Well I nearly got to page 100 and that’s probably because I paid full price for this life stealer. I may as well put my head in the oven at approximately 104 degrees whilst wearing some goggles. Then moving on up the road to find the most boring neighbours called John and Sylvia and just nod to each other. Perhaps later get back home to my garage and throw 3 jigsaw puzzles on the floor and try to put them back in the same box. Whilst retiring to my sleeping bag I can blame it all on Greek philosophy and wonder whether it’s been a Classic or Romantic day.

And Chris “shut the fuck up”, no more questions I’ve got an exciting life to live tomorrow and I don’t wish to think about ghosts.

Classic? more like Grand Theft Auto!!

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 to attack a problem. The chapters alternate between storyline and chautauqua, or philosophical probing. It strikes a good balance between plot and deep thought, and Pirsig is able to draw the two disparate halves together quite well.

Quality is a powerful word, and you will understand much more of it when you finish this book. It's not for everybody.

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 certainly seems to languish in the doldrums far too often. I gave it the extra star because I have a soft spot for philosophy in the form of rational evaluations and minute dissections of the mind, which this has in spades. The writing itself is good. In fact at times I thought I was reading very well-written fictional characters. The author's son's whiney desperation irritated, but for the right reasons, because it felt so real. My recommendation is to read this if you like philosophical contemplations, but don't read it if you're only interested in the motorcycle aspect.

It's a gruelling story of genius and madness, and a poignant fabrication that allowed him to continue with his life safely, while feeling complete.

I get that some people are put on a path for different reasons, and I'm very happy for all of the people who have found enlightenment or comfort with this book or any other. I mean that from the bottom of my heart.

And that's the only reason I'm giving this 2 stars; it's strictly for all the good it has done for so many people.

I tried, ok? But I just can't with this hullabaloo about how gravity doesn't exist. Don't feed me garbage and tell me it's steak. I simply cannot suspend logic to buy into that idea.

"What’s new?" is an interesting and broadening eternal question, but one which, if pursued exclusively, results only in an endless parade of trivia and fashion, the silt of tomorrow. I would like, instead, to be concerned with the question, "What is best?," a question which cuts deeply rather than broadly, a question whose answers tend to move the silt downstream.

I don't give a damn about motorcycles, but I do care about learning how to live. "If only I could analyze all the angles and really master my life!" part of me cries. "But it's got to be lived, in the end," another part replies. You can't master it before living it.

Tension. What I want and what I have are not the same. Where to find a happy balance? How to do this thing we call Life right?

"We're living in topsy-turvy times and I think that what causes the topsy-turvy feeling is inadequacy of old forms of thought to deal with new experiences."


The idea that living strictly rationally, according solely to the dictates of Reason, leads to a dead-end is appealing and Prisig's system of thought, which he calls the Metaphysics of Quality and which doubles as both a conception of reality and a values system, offers an antidote to consumer burnout and the inadequacies of a developed world. You need Reason and rational thinking to operate, but you don't want to lose sight of the Romantic frame of mind. He presents his arguments so methodically (and so rationally) that it becomes a lulling sort of mantra, almost. The point is not to examine motorcycling, of course. That's only a convenient means of illustration. The point is to examine character, and how it's expressed through our actions or manifested in our lives. Substitute motorcycles for whatever subculture you like and the lessons might be the same. These ideas are old, but Pirsig shares them here with a commanding earnestness that makes them seem alive again. He is quiet, thoughtful, meditative. But also dry, sometimes starkly spartan. And the book grows meandering, loses focus for long stretches at a time. Perhaps this is intended to provide illustration through example, but it's not something I appreciated.

3.5 stars. Maybe a 5 for a certain crowd, at a certain time of life. It gave me some food for thought, some interesting considerations to mull over, but in the end I don't think I can call it life-changing.

This novel digs into and looks at the age-old questions; who am I? Where am I going? What will it be like when I get there, just to name a few. And they're all about the one thing we most cherish - life. If you're expecting, or rather hoping to find answers to those questions, maybe your questions, then this may not be the book for you. But then again, it just might be. And that's my answer to one of your questions.

This was a pleasant surprise. I read this solely because it is one of the few popular philosophy books. I had low expectations, for the title and summary do not address the totality of what this book encompasses. The author managed to go beyond a life philosophy intersecting between metaphysics and ethics by also contending with ideas of aesthetics, logic, scientific metaphysics, and engineering and science in general.

