"Zen and the Art..." is one of the finest books ever written.
Does that need qualification? I suppose I like the philosophy heavy, almost lecture like quality that some areas of the book contain. I thoroughly enjoy the well crafted vignettes, each of which stand as solid ground for weeks of thinking. (Church of Reason, YMCA Approach to Climbing, South American Monkey Trap, Gumption Traps, Noodling Mechanics.)
And if you can't appreciate the tri-partite winding of the plots toward a literal and metaphorical peak in the Rockies, then you're missing one of the most well crafted bits of literature going.
It took me two good reads to really understand what was going on between Phaedrus and the narrator, to understand that Phaedrus IS the narrator in a different time.
This book stands on its own as an entertaining read, but it goes further as really being a useful book to return to when you start to wonder, "What do I really care about in life, and why?" I can, without any hesitation, say that this book is one of the prime forces in helping me understand that my life is mine for the making.
"And what is quality, Phaedrus? Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?" No, we don't. What a revolutionary concept that quality is "whatever you like." What a simple definition, and so obvious. We seek and appreciate things we like. No one else can REALLY define that for us. With a focused, disciplined effort we can create things we like...i.e. Quality things, including our own lives.
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bookshelves:
fiction---philosophy
Read in May, 2008
I imagine this is what Sophie's World would have looked like if the protagonist had been a crazy middle-aged guy who likes motorcycles, rather than a young girl in the tradition of Alice in Wonderland.
I'll write a proper review someday - after I've re-read the book. My initial impression is that the dude thinks too much and needs a good slap. Or to get laid. Yes, it's a flippant reaction, and to be fair the book does have a lot of interesting insights, but overall it reminded me of th...more
I imagine this is what Sophie's World would have looked like if the protagonist had been a crazy middle-aged guy who likes motorcycles, rather than a young girl in the tradition of Alice in Wonderland.
I'll write a proper review someday - after I've re-read the book. My initial impression is that the dude thinks too much and needs a good slap. Or to get laid. Yes, it's a flippant reaction, and to be fair the book does have a lot of interesting insights, but overall it reminded me of the "Foundations of Interpretative Theory" course we had to take in grad school (ironic, seeing as how the protagonist was also at UChicago). I could have learned a lot more from it if I consistently cared enough to slog through the rhetoric. Sometimes I did; sometimes I did't.
I think part of it might have to do with the fact that I don't care about motorcycles. At all. The person that recommended it to me said my interest (or lack thereof) in motorcycles would be irrelevant, but I dunno. Yes, the motorcycle is more of a metaphor, but still, I would have been far more engrossed had the narrator used something different, like, I dunno, gardening, or Dungeons and Dragons (heh). Also, I didn't really care about any of the characters or what happened to them. It was less of an issue in this kind of text, since most of the story wasn't really about the characters but about the inner monologue of one character. Still, in order for me to like a book I have to identify with SOMEone in it (one of the reasons I disliked Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius).
Anyway, I think it's worth a read if you have any passing interest in philosophy. For me, I think I'll be re-reading it again once I'm in the right mood. ...less
bookshelves:
thosebooks
Read in September, 2007
About two weeks ago, someone borrowed me 'Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance'. When he'd suggested the read to me, I'd made my 'You know, this title sounds a bit gimmicky, and is it any good?' face, so more serious measures were taken (not his own copy, one for library use among his acquaintance).
I was reading it on the way home, in the beginning, it reminded me a bit of 'Jarhead', which I had been reading last year at some time.
Then, on page 93, the book was suddenly released in a wi...more
About two weeks ago, someone borrowed me 'Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance'. When he'd suggested the read to me, I'd made my 'You know, this title sounds a bit gimmicky, and is it any good?' face, so more serious measures were taken (not his own copy, one for library use among his acquaintance).
I was reading it on the way home, in the beginning, it reminded me a bit of 'Jarhead', which I had been reading last year at some time.
Then, on page 93, the book was suddenly released in a wild leap. For a short moment I was frozen midair. Oh, and you HAD my full attention, Robert Maynard Pirsig. Whatever you say.
