Rating: 
Summary: What? ... WHAT? You haven't read this masterpiece? Why not?
Review: A review of this book by me, or even a thoughtful critique,could add nothing to what has been so well-said in the numerouseloquent essays among the 200 below. Among the decisively best dozen, reviewer Barron T. Laycock, only a few reviews below, describes "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" about as well as it need be done. Another finely-drawn perspective is provided immediately below by reviewer Cicha1994, who gets to the bottom of Pirsig's magic of delivering an incredibly complex synthesis with timely spoonfuls of sugar thusly:"Mr. Pirsig has an uncanny sense of timing, and he never allows the heavier passages to labor on too long. This is avoided by craftily interspersing his philosophical discourse amongst very down-to-earth and charming observations made during a motorcycle trip ..." Not daring to venture into the rarified air of the erudite reviews already here, I humbly offer a more fundamental observation, one that is "down-to-earth as fertilizer," as we say. How I came to read this book the first time -- of how many? -- I can't imagine. I have no interest in Zen, never owned a motorcycle and so needed no advice about keeping one humming. What I found I did have very strong interests in was everything Persig had to say. "Zen and the Art..." was an immediate best-seller when it was published 26 years ago. That couldn't have inspired my interest in it, for I have instinctive misgivings about best-sellers. But I did read it and have been all the better for it. Every subsequent reading has opened a little door or niche missed before. Call any used book store and mention of "Zen and the Art..." and you'll get immediate recognition of it, often a comment like, "Oh, yeah. That Robert Persig book. No, we can't keep them." Still selling like crazy, after all these years. There is a positively bone-chilling aspect about "Zen and the Art...". The millions who have read this supreme intellectual and artistic masterpiece -- many, many of whom, like me, were profoundly enriched by it -- came perilously close to being denied the experience. If memory serves, Persig's manuscript was rejected 122 times before William Morrow picked it up (probably after having also rejected it a few times). That says volumes about the dismal state of publishing back then, an industry that is in even blacker depths today.
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Summary: Does the quest for quality have to drive you quazy?
Review: It did to our narrator. But what a tale he tells! It seems that most of the reviews of this book revolve around the obvious lessons. But like Allen Bloom's "Closing of the American Mind," if you are not grounded in classic education you will wind up like me, wondering what this book is really about. The motorcycle analogy, like parables, tells a story with a hidden message that portends to be spiritual. While the meaning of our lives from an eternal perspective is danced around, it is not the central message of the tome, which I find it's weakness. I feel the author is looking for answers in the intellect, but they are only available in the soul. The quest for quality in life is a worthwhile journey that we all will account for someday, and this book will benefit all those who care to ponder the journey.
Rating: 
Summary: Dull hippie philosophy
Review: Do you enjoy the intellectual depth that greeting cards provide? How about the careful thought that bumper stickers demonstrate? Are you excited by windbags, braggarts, pedants, and Mr Know-it-alls? Do you drool at the thought of yet another dispatch from the me generation, the baby boomers? If so, this book will thrill you. If not, in other words, if you enjoy challenging reading and original thinking you will find this tome dull, cliche-ridden, pretentious, and authoritarian.
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Summary: An odyssey of the modern-day self.
Review: Pirsig's narrator relates a picaresque intellectual narrative interweaving 3 metaphoric journeys with his main quest-- coming to terms with his own identity and the meaning of existence. In the present tense, it is his broken marriage and troubled relationship with his teenage son that occupy his thoughts. In the past, he is consumed by his failure as a graduate student at the University of Chicago, which found him at odds with Aristotelian, "logocentered" philosophical traditionalists. At a more timeless level, it is his identification with Phaedrus, the rhetorician whom Socrates discredits in the Platonic dialogues, that consumes him. Against the weight of all Western philosophy, with its influence on "dialectic," the narrator affirms and finally celebrates his unique identity as Phaedrus, whose search affirms "rhetoric," the power of the individual to create his own existential truths and construct a sense of identity. In the thrilling climax, the narrator reaches his geographical destination along with the hope of constructing a bridge with his son--not because of the discovery of some ultimate or transcendent truth but because of his own empowerment as "Phaedrus" to create such a truth. Pirsig reviews and critiques the whole history of Western philosophy, then like Nietzsche "deconstructs" it in order to celebrate the constitutive, creative role of the individual in determining the nature of world and self. The book is an unforgettable intellectual journey on many levels, into past, present, future, but don't expect much Zen. It's final affirmation of the individual quest, of the poetic vision of Phaedrus, belongs more in a Western Romantic, than Eastern, mystical tradition.