The greatest brilliance, however, is in how the applications of philosophy are demonstrated to be relevant and useful in normal life. For reference, this book is written in the form of a log during a motorcycle road trip with his son. Herein he speaks of events and his thoughts of that present or of his past. From simple yet fundamental notions, the actions—and perhaps even capabilities—of Pirsig are a stark contrast from those of others around him. In terms of experiencing life, reacting to situations, making decisions and choices, or approaching and solving problems, Pirsig appears to fare better because of his philosophies.

Another interesting aspect is the utility of the analogy of a motorcycle to address quandaries. I was reminded of other famous analogies such as living in a "mechanical universe", "billard balls" of causes and effects, and the various ways "water" is used particularly in Taoism. Pirsig uses the motorcycle as an analogy from its actual use in exploring the world and experiencing life, more broadly as a technology and its influence on society, as a work of science and engineering with systems of causes and effects that are created and altered, then back again to ethics and experiencing life in the aspect of maintaining a motorcycle. The point is, unlike other analogies which are abstract or utilized in limited ways, the analogies to a motorcycle were pragmatic and clear.

On a side note, having driven a motorcycle for years and having gone on road trips in the midwest, I sympathized with his experiences, observations, and feelings about traveling. In a way, this is an interesting outlook of what it is to be a modern wanderer and what motorcycle life is.

I would recommend this book in the following order: 1. anyone wanting to see how philosophy can be applied and influential in normal life (however, most certainly not representative of all that is and can be done with philosophy) 2. anyone who has experience with or is interested in traveling or motorcycles 3. scientists and engineers. (Note how I do not recommend this to artists in particular, despite the book discussing quality)

I leave with my favorite quote from the book:

"But a person who does machining or foundry work or forge work or welding sees 'steel' as having no shape at all. Steel can be any shape you want if you are skilled enough, and any shape but the one you want if you are not. Shapes, like this tappet, are what you arrive at, what you give to the steel. Steel has no more shape than this old pile of dirt on the engine here. These shapes are all out of someone's mind. That's important to see. The steel? Hell, even the steel is out of someone's mind. There's no steel in nature. Anyone from the Bronze Age could have told you that. All nature has is a potential for steel."

Now, approach all of reality and life akin to this.

Edit 11/24/2021:
The favorite quote I shared is not necessarily a unique concept though. In philosophy the term is called "potentiality", and it has a long history of very similar examples being given for such

Sometimes it seems as though a book finds you. And, sometimes you ignore that book and then it finds you again ... and again .... and, eventually, you give in. I feel as though this book found me dozens of times, and I regret that I finally gave in. It may not have had all the answers in the universe and I didn’t expect it to. I did enjoy the ride (their actual trip enough was enjoyable and wasn't described enough) and even fell for some of the far-out explanations, but not enough of them. I wish I could say I understood the hype of this book; I don’t.

Απλές καθημερινές σκέψεις αλλά και βαθιά φιλοσοφική αναζήτηση.Ο πρωταγωνιστής αναζητά το νόημα της ύπαρξης,με όλη την πολυπλοκότητά της,κάνοντας ένα ταξίδι με μηχανές με τον γιο του και ένα φιλικό ζευγάρι. Με απλή και ρέουσα γραφή, ο συγγραφέας αφήνει τον αναγνώστη να ταυτιστεί με τους ήρωες,να διαλέξει πλευρά,να απαντήσει για τον εαυτό του στα ερωτήματα που προκύπτουν
δίνοντας,ταυτόχρονα, στο τέλος μια ανατροπή/εξήγηση,που βάζει τα πάντα στη θέση τους.
4/5 γιατί οι μηχανολογικοί όροι είναι τόσοι πολλοί, που αν δεν ήμουν παντρεμένη με μηχανικό και δεν είχα κάνει ταξίδια με μηχανή έτσι ώστε να κατανοώ τι λέει, ο εγκέφαλός μου θα είχε κάψει λάδια και θα είχε χτυπήσει πειράκια!

Pirsig was this guy at the U of Chicago: http://www.theonion.com/articles/guy-...

There is a place where genres for books don't matter - my bookshelves and yours too probably. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance probably took so long to get published because the publishers were all idiots and wanted it to be fiction or fact or philosophy or drama or child raising or mental health or personal bio or some other neat category. But this book is all of those! It is also a journey where as you read you move with the narrator and his heart break -- he lost his mind! -- and now he is trying to find it. With his young son sitting behind him on a motorcycle... and then truth becomes sadder than any fiction, because Pirsig's son was murdered a few years after the book was published. That would make you lose your mind. And want to write about it. Or maybe get back on the motorcycle and head west again, but this time, never stop. This is an amazing book.