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

Rating:
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.

Rating:
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.

Rating:
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.

Rating:
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.

Rating:
Summary: Give copies to your friends!
Review: I regularly give copies to people that I really care about. They have never failed to become absorbed in the quest, both the character's and their own life's. Unfortunately, it will place you at odds with the rest of the world, especially the corporate world, where a good spreadsheet or "running the numbers" is all that it takes to make a go/no go decision... or to call a management failure a success. You may, therefore, find that the main character's descent into insanity, is not unlike the feeling you will get when you see the blank stares from friends and acquaintances when you try to explain what quality is and what it is not. Reading this book undoubtedly changed my life. It remains yet to be seen, however, if the patient dies.

Rating:
Summary: Most important metaphysical treatise of the last 50 years.
Review: An epic humanist catechism framed within a brilliant descriptive narrative. Pirsig talks about the most common and fundamental aspects of human experience and understanding that, it just so happens, no one else is talking about. Why is it that nobody can say what Quality is, but everyone can pretty much agree as to what has it or lacks it; in other words, is it subjective or objective? Pirsig takes his dialectic-of-the-ages to an even more focused and broadly applied level in the sequel, "Lila", which I could not help but notice, did not make the final Amazon.com 2.5-million-title cut. Catching this man's 40-ton metaphysical cleaver of rational thought upside the head will equip you with a drug-like feeling of total intellectual invulnerability that YOU want. Did I mention that I like the book?

Rating:
Summary: One of the top ten books of the last 20 years
Review: This book is the ultimate travelogue. It takes the reader on many different journeys: a motorcyle ride from the midwest to the Pacific coast, a philosophical ride from ancient Greece to modern America, a relationship ride between father and son, and a long slow descent into insanity. All woven together in one story. I have read this book at least ten times, each time starting out with a different journey in mind. I read it the first time because it covered much of the country I came from and I frankly skipped much of the philosophy. I then read it again with the philosophy riding shotgun. I think you can see where I am going here. Each time reading it I have had a different set of values and qualities that I was looking at. (I have even read it to see if I could determine what type of motorcycle was used for the journey.) As I grow older, and my perspective changes from know-it-all youth to confused parent and adult, each time I read this book (or even a section) I get something different out of it

Rating:
Summary: One of the most important books of our age.
Review: If I were to draw a timeline of philosophy with two markers, one marker would be the works of Plato and Aristotle, which placed Truth at the top of the heap (a proposition which forms the basis of western scientific thinking); the other marker would be Pirsig's work, which places Good at the top and Truth second. Pirsig had an insight into the Quality Relationship. Just as an eye cannot see itself, the Quality Relationship is very difficult to see because it is the means by which seeing (in the intellectual sense) takes place. Even the purest scientific truth passes into the mind of its discoverer on a rail established by the Quality Relationship. The implication is that all truth is personal and subjective, even widely accepted scientific truths. That acceptance exists in the minds of many individuals, each of whom is motivated to receive the information and judge it against scientific criteria. The motivation rests on the Quality Relationship, and that is strictly a personal value judgement of whatever the mind choses to examine. Since individuals possess the Quality Relationship, this philosophy places individuals above science (modern society seems to need some of that view). Pirsig's second work, Lila, examines what it means for larger social entities such as governments to possess their own Quality Relationships. The book is also the exquisitely told personal story of Pirsig's efforts to recover this insight after losing the memory of it to shock treatment. A beautiful book in all respects

Rating:
Summary: Inner Analysis of the Highest Order
Review: A thought provoking book which causes you to think about yourself and life. Best to be read in thirty page intervals for maximum comprehension and understanding. Some may have trouble understanding Pirsig's thoughts, writing and ideas. Once you get into the inner thoughts of Pirsig, you begin to understand his views of society. A lot of work went into this work. Well written and thought out. The most intelligently written book I have ever read. Constant analysis and thinking required. Not for everyone. A book one can go back to again and again. A book unlike any other