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Posted on 04/24/2017 5:19:16 PM PDT by ameribbean expat
Published in 1974 after being rejected by more than 100 other publishers, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, was the father-son story of a motorcycle trip across the western United States. Loosely autobiographical, it also contained flashbacks to a period in which the author was diagnosed as schizophrenic.
The book quickly became a best-seller. Pirsig said its protagonist “set out to resolve the conflict between classic values that create machinery, such as a motorcycle, and romantic values, such as experiencing the beauty of a country road”.
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
It was a good book and his introspective commentary caught me at a very good time in my life. I’ve read it twice
RIP.
I read it a long time ago. For some reason I thought the author had committed suicide. Guess I was wrong.
Read it myself a long time ago. Was their not a reference to an atomic bomb and Zen in there? He asked whether the atomic bomb dropped on Japan was an “illusion?” correct me.
RIP. His little boy in the story, Chris, was murdered in 1979 in a mugging in San Francisco. The book is a touch of genius. Phaedrus was never really gone at all. I still get chills.
RIP.
His son Christopher was senslessly murdered by urban youths. They don’t explain the book lays out the history of philosophic and scientific thought, and he attempted to devise his own system of meaning and viewing reality.
The fog of old age is much superior to the fog of war (though they seem oddly to be a lot alike).
It did refer to the atomic bomb as illusory. Was t a key point of he book, but I recall it.
Was t = wasn’t.
Be believed his daughter born later was the reincarnation of Chris.
He really explains well that the scientific method devises theories that attempt to match observations, but never can describe ultimate reality.
One of those books I read a long time ago and now don’t really remember it, except that I liked it. And I liked the title.
Remarkable book. It was honest and real.
I had to read it in a college course. I myself found it to be absolutely incomprehensible, hundreds of pages of mumbo jumbo. Ok so I’m a heathen.
Yes, that book was special. It’s a very personal exploration of what “doing it right” means, and why it is important.
RIP, Mr. Pirsig.
Read years ago in my “sorta hippie” stage. Understood some of it, but it made Greek philosophy clearer than any professor I ever had. I especially enjoyed the part on the importance of rhetoric.
Read years ago in my “sorta hippie” stage. Understood some of it, but it made Greek philosophy clearer than any professor I ever had. I especially enjoyed the part on the importance of rhetoric.
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