Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values

Rating:
Summary: ADD and the art of motorcycle maintenance
Review: Ugh. This book can't decide what it wants to be. Every time you get interested in a topic (and this book does contain some interesting topics from the travel narrative to some of the ideas expressed) it switches over to another topic before resolving anything. This is incredibly frustrating from the point of view of entertainment. Does this book want to be a novel and flow like one, or a middle-brow discussion of contemporary worldviews, or a amateur philosophy thesis? It suceeds only in being a very long and slow 400+ pages of several seperate books thrown together with minimal integration.

Rating:
Summary: Profound, thought-provoking and questioning
Review: This book is about what the title says - an inquiry into values. But, that is an understatement. The author, through the main character, questions and challenges you to validate how you do and accomplish things. I have tried not to give away the contents in this review for it is best left to be read.

The main character is on a yearly vacation and chooses to take a ride down south from his place in Montana. His son accompanies him. As they ride, Phædrus, recollects his past and the path that led him to his current self. He goes over how he viewed doing or accomplishing tasks and how those around him differed. In the process he depends a great deal on his experience with both eastern and western religion and philosophies. His knowledge of the Hindu scriptures, religion and simple but profound truths is particulary gratifying to me (Twat Tham Asi - I urge you to explore this).

A major part of the book, he spends laying a foundation in defining what he thinks is Quality. By referring to Quality, he in a way, is referring to the Absolute in what one days. A few examples he delineates that come in one's way of looking at or achieving quality - Stuckedness, classic and romantic way of approaching solving a problem, value rigidity.

Through his journey, both on the motorcycle and his life (past and present), he walks you into constantly thinking and re-evaluating how you can approach your way of doing.

At times, I felt a great deal of self-righteousness in his approach. After all, not everyone is as gifted as a few people on this earth. His choosing his young son as somebody to display his disapproval constantly is particularly bothering and worrisome if you are a loving parent. Ultimately is it a big relief that he realizes the hypocracy and the truth why he needs to get back to his looked-upon self. Life is more about loving and caring than about how you view things, however right you are.

The afterward is something you wouldn't expect. I had read this book twenty or so years ago as a young man and all I could remember today was that it was one the very best books I had ever read. Reading it again, just confirms the thought; only now, it certainly had a more profound impact.



Rating:
Summary: Chautauq - wha?
Review: For me this work seems to fall into the category of books that are more disappointing than they otherwise might have been if they did not have the reputation as a `classic.' If I had read it without any prior preconceptions I think that I would have just found it occasionally annoying, occasionally interesting - but largely unexceptional.

Unfortunately though since it is a self-described "modern epic" I was expecting more that self-involved navel-gazing. Sometimes they really are just directions on how to assemble a rotisserie and not a deep symbol of our modern value system... I mean, common - insert A into slot B... *sigh* (if you haven't read the book before just know that yes this is really part of it, I didn't make it up)

To give the book its due though the author's unique perspective does give rise to some interesting points and ideas but these worthwhile nuggets are too few and far apart. Maybe if I was interested in the value of philosophy in and of itself this book would have been of more interest but rather it seems to represent more of a problem that pure philosophy can represent. When ones goes on these journeys of the mind and allow themselves to become so disconnected from reality there ideas loose all practical value - while a rational proof of something may be occasionally interesting, a more important question might be how one brings these abstractions back to the real world.

Finally, any book of this type which seeks to expound `the truth' (or even a truth) always walks a fine line between being interesting and coming off sounding aragonite. This book walks that fine line - and crosses it frequently.

While I did have to roll my eyes every few pages I am still glad I read this work because of its reputation - sometimes finding out a book isn't that great is just as valuable as finding out that a book is good.

Rating:
Summary: One of the best
Review: This is one of the great pieces of modern literature. Any critic of note agrees, as did the book reading world when it was published. It's success was a bit of a surprise, as it is a deep philosophical ramble for the most part, not your typical best seller. I am both a motorcycle rider and a student of Eastern religions, so this was made in heaven for me. No interest in either of those subjects is at all necessary to love this book, needless to say! More Western than Eastern philosophy here, both are presented brilliantly, and the final stop is pure enlightenment. The extraordinary mental journey that takes place in this book, the agony and seriousness of the author's search for truth, the philosophical heights, the madness, and the epiphanies along the way are all examples of the author's unique genius. The ending has an impact one would not expect of this book. It explodes. This is not one of your typical "Zen and the art of this or that" deals. This is one of the best books ever written, period. Not an easy read, but more than worth the effort.

Rating:
Summary: A Wolf's Perspective
Review: This is my second reading of this classic. The first was around '74 when I was actively reading various philosophies and trying to be a normal person. Pirsig just blew me away with his wide-ranging scope and single-minded intensity. ZAMM is a profound accomplishment on both a personal and philosophical level. Phaedrus, a true lone wolf, an outrider by necessity, finally squared the circle and cracked the koan.

Businessmen who work their way to wealth through shrewd dealing have many admirers. Even more make heroes of athletes who robustly compete and win medals. I respect Pirsig more. He followed his mental compulsions to their denouement without assistance or thought of personal gain. When some anonymous functionaries at Bozeman try to standardize his teaching, does he have a chat with the department head? Well, of course not. To Phaedrus, his classroom procedures bear the weight of the planet's collective wisedom. He must justify what he does personally and professionally with the only response acceptable to him. And that requires that the entire Western philosophical tradition be tweaked into concordance with the East. The result is an amalgam that will please 1) the over-organized, rational engineers, 2) the spacey meditators seeking nirvana, 3) the spiritual who want God on High, 4) and especially the lone wolves of the mind.

