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

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Summary: This book changed my life
Review: This book helps one to deal with the conflicts one faces in the day to day pursuit of truth.

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Summary: Magnificent example of metaphysical excellence
Review: This book succeeded in forcing open the rusting mind of humanity and setting precedence for aspiring philosophers and theologians to come.

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Summary: a book that can change the way you look at things
Review: This book is one of those rare books which can completely change the way you think. Pirsig is a brilliant author who takes you on a trip where you start disbelieving everything you have learnt so far in your life and finally accept it. It is a book which makes you question the absurdities of present day thinking, our set of rationality and very forcibly explodes your mind .An indepth and profound book on thinking and knowledge ,probably the most original after Kant. A must read book for all.

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Summary: ZMM--Exciting, fascinating, rewarding, totally unique.
Review: The essential how-to for learning to take a mental knife and split reality into new ways of seeing and understanding. An excellent resource on the art of persuasive writing (rhetoric) and communication. Written by an education reformer, it is a wonderful biographical novel, an inspirational travelogue, an introduction to metaphysics and philosophy, a frightening ghost story and mystery. Excellent book to read aloud with teenagers. The best book ever written.
Note: The current editions have an afterword, written years after the original publication of the book. THIS SHOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN ADDED. IT DOES NOT BELONG, AND DESTROYS THE ENDING. Have someone else cut this out and stuff it into an envelope for you. Keep it to read a year after you finish the book.

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Summary: A profound and challenging journey of the spirit.
Review: This is one of the most difficult but, ultimately, most rewarding works of literary non-fiction written in this country in this century, and one of the few books that I can say I was privileged to have experienced in my life. "Zen etc." is a haunting, quntessentially American jewel of insight, reflection and expression. It ranks alongside James Agee's and Walker Evans' "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men" in the richness of its subject and its defiance of easy categorization. Understand and be forewarned: "Zen" is not "light reading". The story unfolds pondersously through a series of flashbacks and philosphical discourses along a motorcycle trek with his young son between Minnesota. Montana, the Pacific Northwest, and California. The "plot" is an ex-college professor/PhD candidate's vision-quest to come to terms (after a fashion) with the circumstances and a hubristic persona he calls "Phaedrus" that brought him to debilitating madness, divorce and the estrangement of his son. This trek brings him a kind of catharsis and redemption, in the final analysis, but the getting of wisdom, the reconcilliation with his son (and Phaedrus) are not without their own costs. I have recommended this book over the years to many friends. Few have had the stick-to-it-iveness to get beyond the first 100 pages, let alone finish it. But like climbing Mt. Everest, the reward of the view is assuredly worth it.

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Summary: A Must Read
Review: This thought-provoking work provides insight into ideas in a fictious manner, yet implies much more. It utilizes historical perspectives as well as the author's own insight to discover what is good and how is it defined. The book dabbles in various topics and inspires wisdom in every reader. This novel influenced the way I look at the world and the way I look at myself. Anyone who is wandering through life looking for some meaning, pick this up at once.

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Summary: Terrific book IF you are ready for it.
Review: Every twenty-something knows a thrity-something who claims this book changed their lives. They may very well be telling the truth, but I know far more people that put this book down in frustration than in rapture. Pirsig indeed captures a subtle, yet vital, way to engage reality in a mechanized and secular late 20th century. This book certainly must be credited for inspiring so much of the New Age literary spiritualism that followed it. But this book is not for everyone. Heavy doses of Kant and sweeping passages of rural landscapes have caused many a person to put it down thinking they've grasped the general idea, which is enough to discuss it at the next social gathering. This book, however, is a journey of the mind and the self at a particular moment in time. It is also a touching, and sometimes wrenching, acount of a man's own life. Pirsig's view of integrating technology into one's spiritual perspective is actually more interesting now than when he wrote it. It offers an immense amount to a prepared reader. But don't expect it to be an easy book offering any answers. It is a beautiful, though trying, process. If it doesn't grab you right away, don't be afraid to put it down for a few months. When the time is right, this book can be a centering experience.

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Summary: Awakening of the Mind
Review: Without a doubt one of the most important books of this century. Pirsig has created a paradox of humanity on a scale next to none. The Journey is the key to understanding oneself. Best if read several times.

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Summary: Zen and the Art of Life Maintenance....
Review: If what you look for in a book is entartainment only, don't read this book.
If you don't care about what set of values reality as we perceive it is based upon, don't read this book.
If you are not in the least interested in trying new perspectives to look at the world at, absolutely avoid this book.
I think this outstanding manuscript (and I write 'manuscript' because in it the boundaries between novel and philosophical essay aren't very well defined) is a fantastic voyage into how all the human experience can be re-thought in a new, and I think fresh perspective.
The actual trip described in the book is superimposed on a mental, almost oneiric one, where reality is interpreted under the powerful influence of Quality - the novel philosophical entity introduced by the main character...
However, who's talking to the reader, actually? Is it the character of the book, or is it the Author himself? Or, again, a weird cross of the two?
Leaving aside this last question which, I admit, is rather academic, we're brought by the author in the labyrinthic mazes of a new philosophy while it is being built, and the process is a most fascinating one.
We see how this huge work is accomplished through trials and errors, and we're struck by how plausible it all seems. Indeed, at the end of the book, it is difficult not to use what we learnt by it in our everyday experience. It is a book whose message will be with the readers for the rest of their lives.
I myself felt as if I had opened my eyes, after reading it. Again, it is a literary work that widens our views on the world thus allowing us to rethink our lives in its brilliant light.
Motorcycle maintenance is just an example depicted in the book (together with many others).
After that, the reader can apply what he learnt to Life Manitenance.
In a word?
Illuminating.

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Summary: A meeting point. The beginning and ending of all our souls.
Review: Never has any book affected such life changing attitudes in myself. Life is more precious more adventurous, less judgemental. I feel as if I have touched the soul of another on the pages of this book. I will never be the same. I think every person in America should read this book and then pass it to every being in the universe.