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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.
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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!
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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.
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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.
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Summary: Flight to New Reason
Review: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert Pirsig
First Published 1974, 25th Anniversary Edition published 1999 by Vantage / Random House
Review by Ian Glendinning, February 2002.ZATAOMM is a journey - at least four in fact - two real in the present, one historical narrative, and one metaphorical. The real-time is in fact some 30 years ago - immediately post-hippy era - the book having been published in 1974. The first journey is a cross-US Motorcycle buddy-ride - Easy Rider without the drug culture. The second is a man-and-boy mountain trek - a physical challenge to find themselves and define their relationship - Ex-hippy Walk in the Woods if you like. The third is Pirsig's historical, and painfully personal, autobiography as a student, a teacher, a husband and a father preceding the real-time narrative. Common people and locations link the first three stories, but the fourth, a philosophical argument is woven into all three. As an experience the book moves quickly - chopping between the various threads - dropping clues and hints at the past events and connections to be revealed later, but always leaving enough doubt and emotional confusion to press on. Whilst several threads do get resolved, with a real-life mix of surprise and anti-climax, several remain wonderfully open ended - no-doubt succeeding in provoking the thoughts Pirsig intended. Practically the motorcycle and its maintenance are archetypes for technology, and the qualities of these are metaphors for the philosophical "virtues". In fact the concept of quality and the ancient debate between rational (logical) and subjective (rhetorical) views of the world are truly the subject of the book. Like Sophie's World the entire book is a vehicle for a serious philosophy text, though unlike that particular best-seller, ZATAOMM provides a gripping and involving story. The emotive power arises from Pirsig's own credentials in philosophical academia as a student and teacher of rhetoric, coupled with the passion and frustration that jumps off the page and grabs the reader by the throat. No surprise to find that Pirsig's schizophrenic alter-ego, Phaedrus, hides a past brush with a mental institution. The frustration of the rational trap, leaving madness as the only apparent escape route is evocative of both Catch-22 and Cuckoo's Nest. For anyone with an interest in the big questions of life, this is a good read. For anyone concerned with making progress in the details of the underlying philosophical debate, it is a text worthy of serious research. Both will find that those threads with uncertain resolution, command at least one re-read. (Reviewers Note: I find myself identifying strongly with the central character, yet when first given this book on an MBA Organisational Behaviour reading list in 1988 I chose not to read it. Now, having read the 25th anniversary edition, I find myself moved by it and regretting that my main thesis did not benefit from it at the time. I am currently conducting research into knowledge modelling.)
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