I first read Robert Pirsig’s ZEN AND THE ART OF MOTORCYCLE MAINTENANCE in 1975. It was assigned reading in a political theory course offered by the political science department of my university. I have no recall what the professor had to say about MOTORCYCLE MAINTENANCE, but I was under no illusion. MOTORCYCLE MAINTENANCE would never have been taken seriously in the philosophy department.

The social sciences were different. It was the 1970s and standards in social science had been unmoored for decades. Among students who I knew, it was a popular strategy to include a poli-sci course in your schedule to counter-balance more demanding courses and thereby lighten what otherwise might be a challenging semester. I do not remember, but it seems likely that was my thinking too when I chose this political theory course. I guess it worked. When the course was done, I received a good grade even though I had learned very little political theory. More to the point of this book review, I had gained no understanding why MOTORCYCLE MAINTENANCE was required reading in a political theory course. I had no clue what it was that Pirsig had to say that mattered for political theory.

I re-read MOTORCYCLE last year (2018). A copy of the 25th Anniversary edition had been on my shelf for a few years. When I took it down and began reading, it was like reading it for the first time. It seemed brand new and quite odd. You probably know that MOTORCYCLE MAINTENANCE is really two books in one. I enjoyed the first book and was left completely puzzled by the second. The first is a story about a father recovering from mental illness and from the treatment he received, which included involuntary electro-shock therapy (which has since been outlawed). He takes his pre-teen son, who is himself suffering emotional issues, on a motorcycle trip from Minnesota to San Francisco. The story of their trip is a worthwhile and captivating story.

Pirsig tells us in his preface that this story is fictional, yet should be regarded as essentially true. That is, it is autobiographical fiction. Pirsig himself had suffered a breakdown in 1960, I believe, while an instructor at the University of Illinois in Chicago, and a PhD candidate at the University of Chicago. He had a wife and two young sons then. The elder boy was named Chris. Pirsig makes no effort to disguise that the fictional Chris who traveled to San Francisco on the back of his father’s motorcycle is the real-life Chris. Indeed, in the afterword of the 25th Anniversary edition, Pirsig shares the rest of real-life Chris’ story in such a way as to confirm that the fictional Chris and real-life Chris are the same person. It seems a fair assumption that the same is true of the fictional and real-life fathers.

The second book in MOTORCYCLE MAINTENANCE is a loose collection of Pirsig’s speculations on subjects of interest to philosophers. Pirsig calls his speculations a Chatauqua. They are presented to the reader as the father’s internal monologue while traveling thousands of miles on his motorcycle across the northern states of the American west with his son on his back. Candidly, Pirsig’s Chatauqua went in one ear and out the other when I read the book last year. The Chatauqua has nothing to do with Zen, seems cleverish pop philosophy and I devoted little energy to trying to follow and sort out what Pirsig has to say.

But it didn’t sit well with me that I had defaulted my responsibility as a reader. After all, MOTORCYCLE MAINTENANCE was a fabulously successful book in its day. Why was this true? My conscience would not let it be. So I decided to give Pirsig another try. Last week I had to drive my wife’s car from Michigan to south Florida. The trip takes about 24 hours of driving time. I would be alone. It was the perfect occasion for me to listen to MOTORCYCLE MAINTENANCE on the Audible app, as I drove.

Listening to a book read by another is very pleasant. Some of the pleasure comes from the relaxed effort imposed on the listener. For me, listening to MOTORCYCLE MAINTENANCE also opened up a new perspective. Instead of trying to catch and process the details of Pirsig’s Chatauqua, I was free to focus on the larger patterns of his speculations.

The over-arching pattern of his thought is to address and attempt to reconcile dichotomies. He begins by noticing that some people like and feel comfortable with technology and other people do not. He thinks that those who do not like it instinctively should be educated to become comfortable with technology. For him, this problem is not philosophical or psychological. It is a matter of education.

Later, Pirsig seems to conclude that the technology/no technology dichotomy is a subset of the classical/romantic dichotomy. Classical thinkers like to solve problems using empirical and logical reasoning. Romantic thinkers are more likely to rely on feelings, for example, does it feel right? Does it make people happy? Etc.

I will give him that. But I ask, so what? Pirsig does nothing with this insight.