Pirsig is not just a philosopher. By training and profession, he is also a rhetorician. That means he presents his case with ability, drama and persuasion. You may not hang on every word, but I can think of no other book that so dramatizes an intellectual battle.

Of course he was insane. Of course he treated people badly. But the necessity of resolving such a conundrum is exigent in very few. Fewer still come away with resolution, much less their sanity. If you've ever been in Phaedrus' pack, read this book. The indelible impressions from 30 years are still with me.

Rating:
Summary: Great Trip
Review: This is an astonishingly good book, though hard to characterize: it's a travelogue, philosophical meditation, intellectual autobiography, father/son story, spiritual quest, and tale of madness. It's true that the author, Robert Pirsig, has a touch of crankiness about him -- who else but a crank would believe that he's solved the deepest problems of Western civilization? It's also true that some of Pirsig's details about Greek philosophy and the history of science are wrong -- Copernicus did not, for example, discover that the Earth is round. But these are quibbles. Pirsig's overall lesson is that thinking is a serious, almost life-or-death adventure. In a culture swamped with materialism, fundamentalism, and nonsense disseminated on the internet, that's a huge accomplishment. I can't think of any book that would do a better job of getting an intelligent high school of college student turned on to serious philosophy. Six stars!

Rating:
Summary: Metaphysics in laymens terms
Review: This book is metaphysics from the bottom up, which makes it interesting for anyone who likes philosophy and thinking about lifes meaning, and also feels too overwhelmed with those thick super dense writings by the classic icons like Kant. This might open up those more distant figures to a practical understanding too. A must read overall for anyone who likes to think about things.

Rating:
Summary: Happiness from "Quality" - an investigative expose
Review: I've procrastinated for months before writing this review because I was afraid of doing the book a disservice. But....the time has come :-)

I love this book - for its excellent handling of an oblique subject, and for giving us a message for the times.

In Pirsig's words, ZATAOMM has acquired "kulturbearer" status - i.e., it encompasses entire realms of thought within our present culture, and it attempts to carry these things into cultures of the future.

It talks about the split between Art and Technology and the unease of regarding one from the other standpoint. It discourses about the innermost mechanisms that make "Hip" and "Square" two distinct schools, and how they actually represent two different worldviews. But Pirsig is about unifying, not dividing. He delineates the divisions, only to unify them later.

The book seeks to create a framework (of thought) from which such concepts - Art/Technology, Hip/Square , Groovy/Classical - need no longer be treated as disparate entities. This is an ambitious work all right. Pirsig points you to subtle concepts - he needs to uncover the very nature of our natures before he can show you what's wrong with it. To do this, Pirsig deconstructs Perception to study why we believe what we believe - this involves discourses on Myth and Legend (my other hero, Joseph Campbell came to mind a lot in these passages).

He goes back in history to the ancient Greek schools - Stoics, Aristotle, and the beginnings of Dialectic and Rhetoric. The last part of the book is pure detective work, where he uses thought structures as clues and tracks down the perpetrator of the crime; the crime being the modern disconnect between Form and Function, and the perpetrator being the person who dominated early Western thought and created the philosophical foundations of the Modern Western Industralised World. I won't reveal this villain here - go read the book.

Pirsig opines that humans took a wrong turn at that point in history, and grew into a race of beings that only recognised Good-Bad, Right-Wrong, Theory-Proof, i.e. a "Dialectic Approach" ; Pirsig blames this worldview for many modern evils.

Pirsig claims to have studied Eastern philosophy - spent time in Benares, India and so forth. But his deconstruction is mainly relevant to Western thought, or Dialectic Reality. Some of his conclusions are indeed mirrored in Vedantic teachings. But, this reworking for a modern audience is worth its weight in gold.

The practical relevance of this philosophical tour-de-force is the message of Quality, its relation to happiness, and how to achieve it. Pirsig's Quality is not the ubiquitous quality - it is far more involved but very simple when you understand it. The book's final assertion is "From Caring comes Quality, from which comes happiness". "Gumption" is noted as something that will help achieve Quality, and Pirsig uses motorcycle maintenance as an illustration.

Although the subject is so arcane, it is very interestingly rendered. The philosophical plot is masterfully interwoven with the mundane plot with descriptions of life on the road and with friends, and with his son, which are all relevant to the philosophy that follows it. And, there's also a dramatic twist in the story regarding the main characters in the book - i.e., Pirsig and his son, which really elevates the book.

For all the heavy language and unintentional high-brow, this is a very humanistic work with a timeless message. This book will cease to be important the day happiness goes out of fashion. Go for it!

Rating:
Summary: Read it twice.
Review: A stunning, important work about the nature of truth, beauty, and the subjective and objective realities of life through which we find and create meaning. For anyone who has wondered about such things and who enjoys an engaging story (fictionalized, but I believe it to be largely autobiographical).

Rating:
Summary: Really only for those seeking deeper meaning
Review: I first read this book as a junior in high school, which is probably to young of an age to really understand much of what the book explores. Subsequently, I've reread the book on two occassions.
My review of the book is simple. For those who are interested in an exploration on the nature of thought and philosophy and a willingness to explore human intellect, then much of the book will resonate with you. For many, it is a book that you will willingly re-read.

For those with zero interest in the subject, save your money for something else.