As I was turning the pages (always an intimate gesture), the book in my hand felt very strange. Even though I don't care if a book is 'used', I almost never read one that does not actually belong to me. I knew I had to return it, but already started bartering with myself, figuring I could just get him a new one. This must be what it's like to sleep with somebody who's not yours to be either. Not that I knew.
So, it's a book that one should read. It is not necessarily one with which I agree in every point (especially about the philosophy of 'quality'), but it demonstrates its subject in a most unusual way, which is stunningly appropriate.
The only point at which I was inclined to shoot the (imaginary, you know, it's not like Pirsig is sitting in a room with me)author a dirty look is when he claims that John and Sylvia are no figures for plot use, since not developed in 'action' scenes. Robert M., you know they ARE the means of your rhetoric demonstration, and they ARE discarded when you don't need them any more.
But I think the demonstration itself is high. quality....less
Read in January, 2007
After years of people saying, "Oh, you're a philosophy major? Have you heard of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance? You should read it!" I finally broke down and bought a copy. I am usually wary of books that seem to hold promises of sweetness and light and spiritual awakening, in this age of The Purpose-Driven Life and Silver Ravenwolf.
...more
After years of people saying, "Oh, you're a philosophy major? Have you heard of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance? You should read it!" I finally broke down and bought a copy. I am usually wary of books that seem to hold promises of sweetness and light and spiritual awakening, in this age of The Purpose-Driven Life and Silver Ravenwolf.
My thoughts on the book, even months after reading it, are still mixed. Artistically, I do think it is a well-done piece of literature. It's well-written and compelling. But my philosophy major side is hesitant about it. I don't know much about Zen Buddhism, so I can't speak for how Pirsig treated that aspect, but the rundowns on philosophy made me anxious in the way that "Philosophy for Dummies" makes me anxious: you have to assume that the author's interpretation is one that is valid. And sometimes there was enough value judgment language that it felt like the text was "conveniently" interpreting philosopher at hand, as opposed to fairly.
It's a good book, and I recommend it, but I also recommend reading more about the philosophies Pirsig touches on, eg Kant, Hume, Aristotle, Socrates, Plato, etc. Anything that turns people on to philosophy can't be all bad, after all....less
Read in August, 2007
recommends it for:
anyone who can read a little philosophy
The basic plot is straightforward enough: a father and son take a motorcycle trip across the country. Anyone who has owned and ridden motorcycles will relate to it on that level easily enough, and with pleasure. This book will elicit all kinds of happy memories with its graphic descriptions of scenery, smells, "maintenance problems" and road trip anecdotes. But Pirsig is only using the motorcycle and the trip as metaphors. What he's really interested in providing the reader is a set of...more
The basic plot is straightforward enough: a father and son take a motorcycle trip across the country. Anyone who has owned and ridden motorcycles will relate to it on that level easily enough, and with pleasure. This book will elicit all kinds of happy memories with its graphic descriptions of scenery, smells, "maintenance problems" and road trip anecdotes. But Pirsig is only using the motorcycle and the trip as metaphors. What he's really interested in providing the reader is a set of Chautauquas ("an old-time series of popular talks intended to edify and entertain and bring culture and enlightenment")in which he expounds on philosophical ideas. The narrator of the book must also confront his own insanity brought on by hyperintellectualism, and the growing concern over his son's possible mental instability. The resolution in the story isn't trite, and leaves the reader hopeful, if not somewhat dazed with philosophy.
Pirsig describes two mindsets, classical and romantic, and attempts to bridge the gaps in each of them. He writes: "A classical understanding sees the world primarily as underlying form itself. A romantic understanding sees it primarily in terms of immediate appearance." He further shows the beauty and shortcomings of each, giving the reader both lenses for consideration and reflection. The question I began reading with was how am I limited by my paradigms? What is to be lost, gained or merely augmented by shifting, when possible, my fundamental point of view?...less
Read in July, 2008
recommended to Carolyn by:
Jim Parker
recommends it for:
Meghan Anderson
I decided to finish the book I've been reading all summer: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig.
