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Dec 17, 2009

Richard rated it:

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 More...

19 comments like (47 people liked it)

Jun 03, 2011

Katherine rated it:

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 litera More...

7 comments like (25 people liked it)

Aug 09, 2010

Christy rated it:

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 by a rush of unpleasant memories about this particular reading e More...

4 comments like (29 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Trevor rated it:

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.

Admi More...

2 comments like (19 people liked it)

Aug 10, 2008

Charlotte rated it:

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...

1 comment like (26 people liked it)

Mar 21, 2008

Mason rated it:

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 institu More...

1 comment like (17 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Tatiana rated it:

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 t More...

2 comments like (18 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Kevin rated it:

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 meta More...

0 comments like (9 people liked it)

Feb 06, 2012

Jason rated it:

The author went insane and nearly took me with him! After years of putting this one off, I finally recently read it and was floored by how it was almost nothing like what I expected: motorcycle talk and philosophy. I did not expect the contemplations of a depressing, crazy person. But that's no reason to hate on a book, and I don't hate "Zen...", I'm just not in love with it. I was close to giving it only 3 stars mainly for its inability to move. I mean, for a roadtrip book it certainl More...

3 comments like (4 people liked it)

Feb 24, 2011

Tom rated it:

I have read a lot of scathing reviews of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance on goodreads, and I only know one person (my Dad) other than myself who has actually finished it. I know 5 people who couldn't finish it, calling it 'pretentious,' 'a load of rubbish' or just 'too hard.' Now, I enjoyed this book and rather than explain why directly, I think I would like to explain it through taking apart all of those negative reviews which I feel weren't thought through particularly well.

More...

0 comments like (14 people liked it)

Jan 19, 2009

Aaron rated it:

This book is one of those books that I want to rate way higher than 3, but I don't think I'd quite give it a 4. I always have this problem with Netflix too! By reading the random reviews posted about this book, many of them are extremely negative, focusing on the "arrogance" of the narrator or his "absurd" search for quality.

I think if you go into this 400 page novel with the expectation that it will be a light read about a motorcycle trip out West with a couple More...

5 comments like (11 people liked it)

Jul 14, 2008

Carolyn rated it:

I decided to finish the book I've been reading all summer: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig. I've had a lot of complaints about this book, as I read it. It was a rather grueling endeavor, certainly not most people's idea of summer reading. Having just finished the book, however, I can say that it was well worth the experience. This book turns on its head our idea of what it means to be sane. The book can be described as generally a thesis on substance, form, and More...

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Nov 29, 2008

Rebecca rated it:

Okay, I confess I haven't finished it yet. But I'm finding it so irksome I don't know if I'll be able to get all the way through it. Here's what I wrote on my bookmark 50 pages in:
"the author's logic is self-contained, entirely self-referential and so his argument is self-sustaining! He can set up armies of logical strawmen and have them elaborately duke it out in massive rhetorical battles taking place entirely without any grounding in reality.
He has the manic ADDH intelligenc More...

5 comments like (12 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

C. Benjamin rated it:

I confess that, when I first found this book on the shelf of a small and now-defunct used bookstore, my motivation was it's being one of those books that "everyone," or at least numerous people, read and recommended with that certain degree of enthusiasm and gravitas that spoke deeply to my peer-pressure-obeying 21-year-old self. I also confess that it took about three passes through it to connect it to my life in any meaningful way, due not to the author but to said life and its dear More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Zora rated it:

I learned from this book that you can sell a billion copies of a book that no one should ever waste three minutes reading. This is just another neo-philosophy book disguised as a novel. I'm almost convinced that the only reason people buy this book is so that their pseudo-intellectual (read: pompous scumbag) friends will accept them into the hippie circle. Although I know about twenty people who claim to have read this book, I have yet to meet a single person who actually knows what it's about. More...

7 comments like (14 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Wendy rated it:

According to family lore, my brother gave this book to my father when he - my brother - was in college. When my father read it, it apparently made a very deep impression on him, 'cuz he turned around and bought 4 copies and gave one to each of his children.

I refused to read it for years because...well...because my father gave it to me. Sometime after college though, I picked it up and read it for the first time and, for the next 5 years, I read it once a year every June. Clearly, it More...

3 comments like (4 people liked it)

Dec 03, 2007

Erich rated it:

Readers of Thoreau, Emerson, and Dillard will be entranced with this book. In the best traditions of transcendentalism, Zen is about the journey, and the answers that we find when asking the difficult questions, about fairness, and quality.

You, as the reader, are taken along on a journey. Pirsig writes with his hands and head, and analyzes a concept in much the same way he would diagnose a problem with his motorcycle. You begin with knowledge, and you form it into a tool with which More...