Pirsig is also interested in the mind/body problem and the issues that mind/body dualism poses for epistemology. He recounts a small piece of that centuries old discussion involving David Hume and Immanuel Kant. In essence, Hume argued (and thought he had demonstrated) that the only way in which the mind receives information is through discrete sense impressions. Because there is no discrete sense impression that corresponds to abstract things like time, causation, continuity and et cetera, the mind cannot know whether these things exist. Instead, we develop the habit of acting like they do exist, even though we can never be certain of it. Kant was deeply disturbed by Hume’s skepticism. In response, Kant developed his theory of the categories of the mind which posits that our minds come from the factory equipped with pre-installed notions of time, causation, etc. While both Hume and Kant are rightly credited with making brilliant contributions to our understanding of this set of problems, neither is thought to have solved them. Not surprisingly, Pirsig does not solve them either. In fact, he never tries to. Nor does he claim to have a solution, though that might be lost on some readers.

What Pirsig does claim to have solved is the truth versus good dichotomy. His solution is original as far as I know. He asks us to imagine how philosophy might look today if Socrates and Plato had lost their battle with the sophists. That is, what would the world look like if rhetoric had ascended over the dialectic. Pirsig argues that in such a world rhetoric would reside at the top of the hierarchy of methods and the tier immediately below would be occupied by dialectic and poetry, both of which are secondary to rhetoric and serve rhetoric.

Elaborating on this, Pirsig argues that, regarding values, Quality is preeminent corresponding to rhetoric. The second tier in the hierarchy of values is comprised of the true and the good, corresponding to truth and poetry. Pirsig concludes, therefore, that the true and the good are not in tension with one another. (He argues that Socrates and Plato wrongly resolved that dichotomy and needlessly rejected the good, in favor of the true.) For Pirsig, Quality harmonizes true and good. He also concludes that Quality cannot be defined because definition is a tool of dialectic and Quality corresponds to rhetoric and comes before dialectic. He sees his refusal to define Quality as a breakthrough insight.

As I said, this seems original. It is also interesting enough that I will not dismiss it out of hand. I will say that I entertain a lot of doubt and wonder if this isn’t just confusion posing as something profound. It is also clear that there is a lot of room to argue Pirsig’s interpretation of Socrates and Plato. But I do not have the time or motivation to investigate further. Even if Pirsig has something here, I do not see a pathway for it to solve the problems that most occupy me currently.

However, dear reader, if you do have the time and motivation, some years after MOTORCYCLE MAINTENANCE, Pirsig published a book called LILA: AN INQUIRY INTO MORALS and attempted to strengthen his case for Quality. I suppose that I would start there to continue to try to sort all this out. If you do take it on, please share a review with us. Also, feel free to drop me a note explaining why a professor of political science would assign MOTORCYCLE MAINTENANCE to a bunch of undergrads in a course on political theory.

Before I dive into my review of Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (henceforth abbreviated ZMM), I must make two small confessions. Firstly, I struggled to finish reading this book. In fact, I stopped at one point around page one hundred and forty, and allowed one week to pass before I picked it up again and regained momentum to finish it. Secondly, my expectation going into reading ZMM, due to its recent popularity (or hype) was quite different than how I experienced the book. I had naively expected a more spiritual, self-help type tome as opposed to a philosophical treatise. With that out of the way I will now get on with my review of ZMM.

ZMM by Robert M. Pirsig is an intriguing, deeply philosophical exploration into the art of how to live one’s life. It’s main subject matter is the dichotomy between a classical, rational approach to life and a romantic, less rational path. The intense philosophical discourse in ZMM is woven together with a fictional, cross-country motorcycle trip that the author undertakes with his son, Chris, and a couple, who are close family friends. Their experiences on this journey from Minnesota to the West Coast of the United States provide anecdotes which punctuate Pirsig’s story and subtly illustrate many of the insights he tries to bring across. Ultimately ZMM highlights a breakthough that the author has made in linking the two seemingly diametrically opposed rational and romantic viewpoints on life together. The crux of Pirsig’s thesis lies in the definition of the concept of quality, which consumes the better part of one hundred and fifty pages in ZMM. What I enjoyed most about this book was the last fifty odd pages, in which Pirsig delves more deeply and straightforwardly into his phiolosophy. I found the build up to this point too longwinded and dreary. I felt he didn’t get to the point quickly enough to hold my attention, which is one of the reasons why I stopped reading ZMM roughly half way through. Another contributing factor for me personally struggling with reading ZMM is Pirsig’s writing style. It took me considerable time get used to his rough-around-the-edges, unrefined prose peppered with long run-on sentences. One might even argue that the quality concept that Pirsig expounds on at length in ZMM is ironically lacking in this opus to a certain extent. Nevertheless, I do believe that the message that Pirsig tries to convey comes across. Although I am unsure how accessible ZMM is to the average reader since Pirsig goes quite deep into fundamental philoshophical concepts, which I can imagine are unfamiliar to many readers. So in sum, ZMM in my view is not a book for everyone. However, I would recommend it highly if you are looking for a new way to think about living life and are open to immersing yourself in complex philosophical concepts.