Rating:
Summary: A Narrative and Philosophical Masterpiece
Review: I first read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance as a college senior twenty-five years ago. I remember then being frightened by how this man's determination to pursue a philosophical idea to its conclusion, even if it were against the grain of established conventions of thinking, drove him insane. I was afraid deeper study and questioning might do the same to me. I know now, however, that I'm not insane. I also know that twenty-five years ago this story of a man and his son travelling by motorcycle from Minnesota to the Pacific Ocean took deep residence in my soul. I've been a teacher now for twenty-three years, long enough to forget some of my initial influences. But, as I read this book all these years later, I realized that my philosophical view points, examples I use to illustrate ideas with my students, what I believe the purpose of an education is, and several other bits of pedagogy and ideology originated in Pirig's story. I highly recommend this book, maybe especially if you are unread in philosophy and would like a readable, enjoyable, and provocative entree into the history and vocabulary of philosophy. It's a deeply moving, intellectually stiumlating story. Its devotion to story-telling and philosophical inpuiry is indeed most rare.
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Summary: One Of The Best Nonfiction Books Written In the 20th Century
Review: Robert Pirsig's incredible tour-de-force in this book is literally the intellectual adventure of a lifetime, and one that still leaves me shaking my head in wonder after thirty years and a number of readings of it. I was introduced to "Zen" by my brother in law, who promised me that I would enjoy it. By now I must admit to now having several short quotes from it framed under glass at various spots in the house, because I was so taken by the gravity of what he has to say, and the disarmingly simple way he usually chooses to say it. Pirsig is a man with a lot to say, and a lot of wisdom in what he has to offer. Although I must admit that I do not agree with certain key aspects of his argument regarding the way the ancient bifurcation between what he calls romantic and classic perceptive orientations can at last be repaired and restored to cognitive and intellectual unity, I stand in utter awe at the quality of mind any human being must have to marshal such a breath-taking effort as this, at the accomplishment of conceiving and articulating the philosophical treatise described in such loving and painstaking detail here. His grasp of such eclectic, obscure and philosophically central notions truly is a feat quite the equal of the ascent of Everest in terms of the levels of concentration, mental endurance, and simple cognitive acumen necessary to muster this kind of argument. The book works on two levels that both assist and complement each other. First, the story narrative, which he uses both to illustrate ideas he is talking about and to introduce ideas he wants to discuss, also acts to bring us back to "normal everyday reality' after spinning high in the thin cold air of his theorizing. Second, the philosophical story becomes a kind of sophisticated detective story for curious intellectuals, as Pirsig's alter ego, Phaedrus, searches deeper and deeper into the mysteries that once led him into insanity because of the sheer intensity of his efforts to solve the riddle of the difference between the two seemingly irreconcilable aspects of reality (the romantic and the classic). The book is an awe-inspiring trip into a discovery of the nature of reality, contemporary society, and yourself. It has led to study groups, study guides, and a whole cult of Pirsig watchers who consider him the functional equivalent of the wise seer. The wildly best-selling book also led Pirsig deeper into a life of isolation, eschewing publicity and seeking greater introspection. There is a sequel, called "Lila", which also enjoyed a best-selling run on the charts in the early 1990s. This is a book that is quite unlike anything else you have ever read, and is something you have to experience to understand in its full impact. It is also a book I can recommend with a smile, knowing with confidence you will be glad you finally decided to buy it and read it. Enjoy!