0 comments like (7 people liked it)

Dec 14, 2008

Margaret rated it:

He starts pretty full of himself: he clearly believes that he has deep wisdom to impart. But when he starts telling the story, he loses the didactic tone, and captures my interest. I'd love to read the story as written by his son, captive audience to Pirsig's strange 1968 cross-country odyssey. Tragically, Chris was murdered in 1979.

And I GET the reference to Daedalus. It gets to be a bit narcissistic after a while.

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Dec 14, 2011

William rated it:

The story is about a man riding across the country on an eighteen day long journey together with his young son and his two married friends on their motorcycles. During this travelogue a second element is described. It is gradually revealed that he’s on the road both to escape his past and attempting to remember it. The narrator tells us the story of his past before being admitted to a mental institution as a result of going crazy in his pursuit of what he calls “quality”. This essentially holds More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 15, 2010

Henry rated it:

It took me almost seven years to finally finish this book, admittedly i was young, but i took it all the way round the world for almost a year and a half and still didn't finish it. I finally finished it in a three day orgy on a beach in Moorea and i wish i could say it changed my life but it didn't.

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Oct 18, 2011

Jim rated it:

I have read this book at least 8 times over the years. An excellent metaphysical discussion blended with a father-son road trip. Inspired me to look into early Greek philosophy and explore my beliefs about rationality and the scientific method.

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jan 21, 2009

Susan rated it:

This is one of those books you hear about your entire life that actually lives up to the hype. I was very impressed.

It helped to sleep next to someone who is far better studied in philosophy than I am. I took an introductory course in undergrad many moons ago and knew all the names Pirsig was contrasting, but I really only retained thumbnail summaries of their actual philosophies. Terran was very patient in taking breaks from Anne of Green Gables to dissect the implications of sub More...

8 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jan 12, 2011

Clinton rated it:

I feel like Robert M. Pirsig has wronged me personally.

1 comment like (12 people liked it)

Jul 31, 2011

Bre rated it:

[ By the way...the best bit of advice from this novel had to do with the benefits of getting STUCK!...Love it.]

Any title which manages to mix spirituality, art, and an activity as seemingly mundane, frustrating, or practical as motorcycle maintenance deserves to be read.

This book was a refreshing surprise!

The protagonist is on an inner and outer journey and exploration, simultaneously. The outer journey has the complexities of travel partners, weather, physica More...

9 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 14, 2010

Mary Etta rated it:

Polly's copy. In following my thoughts on the MT artist, Gennie DeWeese, I was reminded of she and her husband's connection with the book and author. I've intended to read the book, but never did. The route they drove is so familiar to me, I'm motivated once again. By the way the poster from Yellowstone Art Museum in my basement of the old chair at an open door to spring snow is Gennie's. She is still painting at 89 if the online info is correct.
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Deleted my former current re More...

6 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jun 07, 2010

Natasha rated it:

I just re-read this book and HAD to annotate it because it sent my head swimming. I'd studied quite a lot of philosophy since I read it a year and a half ago and so the philosophies didn't go over my head this time.

Robert Pirsig’s genius in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is to insert classical forms of thought into the backdrop of a cross-country motorcycle trip. He piques our interest by waxing philosophical in an effort to get to the root of the ghost story haunting hi More...

2 comments like (3 people liked it)

Oct 27, 2008

Wheels rated it:

Hard to know where to begin. This is the type of book I know I'll reread every few years, alongside Dune and Fear and Loathing (strange company). I've kept it in my bag just to go back over highlighted sections and make sure it remains useful.

Pirsig essentially tries to break down the ways people make value judgments and how they reason. At the center of this is how we view and react to aspects of technology. He splits it up into classic (function) and romantic (form) all while n More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Feb 15, 2008

Adam rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Sep 25, 2010

Kim rated it:

I have read this book completely, cover-to-cover, on two occasions. In addition, I have read portions of it countless times. It is for me almost a bible of my own beliefs and philosophies. In Zen, Pirsig divides human thought into classic and romantic forms. This dichotomy is roughly equivalent to what we might also call logical and emotional. He states (p 73-74):

"A classical understanding sees the world primarily as underlying form itself. A romantic understanding sees it More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

May 07, 2007

anna rated it:

i read Zen for the first time after my senior year of high school. then again after my sophomore year of college. and most recently, over winter break after coming back from studying abroad.

in high school i was a moron. i didn't know enough for the book to mean a whole lot to me, but i did enjoy some parts of it. generally, a philosophy background of even a high school level is useful for understanding some of Pirsig's lengthy discussions on dudes like Hume and Hegel.

t More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)