قرأت في فترة بعيدة أن رواية " زن وفن صيانة الدراجة النارية" هي أحد 50 رواية قادرة على تغير حياتك للأفضل، وعلى الرغم من أنني لا أحب هذا النوع من الاطلاقات إلا أن السعي وراء التغيير من قبلي كان مغريا. بحثت عن الرواية آنذاك، فوجدتها لم تترجم بعد، تركت الأمر فترة، ثم رأيتها عن طريق الصدفة في معرض أبوظبي مترجمة وأنيقة، لكن الذي أفسد علي المفاجأة، هذا الحجم الضخم 600 ص !

ها أنا ذَا قرأت الرواية بعد جهد جهيد، والذي يبدو عليه الحال معكوساً لما يقال عن الرواية بشكل عام، لم يتغير الكثير، إلا أنني حائر ربما بسبب تبلد أصابني نتيجة أمر ما، لا أدري ! وعلى الرغم من ذلك فالرواية مقروءة بشكل جيد في أمريكا ولها حظ وافر من الشهرة هناك، فشككت في مدى فهمي لها، لكنني تماسكت قليلا عندما لم ألحظ إقبالا عليها لدى القراء العرب وقد مضى على ترجمتها عامين !

حسنا لا أستطيع القول أن الرواية كانت جيدة أو أنها كانت سيئة، ربما ليس لدي الجرأة الكافية لكي أقول أنها سيئة، لأنه في النهاية لم تعجبني. لكن تبقى مقولة "كذب الروائيين" فيها الكثير من المناورة ضد القارئ، أنظر إلى الروائيين العظام، وأفكر بأنهم عظام لأنهم يشيرون إلى الحقيقة. حيل يلتذون بها ضدنا !

بالمناسبة كان يوم وفاة الكاتب قد صادف أيام المعرض، فكان سببا آخر جعلني اشتري الكتاب كنوع من تأدية صلاة الجنازة على روحه الطاهرة.

الرواية تعد بحثاً في القيم، استنتاجا طويلا حول (لماذا نعيش؟)، رواية عن التفكير الفلسفي أو كما يصفها المؤلف (عن توحيد الشعور الروحاني والفكر التكنولوجي) كان يرا الفصل بين الروحانية والتكنولوجيا المتعمد، أحد أسباب سخطنا في هذا العصر أو على الأقل إبان نشر الرواية عام 74، إذن الرواية يمكن قراءتها من عدة مستويات، لذلك يصعب الحكم عليها بشكل واضح، لكني المتأكد منه أن الرواية غير ممتعة ومملة جداً !

ببساطة هي قصة متعلقة برجل يمضي برحلة على متن دراجة نارية مع ابنه. تعرّض هذا الرجل للجنون في الماضي، وهو الآن مختلف تماماً عن الذي كان عليه قبل أن يجد ذاته. في رحلته عبر الدراجة النارية كان يواجه ماضيه مع ابنه وأصدقاءه، ويقال بأنها سيرة ذاتية للمؤلف.

Скарана съм с Източната философия, и всякакви оракулски книги и автори, които се смятат, че я проповядат.
Не разбирам нито ред или опита на всякакви такива автори да се пробват да промиват съзнания с мисли, които могат да се изрекат съвсем свободно и без да им се лепи етикет - Изток, философия.
Разочаровах се и от "Дзен и изкуството да управляваш мотоциклет" . Скука. Интересни ми бяха пасажите, в които се говореше за устройството на самия мотоциклет, но сравненията му със философски термини и настроения, ми идваха доста изнанагорно и в повече. Нищо особено е тази книга за мене.
Очаквах пътуването да е романтика, да е секси и да е преплетено с интересни мисли, в които да се загубя.
Долових някакви опити да се остави июпокаже нагледна връзка между две поколения, но не разбрах особено с какво ...
Книгат е разказ за пътуване на двама човека, но разказан и видян само през очите на единия герой.
Другият не съществуваше. Не го открих, и не го видях. Егоцентризъм от всякъде.
...

