Well, that's me done. I'm officially giving up. I feel like I've been running a shitty marathon through treacle for weeks. I even tried limiting my reading to my breaks in work to split it up but no, just no. Oh my god, where to begin. A book about Zen written by the most pretentious, self obsessed, obnoxious, egocentric man this side of Trump! Not only does he drag his poor traumatised son across the country, all the while indulging in introverted nonsensical ruminations; he comes across as an insufferable bore about all things "motorbikey" to his poor well meaning friends who realise they can only spend a limited amount of time in this a-hole's company before sensibly fooking off to pastures new. Granted, he's clearly suffered some sort of mental illness, but frankly I don't care. Pirsig or Phaedrus or plain old boring twadge just doesn't provoke any feelings of empathy from me at all. The book bangs on about Quality, Quality, Quality. You know what is NOT Quality? This book, written by a total gobshite. Waste of some perfectly happy trees. Psh.

Rest in peace, Mr Pirsig. And thank you for your book. Your ruminations on quality were among the most significant influences on my thinking.

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 narrating a cross country motorcycle trip.

He seems to discuss Buddhism peripherally for most of the book. It's the way a hyperanalytical person might approach it which was pretty fascinating. I've heard this book called pretentious but the methodology is so thorough and far-reaching that I can't deny the results. He hits philosophical topics from modern thinkers all the way to ancient Greece, as clearly connected as one could hope.

I'm not sure how to verbalize much else about this. Maybe some other time.

Now to check out the sequel.

Read young and never looked back.

At this point the only thing I remember, even vaguely, is the discussion on 'quality.' Which led me to reading the Plato myself.

While this book is not philosophy, it is philosophical. The detractors out there can think of it as sloppy new-age mysticism, a poorly constructed novel, a deficient stab at serious thought. That's ok. (But if you do, I urge you to read the serious stuff and see how much of it ends up reminding you of "Phaedrus'" academic fate.)

I am, perhaps, over-generous with my stars on account of nostalgia. Yet, I think the lesson that the author-narrator learns is an important one: tempering your own arrogance does not mean the end of truth seeking.

There are not many times when you just fall short of loving a book and still want other people to read it, primarily because they might experience what you are unable to. Unfortunately, it failed to move me; yet it's a work belonging to that prestigious body that questions some of our fundamental assumptions regarding life and may transform our Weltanschauung, if not transpose it completely.

There are scattered gems in it and they are too many to count but on the whole, it just falls short of engaging as fictional or road-trip philosophy. I wonder whether Pirsig ever thought of portraying it as a strictly non-fictional work on the lines of popular philosophy.

Update: May 2022
So I picked it up after about 10 years, and almost impulsively reread various parts. Here is what happened: I immediately got what I failed to get the first time. The problem with first-person voice is that the author is enclosed in the head of the narrator, and can't get an external perspective. What I failed to understand in my first reading was that the reader is also there in the same mental prison. It's amazing how we grow old and mature as perspective readers. I have now changed the rating by adding one more star.

Today I was reading Orhan Pamuk's "By the Book" interview in the NYT and was delighted by his recommendation for Obama.

To him or to any American president, I would like to recommend a book that I sometimes give as a gift to friends, hoping they read it and ask me, “Why this book, Orhan?” “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values” is a great American book based on the vastness of America and the individual search for values and meaning in life. This highly romantic book is not a novel, but does something every serious novel should do, and does it better than many great novels: making philosophy out of the little details of daily life.

Browsing Goodreads tonight I was surprised I'd never added my 2¢ in praise of Pirsig. (Actually I had, but only by way of reviewing Mark Richardson's Zen and Now.)

No doubt my 5 star rating reflects the nostalgic glow of reading Pirsig's book when it first appeared.* I was a dream- and philosophy-haunted college student living in Berkeley with a direct view of the Golden Gate Bridge, where Pirsig's epic journey concludes. Pirsig's book was also my pathway drug to FSC Northrop's nonpareil Meeting of East and West, published in response to the colossal carnage of World War II. In ZMM, Pirsig's alter-ego Phaedrus describes this book as "a text on Oriental philosophy and it’s the most difficult book he’s ever read." Northrop is indeed demanding but not exceptionally difficult. Anyone willing to invest the hours required to read it will be rewarded by an intoxicating, integrated vision of global culture. Probably Northrop's analysis would be faulted on many points by contemporary theorists, but in 1946 his book was authentically visionary. Pirsig's novel translates this vision into the classic American idiom of the road trip, the quest to find oneself – and is itself perhaps the most marvelous instance of that myth.
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* There are plenty of 1 and 2 star reviews here. Obviously the magic doesn't work for everyone.

I’ve heard about this book for years, but never found the prospect of reading it appealing. The hardcover from William Morrow and Company sat on my shelves for years, collecting dust and staving off inferiority complexes against its oft-picked neighbors. What do I know or care of motorcycles? Why do I need to read another book about a practice (Zen) that prides itself on being ineffable? A few Zen koans and some of D. T. Suzuki’s treatises and that’s enough for me to get the gist. Anyway, the title, the unremarkable blackboard binding, the lack of public representation (today), and, well, my own circumscribed thinking kept the book from my mind. Until the recent news of Pirsig’s death.

Read full review here: http://chrisvia.wordpress.com/2017/09...

The reason I'm writing here is because this was one of the most irritating books I've ever read. It's self-indulgent, narcistic and over-rated. Hope it's not your favorite.

”To reject that part of the Buddha that attends to the analysis of motorcycles is to miss the Buddha entirely.”

This is a busy, complicated book. It’s a fictionalized memoir, a travel book, an examination of psychological breakdown, a tale of father/son conflict, a book of philosophy, and a ghost story. There’s even some motorcycle maintenance in it. Pirsig wrote well, and he seamlessly weaved together all of these elements to illustrate his overarching theme, his own metaphysics of quality.

