Rating: 
Summary: Quality
Review: As Prisig himself says, "the real cycle you're working on is a cycle called 'yourself'.", "Astronomers would be telling mankind that if it looked long enough through a telescope powerful enough, what it would see was the back of it's own head." I feel like I'm back in school and have just finished a very intensive philosophy class, but theres no grade, no pass or fail, and the University is in your mind. If I've learned anything from this book it is that "Quility" is "Reality". "'Quality' is the parent, the source of all subjects and objects. "Any intellectually conceived object is always in the past and therefore unreal. Reality is always the moment of vision before the intellectualization takes place. There is no other reality." "Religion isn't invented by man. Men are invented by religion. Men invent responses to Quality, and amoung these responses is an understanding of what they themselves are." This is one of the best books I've ever read. It forced me to think and look at the world in a new perspective.
Rating:
Summary: Simply a great book!
Review: I am reading ZAMM for the third time and am finding it even more marvelous this time than the first two times (when I loved it). This book becomes more significant with the passage of time. Not only are his ideas illuminating and always fresh, but his take on modern society -- through his own experience with what is so loosely termed insanity -- is absolutely on target. His wonderful descriptions of his bouts with academia are both funny and unsettling, especially the excruciatingly entertaining episode with the Great Books seminar in Chicago. Pirsig is simply a beacon of independence and a roamer of the high spaces of the intellect invaluable to set off intellectual sparks and new approaches in anyone drawn to ideas. I think he would be worth reading if only for his elucidation of Kant's ideas (I have never been able to make head or tails out of Kant). A wonderful, wonderful book with something for everyone who thinks.
Rating:
Summary: gosh...
Review: I've had a copy of this book for 10 years, and in that time I've read it 4 times. Each time I reread it, I find new things which impress. Just leaving aside the central Metaphysics-of-Quality for a moment, its actually a well written story. The author illustrates his knowledge of language through descriptions of the origins of words, and he puts this knowledge to good use. He seems to have put considerable effort into using the correct words throughout - only the use of 'square' grates nowadays.The other (for me) great thing now is the ironic humour which is especially visible in part 3. For example, there;s the part where the author's son is having a severe emotional crisis in a restaurant, they get up to leave, and the waitress says:
" I'm sorry your boy's not feeling good. " Well if you're familiar with the book, this is so full of irony it can make you laugh out loud. It just leads me to think this guy is *even* cleverer each time you read it.
Rating:
Summary: The motorcycle you repair is yourself.
Review: This is what a book is supposed to be. It raises questions about yourself and what you believe. When I finished the book I had a different outlook on life. Everyone should read it.
Rating:
Summary: Feeling schizophrenic? You're not alone...
Review: This book changed my life. This is one of those books that you either get or you don't. It is all about timing. When it was my time, I stopped doing everything else to read it. I was in the throes of a major mental meltdown. The world I was physically living in was not the world I was living inside of my head. The separation had become almost unbearable. If you are a thinker, analyzing everything (and I mean everything) and have reached the point that you are not sure you can think any deeper and that the rest of the world around you seems far away, this is your book. If you are peeling away the onion layers of the mystery of life from a purely intellectual standpoint and you have realized that it can be infinitely sliced and you are questioning your sanity compared to those around you, this is the book for you. Sure the author is relatively depressed and the tone is not overly buoyant, but this book will take you on the ride of your life. It will take you to the edge but it will not take you over the edge. You will come back and you will come back feeling relieved. You are not alone; there are millions out there who feel the same way. Or this book may save your life. It brought me back by making me realize someone had taken the journey I was about to take and made me realize that it was not the route I wanted to take. Update: I work with people who are homeless, including those who are schizophrenic, chemically addicted, living with other mental illnesses and a whole host of other life issues. This book stands the test of time. Mr. Pirsig was fortunate enough to have lived as long, and as well, as he did before it became too much for him. Many people never return; these are people I see daily. This book, quite honestly, helps the rest of us understand what others with similar thought patterns are living with every day. This is more than Boomer self-indulgence, as one reviewer noted: this is what people I work with wrestle with in their minds every day of their lives. Mr. Pirsig shows us that it is possible to get out (even though the details of his journey back is somewhat skethcy). His follow-up, Lila, is also highly recommended. ...
Rating: 
Summary: Where the Typewriter Meets Ten Hits of Acid Too Many...
Review: This book was frequently assigned to middle and high-school aged kids when I was growing up, and having finally read it later in life, I can only shudder at the thought of how many kids were turned off to reading, let alone Zen or philosophy by having this book foisted on them. The book is about nothing so much as a self-absorbed, navel-gazing hippy monster of a father who sees only the worst in his own son as he drags him around the country on the back of his motorcycle in persuit of some sort of psycho/spriritual quest. The tortured internal philosophical ramblings boarder on absolute schizoid nonsense, and offer no usable wisdom for happiness, enlightenment or remotely practical living, thinking or being. This book's endless pages of densely packed type have been fawned over by slack-jawed English professors for far too long. They are impressed and frightened by it's rambling inscrutability, and then jump on the "Wow! What a powerful and enlightening book!" bandwagon that they see all their peers clinging to. Don't believe the hype. It reminds me of another piece of New Age trash I read a while back about a woman who left her family and children to persue her 'Zen quest'. Pathetic. These people are more spiritually clueless than anyone, and yet they get bandied about as heroes. The secrets to the wisdom they seek are right in front of them the whole time, and yet they run (in the guise of 'sacrifice' or 'letting go'), and expect the rest of us to applaud and admire them for doing so. No applause here.
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Summary: So boring that i could hardly stay awake in it
Review: i propably wouldn't have even finished it if it weren't for school! The book will start a something then break off into something else then you have to wait to read the rest of what you were reading before. It wasn't good at all, i give it two thumbs DOWN!
Rating:
Summary: Looking for more
Review: For years I have talked to people who told me that this book changed their lives. Looking for enlightenment, I read it a couple of times and finally realized that there is nothing in it that a thoughtful ten-year old could not come up with. The book has long been overrated. For those of you whose lives have been changed by reading it, try something like Nietze or even Karl Marx and get ready.
Rating: 
Summary: Be careful what motorcycle you ride
Review: Zen is broken up into two parts: story and philosophy. Okay, so it's a book about a man riding his motorcycle across the country and trying to organize his thoughts at the same time. The story is basic; the philosophy is not. The narrator apparently had an identity crisis because he overloaded his brain. That is, all his "over the hill" philosophy finally drove him insane. So why, then, does he want to share it with the reader? I will admit, some of his reasonings and ideas are very good, but after a while it gets ridiculously repetitive and redundant. By the time the narrator touched the topic of "Quality" for the seventh time, I realized Zen to be a very boring and tedious book, slaughtered by greek (and otherwise meaningless) philosophy. The book conveys a very good message in the end, but it took way too long to get there. By the time I finished the book, I was just glad to put it back on the shelf and never speak of it again. I recommend only reading the first half of this book... and the last fifteen pages. Everything else becomes a waste of time. (...)
Rating:
Summary: Give it a second chance....
Review: This book is great if you are on the edge of a great depression. If you want to spend some time on your own and investigate the innerworkings of your own mind, try giving a shot to ZaMM. The novel is about man taking a journey with his son and friends. However, the background of this journey is decorated with philosophical motifs, and the autobiographical nature of the novel gives the reader a chance to take a look at the background of the author. At some point throughout the book, philosophical approaches and definitions make the book very hard to read. At those times, leave the book aside and try reading it at some other time. I believe that the book is somehow about the second chances, thus give reading it a second try. It does WORTH the pain!!!!
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