Прекрасна книга! „Дзен и изкуството да се поддържа мотоциклет“ толкова силно ме впечатли, че ми е трудно да пиша за нея... Романът на Робърт Пърсиг е изключително силен и философски - тежко четиво е, но напълно си заслужава!

В него е описано пътешествието на баща и син с мотоциклет из Америка, но също така се съдържат много ценни мисли и идеи... Книгата определено предизвика мисленето ми... Силно препоръчвам „Дзен и изкуството да се поддържа мотоциклет“ на всеки читател, а пък ето какви пътища препоръчва авторът:



„Пътищата без крайпътни заведения и реклами са по-добри, пътища, край които дъбрави и ливади, овощни градини и поляни почти могат да се пипнат с ръка, където децата ти махат с ръка, когато преминаваш край тях, където хората надзъртат от верандите си, за да видят кой е, където при спиране за напътствия и сведения отговорът проявява склонност да бъде по-дълъг, отколкото е нужно, където хората питат откъде си и от колко време пътуваш…“

This is my favourite book of all time and one of the few that I have read more than once. The more often I read it, the more deeply I understand the philosophy behind it, and I always find a new angle to enjoy. This is the book that changed my way of thinking about the world and the insights it contains are as relevant as ever, 40 years later.

A book for morons, written by a mentally damaged man.
Possibly child abuse involved as well.



As with Ayn Rand, some people mistakenly think this is a
philosophy book. I realize many people read this book in
college -- it's a time to experiment and make mistakes --
but stick to sex, drugs and rock-n-roll ... Ayn Rand and
this kinda crap are more harmful. I was surprised to learn
some colleges even *assign* this. If your college assigns
this book (except perhaps ironically, in a class on Fraud
Literature [sic]), then you go to a shit college. It's as
simple as that.


I did learn the word "Chataqua".


I would recommend this book to:
--People who shop in the "metaphyiscs" section of bookstores.

--People who listen to new age mumbo-jumbo "infomercials" on
PBS stations at fundraising time.

--The Idle Rich of Marin County.

Pirsig nitelik üzerine 450 sayfa konuştuktan sonra kitabının burada notlandığını gördüğünde ne düşünmüştür acaba?

Okuduğum kadarıyla bu kitabı insanlar ya çok sevmiş ya da nefret etmişler. Tam da olması gerektiği gibi. Güçlü, başını kalabalığın arasından çıkaran ve kutupta duran bir fikir her zaman böyle bir tepkiyle karşılanır. Ben kendi payıma Pirsig ile aynı kamptayım ve kitabı çok sevdim. Sevmemem de mümkün değildi zaten, ikimiz de hikmeti ararken aynı kelimeye başımızı çarpmışız: ἀρετή.

Zor bir kitap olduğunu kabul ediyorum, hatta kimsenin kolay kolay sevemeyeceği tarzının olduğunu da itiraf etmek durumundayım. Ne roman olduğu söylenebilir ne de felsefi bir kitap. İçinde ikisinden de biraz var, üstelik birbirine güzel karışması için de hiçbir çaba sarf edilmemiş. Roman bölümünde Phaedrus'un kim olduğunu, felsefi tartışmalarda ise ne yaptığını anlatıyor yazar (ki bu düzen, kitabı okursanız anlayacağınız üzere, onun teorisinde önemli bir yer tutuyor). Ben bir roman yazıyor olsaydım böyle yazmazdım, Pirsig roman yazıyor olsaydı muhtemelen o da öyle yazmazdı ama bu bir otobiyografi. Hikayesi ne ise onu kaleme almış. Üstelik zor bir hayatın otobiyografisi. Bu yaşantıları kaleme almak cesaret ister.

Çok sınırlı bir kitleye hitap ettiğinin de farkındayım. Felsefe altyapınız yoksa hiçbir şey anlamayıp sıkıntıdan ölürsünüz, üniversitede felsefe okuduysanız veya çok özel bir merakınız varsa her şey size fazla aptala anlatırmış gibi anlatılmış geleceğinden yine sıkıntıdan ölürsünüz. Doğu felsefesiyle ilgilenmiyorsanız (biz bu bakımdan Pirsig'i sevmeye daha yatkınız) kitap size fazlasıyla hayalci ve kural dışı gelir. Batı felsefesi ilginizi çekmiyorsa zaten okumanıza imkan yok. Gördüğünüz gibi bu hesaba göre dünyada 3 kişi falan okuyabilir. Bestseller olması gerçekten inanılmaz bir şans (tam olarak doğru kuşağa denk gelmiş) eseri ve bugün muhtemelen yayımlanmazdı bile. Gerçi o dönemde bile 121 yayıncı tarafından reddedildiği bilgisi bizzat yazar tarafından paylaşılıyor.

