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: Zen and the Art of Crap
Review: Yeah: it all makes sense when you get to the part about the author getting shock treatments.
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: Clear vision & understanding the paradox of western culture.
Review: An excellent examination of the deep, nearly invisible, internal incongruities of Western society. Read it in my early twenties and it changed my life. When you read and understand the way our minds and hearts are programmed by our society, and how that programming leads us to goals that don't satisfy or unsuccessful pursuits of happines, it's almost a religious experience.The reviews posted here don't call enough attention to the paradox Pirsig examines, and here it is: you are brought up to believe that what is right, what is true, what is logical will prevail in the end. That logic is truth. The problem is that rhetoric overpowers logic, and rhetoric is the tool of those who further their dark ends by pushing our buttons -- buttons we don't even realize we have. Sure, we all may look at that statement and say "Yeah, so what?" The beauty of this book is how it helps us get past that 'rhetorical' mind set, the "So What" mind set. Getting past it is no small feat. It's also hard to get past the smirks of your peers. This book helps you look inside yourself and realize not only where, but why you are making decisions and behaving in ways which prevent you from growing as a person and transcending the banality of consumption as a way of life. When you finish reading this book and try to explain it to someone else, you will find yourself at a loss for words because there is virtually no vocabulary, no paradigm around which to discuss it. Yet another major paradox of our society. When you extend this line of thinking a bit, it becomes clear that the message in this book is not for glib conversation, a la Frazier Crane. You can't change other people much; but you can change yourself. And that's an internal conversation. When I look at how ZAMM asks some painful, bedrock questions about our lives, I wonder where the answers are. The only book that seems to address some of the questions is Steven Covey's book on the Seven Ha! bits. Problem is, how do we un-program ourselves so we can move toward Covey's paradigm. I don't pretend to know the answer. So maybe we need the third book to complete the set for the modern philosopher. This book demands multiple re-reading. It's the most profound book I've read in English.
Rating:
Summary: Toss Out the Frozen System
Review: Anything you know, either unfolded before your senses, or you heard about it from someone else, and it unfolded before theirs. And it keeps going, and you can't freeze it. The mind, beholding Quality, or Tao, is all there is. After 4 reads and 15 years, I finally got it. It's super-simple, yet the hardest thing to accept. But once you do, watch life's Gordians knots fall apart.
Thank you Mr. Pirsig, for your intellectual pit-bulledness in the face of Plato's inversion.
The book's highly rich parallel structure is poetically satisfying.
Why did the author collapse? He paralyzed under two fundamental reversals at once: philosophical conversion to Quality from Truth, and, moral conversion from power to "mu"?
My opinion is that if he had been in the right hands at the time, he would have pulled out ok, ie, without the shocks.
P.S.: It's Monism.
Rating:
Summary: 20th Century Sophism, or Greatest Metaphysical Philosophy?
Review: As a philosopher, Pirsig has gained very little recognition, even though his book has been around for 23 years. You will not find his name or his work anywhere within philosophical encyclopedias, or any other kind of encyclopedia for that matter. I've wondered for many years why that is the case. It is true that the Metaphysics of Quality is not very compatible with most of the great Western philosophies, but nonetheless, I've found it incredible in scope, vision and depth. It is a book which contains principles applicable to almost anyone, anywhere, anytime here on earth, and its applicability owes much to the fact that it is very simple to read, though the ideas it explores - especially when dealing with Kant and Poincare - can become mind-boggling; fortunately this is not the case when it discusses Quality. It is true that Pirsig can sound rather sophistic at times, everyone, even the revered Socrates and Plato, are guilty of that. What really matters is that on the whole, Pirsig can hardly fail to deeply affect anyone who reads him with an open mind. Love it or hate it, this is definitely one of the most important books of the century, if not of all civilization
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: 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.
Rating:
Summary: What an amazing book
Review: I tried to read ZAMM years ago and didn't get past the first chapter. My mindset was impatient and I wasn't prepared to think about the issues he was raising. One of Pirsig's classic gumption traps, I guess. Something told me to try it again, so I checked out a copy of the original edition from the library. I just finished the book and now I'm buying my own copy. Prisig is one of those rare authors who can express emotions so subtly and naturally that you actually feel them rather than just read about them. He also has a remarkable way of blending the past, the present and the deep thoughts of two distinct points of view into one smoothly flowing narrative. Just when things might start to drag he switches gears (no pun intended) and lets us all just ride along for a while. This isn't the type of book that everyone will read straight through, or that everyone will appreciate right away. And there's really no reason to force it: Put it down, come back later, read back over the part you didn't quite get. There's no hurry. And when you finally arrive at the destination, the end of that cross-county motorcycle ride, and contemplate the remarkable ideas you've picked up along the way you'll smile, think back, and realize how much you enjoyed the trip. -Bryan
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 simply adore, revere and idolise this book - for its interesting treatment of an oblique subject matter, 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!
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