Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenace

[Edmond]

Robert M. Pirsig's masterpiece "Zen and The Art of Motorcylce maintenance" was part of my summer reading list, I must say that I learned a great deal from the book, what do you think of this book?

[gar]

It is great. I read it for the first time back in the seventies and have read it a couple of times since. I can't claim to have a complete understanding of it yet. Maybe it is time I read it again.

Have you, by any chance, read Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse? To me, the two books are intertwined. I have never actually tried to figure out why I feel they are. Perhaps it is because both main characters have a sudden shift of view that changes their life - but then, I guess that is a description of all good literature.

[Edmond]

i actually read "Siddhartha", but that was two years ago, I don't recall all the details, but I will go back and check, I must agree both are timeless classics.

[C. Henrique]

Hello there.
I've read both masterpieces. I read Siddhartha about two years ago, and it's one of my favorite books, and Hermann Hesse is one of my favorite authors as well. I had never heard about Pirsig, until an acquaintance of mine once mentioned "Zen and The Art of Motorcylce Maintenance", so I decided to buy and to read. Through the whole reading I kept always the impression that something wasn't so clear, and that I wasn't comprehending quite well. Some sentences, some words etc. Then I judged that I got in hands an awful translation of this book. In actually I read in Portuguese, which is my mother tongue. Hope one day to read it again, mayabe in English, and to appreciate its worthiness better. Thus, I found it just a passing time entertainment - sometimes too long - and pretty forgettable.
See you.

[Edmond]

I read it in English, I must agree with you that the idea of "Qualiy" is pretty hard to grasp at first, but think this way, think quality is like atoms, except, Atoms can only make objective things, Quality unites the objective and subjective world, it unifies all that encompasses what we call "reality".
For example, why do you see, because you see quality, why do you imagine, becasue you imagine quality, everything you see, sense, feel, imagine has certain amounts of quality, there is just matter of how much something or some subject have "quality".
In the novel, Phaedrus used the example of the essay, he gave his students different essays to read, and ask the students which one is better, the students are fully capable of telling which is better, but unable to explain it, this means that good essay has more quality, while bad essay has less quality. And everything in our reality have quality, if it doesn't, it doesn't exist. Hope this helps!

[Stanislaw]

I quite enjoyed zen and the art of motercycle maintenance, however, it was a little drawn out in parts.

my favourite philisophical books would be the Hitch hikers series, they connected with me. (not the movie, it sucked.)

[B-Mental]

I was reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance a couple of years ago when I was living near a ski resort in the same county as Boseman. I thought it was an amazing read. I especially liked the concept of a thought crystallisation, an explosion of thought. Yet to read Siddartha, but it will be one of my next pick ups.

[EMB]

I read the original book when it was first released; quite the riveting read, very fascinating and thought-provoking.

Then there was the Afterword to a later edition, which rendered everything I had read with a special poignancy:

http://www.virtualschool.edu/mon/Qua...afterword.html

Spooky....and strangely, uplifting....

ED

[ADLforApril]

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is seen as a bit esoteric by a few. That is probobaly why it was rejected by more publishing companies than any other eventual best seller ever. I can't speak to the philosophical virtues espoused in this book as I have personally never read it. I do happen to be reading Siddhartha right now and I will say it is an excellent novel. On the topic of Siddhartha, it reminds me of Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo.

Wow, this post was all over the place, sorry.

[simon]

I too, as most people have, enjoyed the book, though the ending was as inconclusive as most attempts to unite western and eastern philosophies and methods of looking at the world. I see the main problem in trying to unite the methods of reason and passion in that the west sees themselves as apart from the world and the east sees themselves as part of it. How can these modes be reconciled if we don't come to a uniform appriciated of our affect on the universe and know that we are not standersby with our heads held high in appricaition of out moral abilities-- it seems narcissistic of us.

[Natalie]

I read it and thought it a big overdone and drawn out - but overall I enjoyed it. As for Herman Hesse and Siddartha - great masterpiece among several other masterpieces he wrote!

[starrwriter]

I have always hated working on machines, busting my knuckles, etc. I just want the damn things to work without my help. The message I got from Pirsig's book was that when you work on a machine such as a motorcycle, you are really working on yourself -- at improving yourself.

Although I enjoyed the book, I still hate working on machines. It seems to me we spend more time and energy fixing so-called labor saving devices than we did with the original way of doing whatever. So I guess I didn't really get Pirsig's message after all.

Machines good when work.
Machines bad when break.
-- the world according to Og, the caveman

[Sami]

I absolutely loathed this book and had a really hard time forcing myself to finish it. Absolutely tedious! Having said that, I am pretty sure that I am missing something, since I gather that it’s generally considered to be a good work, which is why I snored my way to the end. For those of you who enjoyed it, I have a couple of questions (although I realize that this was posted quite a while ago so maybe there’s no interest in continuing the discussion).

Isn’t the book incredibly dated? All that stuff about feeling alienated in a consumerist/technological age may have been a novel insight in the ‘70s but it hardly strikes me as an original point today. I’m not suggesting at all that consumerism or technology has disappeared – far from it. I did expect though that the book might offer some refreshing insights on this question. What am I missing here? Was the ending trying to put across a message about strength and value of human relationships, by suggesting that the Father-son connection is re-established????

I guess my main peeve was with the narrator who I struck to be a totally pompous and selfish character. I was not able to empathize with him at all and couldn’t help but feel incredibly sorry for his poor family. Granted that he does seem to be working out his difficulties with one of his children, at one point making him hike up a mountain (I hate these kind of country healthy activities so this would not have endeared me to my Father had I been in the son’s shoes – I did emphasize with the son there). But there’s also his wife and, if I remember correctly, another child who are hardly featured at all, and do not really seem to enter into his consideration; e.g. he doesn’t mention missing them on the trip, perhaps because he’s far too busy telling us all about himself?

[RobinHood3000]

Eh, I personally enjoyed it, but had to rush a bit through the latter half to finish it in time for my school deadline. There's also the fact that I didn't realize to whom the name "Phaedrus" referred until halfway through the book (likewise for the realization that "Chatauqua" didn't mean the trip as a whole) that probably dampened the experience.

[Sami]

There's also the fact that I didn't realize to whom the name "Phaedrus" referred until halfway through the book (likewise for the realization that "Chatauqua" didn't mean the trip as a whole) that probably dampened the experience.

This indicates one of the reasons I think that I didn’t get along so well with this book. Although I worked out who “Phaedrus” was supposed to be I found that the whole tone of the book was pretentious and was speaking down to the reader. The narrator spoke in an “I know something you don’t know” type of voice that really got on my nerves.

By the way, were you reading this for high school or university? Was it on the syllabus for a course, or something you chose yourself?