Kimseye kolay kolay tavsiye edemem ama benim kitaplığımda en özel kitaplardan biri olarak yerini aldı.

P.S: İsmine aldanıp bu kitaptan Zen hakkında fazla bir şey öğrenmeyi beklemeyin, bu konuda halihazırda bir miktar bilgiye sahip olmanız gerekir, zira Zen felsefesi bu kitapta "uygulamalı" ve örtük biçimde anlatılıyor. Zen'e giriş mahiyetinde bir kitap okumak isteyenleri Alan Watts'a yönlendirelim.

I honestly have no idea what to rate this. In the beginning, I thought I loved it, and read the first 100 pages late into the night. The next 100 pages bored me, and I barely picked it up. I read the last 200 pages, ish, today because I was doing a great deal of travelling and waiting around. On one hand I found Pirsig to be what I've heard about him before: self-obsessed, a bit of an arsehole, preachy... I suppose he is these things in this. And some parts were very dull for me. There is a lot about 'Quality' and what 'Quality' is. The travel parts, with Pirsig and his son and the mountains and the coffee and the driving was amazing and then the philosophy sort of got in the way of that. Sometimes I felt they were two seperate books, his adventure with his son (would have been amazing) and then his Zen book, his enquiry into values.

Regardless of the boring bits, I also found, today, nearing the end, that it was slowly creeping up on me in this oddly profound way. I had a similar experience with Kerouac's 'On the Road'. Did I enjoy it? Well, yes, in a way. I also found it boring, a little repetitive and many other things. Somewhere in that though I felt it was doing something, whatever it was, something was getting through and making me feel something. I don't know. I wanted this book to change my life and it hasn't, sadly. I'm glad I read it. I give the 'Afterworld' five stars, too. An odd opinion to have maybe but there we go. I found it touching, heartbreaking. Only because of what is revealed.

Because it's a book about a road trip and philosophy, there are some good quotes across the 400/500 pages. So here are some, but there are many more.

'We're in such a hurry most of the time we never get much chance to talk. The result is a kind of endless day-to-day shallowness, a monotony that leaves a person wondering years later where all the time went and sorry that it's all gone.'

'Sometimes it's a little better to travel than to arrive.'

"Nonrepresentative art is one of the root experiences I'm talking about. Some people still condemn it because it doesn't make "sense". But what's really wrong is not the art but the "sense", the classical reason, which can't grasp it. People keep looking for branch extensions of reason that will cover art's more recent occurrences, but the answers aren't in the branches, they're at the roots."

'The explanation, I suppose, is that the physical distance between people has nothing to do with loneliness. It's a psychic distance, and in Montana and Idaho the physical distances are big but the psychic distances between people are small, and here it's reversed.'

This quote is personally one for me, as it's on writing.

'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 the 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 ad 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.'

There's some great landscape descriptions, about trees and birds and roads and sleeping bags but I can't write them all down. I enjoyed a lot of Pirsig's writing. This rating may change. I have no idea what I think anymore.

As soon as I finished this book, I closed it and wanted to throw it in the trash. I didn't. It was difficult to get through, but I kept pushing through it hoping that I would find some gem of truth at the end that would be worth the torture or reading this totally self-obsessed and pompous author try to "teach" us about life. I didn't get there. Maybe the author was thinking that he can write a book about what Quality is, that the reader would conflate the subject of the book with their opinion of it. It was not quality writing. There was a lot of redundancy and inconsistencies in the narrator's "theories" about life, etc. I think the book could have been a nice essay and we would have gotten the point. I am surprised that it was such a popular book. I would have enjoyed a book about the motorcycle ride or the relationship of a father and a son, but the philosophical theory in this book was just total baloney. No offense to anyone who loved this book. Maybe I just didn't get it or something.

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.

****************

another reread here in 2018, and as expected, the book did not disappoint. I'm not sure how it happens, but this book is kind of like a tune-up for the mind, keeping me going for another 15,000 miles 'til the next tune-up... Thanks Phaedrus!