”Modern man has his ghosts and spirits too, you know — the laws of physic and of logic, the number system, the principle of algebraic substitution — these are ghosts. We just believe in them so thoroughly they seem real.”

Some have written this book off as pop philosophy. This is true in a literal sense, as it is both a book of philosophy and a best selling book that for a time became a cultural touchstone. But it is untrue in the sense that “pop” is viewed as light or unserious. Pirsig wrestled with deep philosophical questions in this book, questions he had become so committed to that they helped to drive him to the psychological crack-up that he writes of. This isn’t light fare, and you shouldn’t expect it to be a breezy read. You don’t have to be deeply versed in philosophy to appreciate it, but you need to at least be deeply interested in it, and having at least a passing knowledge of the subject helps.

”Laws of Nature are human inventions, like ghosts. Laws of Logic, of Mathematics, are also human inventions, like ghosts. The whole blessed thing is a human invention, including the idea that it isn’t a human invention…It’s all a ghost, and in antiquity was so recognized as a ghost.”

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance has acquired some heavy baggage over the years. Perhaps it is the “Zen” in the title, leading to an idea that this is primarily some sort of spiritual book. (It is not.) Perhaps it’s all the old hippies who read it, didn’t understand it, and babble on about how it is a must read, life changing book. (I suppose that in a sense it could be, but to call it that is to misunderstand it.) Pirsig was not a guru passing down wisdom from the mountain top. He was a thinker, a doubter, a systematic inquirer, and a man who had failed and been broken by the society he had questioned. He wrote:

”What I am is a heretic who’s recanted, and thereby, in everyone’s eyes saved his soul. Everyone’s eyes but one, who knows deep down inside that all he has saved is his skin.”

This book won’t give you Truth. It won’t give you answers. But it may encourage asking questions. And if you, like me, enjoy philosophical noodling about, it will entertain you as well.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert M. Pirsig
تاریخ نخستین خوانش: سوم ماه نوامبر سال 1990 میلادی
عنوان: ذن و فن نگاهداشت موتورسیکلت؛ عنوان روی جلد: ذن و فن نگاهداشت موتوسیکلت؛ نویسنده: رابرت پیرسیک؛ مترجم: اسدالله طاهری؛ تهران، شباویز، 1366؛ در 530 ص؛ شابک: 9645511542؛ موضوع: ذن - قرن 20 م
خاطرات سفر هفده روزه ی نویسنده از مینه سوتا به کالیفرنیا با موتورسیکلت است؛ پیرسیگ در خلال سفرنامه، دیدگاه های فلسفی خویش را شرح می‌دهد و به توضیح بُعد «کیفیت» می‌پردازد. عنوان کتاب نوعی بازی با عنوان مقاله ای ست با عنوان « ذن و فن کمانگیری » که نویسنده‌ ای آلمانی به نام «اویگن هریگن» پس از مطالعه ی فلسفه و فرهنگ بودائی ژاپنی، در سال1936 میلادی چاپ کرده بود. پیرسیگ در ابتدای کتاب خویش اظهار می‌دارد که: کتابش برخلاف عنوانش، حاوی اطلاعات دقیقی در مورد فرهنگ ذن بودایی یا موتورسیلکت ها نیست. ا. شربیانی

Il Fedro che fummo in quegli anni

Niente di più datato. Non riesce ad innalzarsi sulla banalizzazione della ricerca della libertà di quegli anni anche se giura e spergiura di non ispirarsi a quel tempo.
L’ho capito subito, prima che Persing si decidesse a sdoganare Fedro come suo doppio folle annientato dall'elettroshock, ma non troppo ( l'ammorbamento delle sue elucubrazioni tiene banco fino al momento in cui la parte fortunatamente banale della sua personalità viene colta dal terrore di stare precipitando il figlio nel baratro della follia).

L’ho capito subito che né Persing né Fedro fossero Camus:
… tutta la scienza di questa terra non potrà darmi nulla che possa rendermi certo che questo mondo mi appartiene. Voi me lo descrivete e mi insegnate a classificarlo… Al termine utile, mi fate sapere che questo universo incantevole e variopinto si riduce all’atomo e che l’atomo, a sua volta, si riduce all’elettrone… e mi spiegate questo mondo con un’immagine… ho appena il tempo di sdegnarmene, che voi già cambiate teoria. Così questa scienza, che doveva tutto farmi conoscere, finisce nell’ipotesi, questa lucidità sprofonda nella metafora, questa incertezza si risolve in un ‘ opera d’arte… (A. Camus Il mito di Sisifo, Ed. Bompiani, 2017, pag. 20).

Ridurre tutto l’assurdo della vita nella manutenzione della motocicletta (la Qualità dell’artigiano) e chiudere con: - Io continuo a vivere, più che altro per la forza dell’abitudine” (alla morte del figlio Chris) mi intristisce per il tempo perso ora mentre avrei dovuto farlo allora, nei primi anni ottanta, avendone abbastanza davanti.

Inutile.

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 spirit, as I'll label them. Pirsig called these ideas classical, romantic, and Quality. It reads like a thesis, interspersed between bits of an intriguing and true tale of the author's life.

I would like to include here some of the passages that won my attention, but as I look back at the book I realize that there is no way to relate the context. You must read the book and be touched by its perspective. I cannot recreate what is a tapestry by pulling a few threads and claiming they are the best.

Perhaps, I will try later when I have some distance on what I've seen. I never want to read it again, because it was just too painstaking and complicated, and I have a finite amount of time to read (as we all do). Therefore, I hope to flip through the book and write down some of the quotes that struck me... just not today.