Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

by Robert M. Pirsig

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

published	2006 by HarperTorch
binding	Mass Market Paperback
isbn	0060589469 (isbn13: 9780060589462)
pages	560
description	Arguably one of the most profoundly important essays ever written on the nature and significance of "quality" and definitely a necessary ano...more [close] Arguably one of the most profoundly important essays ever written on the nature and significance of "quality" and definitely a necessary anodyne to the consequences of a modern world pathologically obsessed with quantity. Although set as a story of a cross-country trip on a motorcycle by a father and son, it is more nearly a journey through 2,000 years of Western philosophy. For some people, this has been a truly life-changing book.
date added	08-31-06 edit book

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Mason

Mason rated it:

03/21/08

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

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Tatiana

Tatiana rated it:

(review of isbn 0553277472)

08/13/07

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

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Kevin

Kevin rated it:

(review of isbn 0553277472)

07/05/07

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

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Trevor

Trevor rated it:

(review of isbn 0553277472)

06/27/07

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

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Rachel

Rachel rated it:

10/29/07

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

...less

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Steve

Steve rated it:

04/12/08

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

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Folboteur

Folboteur rated it:

03/04/08

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

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Hazel

Hazel rated it:

05/16/08

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

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Lisa

Lisa rated it:

09/08/07

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

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Charlotte

Charlotte rated it:

(review of isbn 0553277472)

09/13/07

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 l 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 page...more

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Rick

Rick rated it:

08/20/07

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

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Cori

Cori rated it:

09/06/07

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

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Ian

Ian rated it:

12/10/07

bookshelves: have-read

Read in January, 2003

recommends it for: Students of Philosophy, Open-minded People

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance at first glance seems a daunting read. The reason for the length and scope of this novel is that it is actually three stories interwoven together.

The story follows a Father and his young pre-teen son as they travel cross country on a motorcycle. Intermixed in their experiences is the man's reflections of his past under the name Phaedrus and also enlightening Zen concepts with motorcycle maintenance analogies.

These two introspective thoughts to ...more

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Eileen

Eileen rated it:

02/10/08

bookshelves: esoterica

Read in January, 1998

I've read this book about ten times perhaps. It's been many years since the last reading, but it was such a profound, life-changing book for me in my youth that I can't forget the concepts even if I don't necessarily remember all the details. I still carry with me Pirsig's analogy of life as a house of cards. We build and build a life surrounded with the distractions of modern, American life, obsessed with getting more, having more, being more. Yet without a life of the soul or a life which conn...more

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Tortla

Tortla rated it:

(review of isbn 0553277472)

07/06/07

bookshelves: religiony

Read in July, 2007

recommends it for: pretentious people

This book is very lay-Buddhisty. And also there was this one part near the very beginning which very eloquently described why I think science is lame. And I liked the part that was all Einstein-y and also the parts where it described boring writing. Those parts were awesome. I found some of the plot-like/philosophical stuff to be rather predictable and not as awe-inspiring as intended, but it's worded rather well anyway. Some of the philisophical-type stuff was lame, too. 'Tis a relatively good ...more

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Adam

Adam rated it:

02/15/08

Read in April, 1998

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

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Joshua

Joshua rated it:

03/27/08

Framing his concepts within a travel narrative and using motorcycle maintenance as analogy, Pirsig creates a theory that unifies classical and romantic appreciations of quality. Recovering from severe mental illness, Pirsig embarks upon a cross-country motorcycle trip with his son to reconstruct the philosophy of his former self. His examination begins with analyzing the dualistic pattern of thought inherent in western philosophy. According to Pirsig, classical thought is largely focused on ...more

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Joseph

Joseph rated it:

04/25/08

Read in April, 2008

Really interesting. The only thing that wasn't so great, and it could have been because I missed something, but I didn't feel satisfied with the ending. Although, the more I think about it, I don't think it's any fault of Pirsig's. That's just what happened. There wasn't anything more to say because there wasn't anything more. That was how it ended. I think what I was really not satisfied with was the ending of the reality of the motorcycle journey. This impression was projected to the rest of t...more

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Alyssa

Alyssa rated it:

(review of isbn 0553277472)

03/15/08

bookshelves: literature, modernclassics, philosophy

Has a copy to sell/swap — Read in November, 2007

recommended to Alyssa by: Professor Tiernan
recommends it for: mechanics, seekers and patient peeps

This is a deeply affecting story of a man and his son on a life changing journey across America on a motorcycle together. The father is clinically insane (or was..), and the son has emotional issues that are bubbling out with his approach towards adolescence. This is a book about "Quality", harking from ancient Greek philosophy (Phaedrus).

It was vociferously recommended to me back in '93 by a college English Professor.The first five times I tried to read Zen and the Art of Moto...more

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anna

anna rated it:

05/07/07

recommends it for: everyone

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.

the second time i...more

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book data (includes all editions)

avg rating (all editions): 3.68 (6212 ratings)