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Summary: Best Introduction to Western Philosophy
Review: Despite the book's title, Pirsig's journey is primarily one through the history of Western philosophy, from the pre-Socratics through Plato, Aristotle, the 18th century empricists, and 19th century idealists. On this level alone, the book succeeds in being one of the most accessible and reliable treatments of the field. But the text is also a critique of the whole Western "logocentric" tradition, with its emphasis on reason, or "dialectic." Like Kant ("Critique of Pure Reason") or Kierkegaard ("Concluding Unscientific Postscript"), Pirsig uses reason to expose the limitations of reason. And what does he replace it with? Not Eastern mysticism or Zen riddles but rhetoric. More than the classic rhetoricians that Pirsig exhalts or the 20th-century structuralists and post-structuralists (Barthes, Derrida, Foucault) for which Pirsig's narrative is practically an illustration, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" makes the case for language as the basis for all reality, for all that we think, experience and perceive. It's this conflict between dialectic and rhetoric that drives the narrative, realized in plain yet compelling prose that's capable of staying with the attentive reader for the rest of his or her lifetime. After reading the book twice, I was unable to look at the self, the world, at all things constructed by language in quite the same way. The least successful parts of the book, it seems to me, are the narrator's protracted discussions of the nature of "reality" as a moment inaccessible to human intellect and his somewhat naive, 1960's-style musings on the nature of "quality." Supposedly his English composition students were immediately able to know it when they saw it, thereby making it unnecessary for him as a teacher to talk about "standards" or to establish criteria. (The suspicion arises that Pirsig hasn't had a great deal of experience teaching students how to write.) Nevertheless, even when a cylinder occasionally misfires, this is a book worth reading carefully and more than once. Unfortunately, because of its "cult" status, many people seem to purchase the text but never finish it. Robert Redford owns the screen rights, but a reader would be ill-advised to wait for the movie version. The "visual" elements of the text--the motorcyle odyssey and troubled father-son relationship--are minor metaphors compared to the ambitious and largely successful intellectual quest.
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Summary: A man in search of himself...
Review: Author's note:
"What follows is based on actual occurrences. Although much has been changed for rhetorical purposes, it must be regarded in its essence as fact. However, it should in no way be associated with that great body of factual information relating to orthodox Zen Buddhist practice. It's not very factual on motorcycles, either." When it was first published, in 1974, this little book took the country by storm. It introduced much of America to Zen Buddhism, in spite of the author's disclaimer, above. Ostensibly, it is the story of a father and son crossing the continent on a motorcycle, but of course it is far more than that. It is essentially a journal of a journey of self-discovery. Here is a sample: "Reality is always the moment of vision before the intellectualization takes place. There is no other reality. This preintellectual reality is what Phaedrus felt he had properly identified as Quality. Since all intellectually identifiable things must emerge from this preintellectual reality. Quality is the parent, the source of all subjects and objects." There is much discussion of the importance of Quality. This book has changed the way many people thought and felt about their lives. It has also led many into the practice of Zen Buddhism. You may like it. Joseph Pierre,
Author of THE ROAD TO DAMASCUS: Our Journey Through Eternity
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Summary: ZEN
Review: Excellent book. Beautifully written. Because of this book, I am now a zen practitioner.
Rating:
Summary: REALLY, REALLY BAD....
Review: It is with much trepidation that I disagree with the clear majority of readers and at the risk of being considered "a cynical drapchode" (expression in previous review), I think this was one bad book. The book has two three subplots: (1) the author and his son take a motorcycle trip across America (2) the author inquires into the philosophical underpinnings of Western civilization (3) the author goes totally insane his career as a college professor goes into freefall and he must have his personality expunged by court-ordered electroshock treatment. The book is chocked full of whining narcissism and self-involvement. We, the readers, have to be subjected to the author's vendettas against faculty committees, rhapsodies about screws and washers and how they relate to philosophy, and his cutting remarks to and about his son whenever the poor child interrupts (as children often do)his book-length loveletter to himself. This book has been published and republished to continual oohing and ahhing and acclaim and it probably is the duty of every sentient human being to get a copy and read it with an open mind. That being said, I plowed through the second half more from a sense of duty than from any enjoyment, and I really couldn't care less whether the author lived or died.
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