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 ...
This is a book that I have known of since it was written and avoided. I think it was because a brother-in-law gushed about it.
He was Masters in Divinity that left the clergy to do a doctorate in Philosophy. I respected him and liked him but I did not like his leftist politics and life approach so I never read it. I bet if I went to his house today after 40 years there would still be a copy on his front room bookcase — he liked it that much.
I am a voracious reader, a lot of it fairly heavy reading in history and political philosophy. Maybe I will read it some day but I just picked out about 2000 pages of stuff to go on my read-next list and it isn’t there.
I first opened "Zen" on a Delaware beach in the mid-1970s, lost all track of time, and got the worst sunburn of my life.
The Quality, the aretê he has fought so hard for, has sacrificed for, has never betrayed, but in all that time has never once understood, now makes itself clear to him and his soul is at rest.
Rest in peace, Mr. Pirsig.
Same here.
What you do say, HL? Is riding a motorcycle a Zen experience or what? :- )
I found the Wikquotes quotes from the book and I thought this particular one explains the meaning of FR:
First book I read on anything close to philosophy. I’m thankful he wrote about Greeks - if a mere fraction of today’s university philosophers had studied them, the western world would be much different.
Japan’s Community Assurance: The ‘Ganbatte’ Spirit
It was an attempt to explain the quality of Japanese life and do some contrast with life in America.
*KPI = Key Performance Indicator
There is a guide book to ZMM by Disanto & Steele.
Very helpful even on a second read.
If you are going to be a bear, be a grizzly.
https://www.amazon.com/Guidebook-Zen-Art-Motorcycle-Maintenance/dp/0688060692
Okay, interesting thread. Might have to give the book a shot. I wonder if there are any similarities between Pirsig’s thinking and that of Michael Polanyi.
It’s a good question, and more important than people think. It’s a synergistic thing. Quality in a mechanical item has to do with design, and materials. They wear well and last a long time is one feature I’d say, and tend to be ergonomic. Attention to detail, it has been refined for use in everyday conditions and real life. Take for example, the typical, ubiquitous ice maker in a modern freezer/refrigerator. It spits out half moon ice cubes pretty well and automatically. But did anyone in the design phase actually use them? The half round shape means the cube hugs the side of a glass or mug, making getting a drink very awkward at times. Small annoyance, but they simply don’t work very well for a drink.
He had yuppies pegged. Remember the other guys handlebars were slipping? The bolt had been tightened all the way. They were in the middle of nowhere. Bob said “You need a shim in there.” “Oh, OK. Where do we get these shims?” The guy was all eager and interested.
Bob was standing there with a beer can in his hand. “Best shim stock in the world.” Perfect, it will be slightly “sticky”, the aluminum, and won’t give. Once the guy discovered Bob wanted to put part of a BEER CAN on his expensive motorcycle, he lost all interest, and was content to have slipping handlebars for the rest of the ride. What he wanted, was “official” consecrated, part #’d Genuine OEM “special” Shim Stock, blessed by the manufacturer, and probably expensive. This stuck with me, and I’ve seen variations on this theme many, many times in different ways.
Ha — I had a feeling there might be a Persig-Polanyi connection.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/20708674?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
Definitely going to have to check out ZMM now.
Ya bum, ya cost me money! :-)
I have read Zen and Lila.
Zen was an “Inquiry Into Values”.
Lila was an “Inquiry Into Morals”.
He tried hard to discover a way for man to be good without God.
He gave it a noble try, but he wasn’t successful.
There are many gems in his books. I enjoy his chapter on meeting Robert Redford. Redford wanted to make a movie out of Zen. Pirsig wouldn’t sell him the rights.
He was a very good thinker and communicator.
I come back to "Lila" occasionally to think about it, but I haven't re-read it yet.
He did ask it as a question, though he didn’t exactly mean it literally. He was shooting down a pompous philosophy professor who was claiming that everything was an illusion.
I read it about twenty years ago...it reminded me a lot of a childhood trip to Yellowstone in the early 80s, and it gave me some serious food for thought on how to approach a problem methodically.
This book was ubiquitous back in the late 70’s.
His death makes me sad and nostalgic, despite the fact that I never read his big fat book.
A friend of mine read it and said it was about a guy going crazy. I had thought it was some dry tome on Zen or some such and was surprised at his description.
I’ve enjoyed reading the comments here and was inspired to look at some background.
I come across this from the Wikipedia on his metaphysics of quality:
“Equating it with the Tao, Pirsig postulates that Quality is the fundamental force in the universe stimulating everything from atoms to animals ...”
So I see that he was essentially just another voice during our country’s transition for animism/pantheism/paganism, which was quite common at the time. He updated the presentation for Americans with a modern take and presentation.
The genesis of his interest was also pedestrianly common for that sort of thing in that it followed his becoming a user of peyote and other hallucinogenic drugs.
I was also troubled by the comments of his early life as a biochemistry student.
“While doing laboratory work in biochemistry, Pirsig became greatly troubled by the existence of more than one workable hypothesis to explain a given phenomenon, and, indeed, that the number of hypotheses appeared unlimited. He could not find any way to reduce the number of hypotheses—he became perplexed by the role and source of hypothesis generation within scientific practice. “
This really doesn’t make any sense, but to me does reflect a type of mental illness, not serious necessarily, but one of a chronic obtuseness that does correlate with personality disorder in some people.
Definitely an interesting and successful career and he had an impact on society.
And yet, as he pointed out, a certified mechanic for that expensive German motorcycle, a Hierophant of the Mechanical Mysteries received by torchlight through sacred ceremonies in the Black Forest...would, following proper Teutonic practicality, have approved of using beer can metal as shim stock.
It also follows his later observation that most craftsmen of metal would see a piece of steel as having no natural “shape” at all.
Ah, I’d forgotten that part. I used to get the MSDS for basic household chemicals, cleaning solvents. Found I could make my own at a fraction of the cost. It’s the same damn thing, sometimes better. From firearms cleaning solvents, electrical contact cleaners, window cleaner aka “Windex”, all kinds of stuff. But I discovered some people, like oir BMW rider, refuse to entertain the idea. If it doesn’t have a brand name on it, they won’t use it. Advertising, I guess. Or something...
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People arrive at a factory and perform a totally meaningless task from eight to five without question because the structure demands that it be that way. There’s no villain, no ‘mean guy’ who wants them to live meaningless lives, it’s just that the structure, the system demands it and no one is willing to take on the formidable task of changing the structure just because it is meaningless. But to tear down a factory or to revolt against a government or to avoid repair of a motorcycle because it is a system is to attack effects rather than causes; and as long as the attack is upon effects only, no change is possible. The true system, the real system, is our present construction of systematic thought itself, rationality itself, and if a factory is torn down but the rationality which produced it is left standing, then that rationality will simply produce another factory. If a revolution destroys a systematic government, but the systematic patterns of thought that produced that government are left intact, then those patterns will repeat themselves in the succeeding government. There’s so much talk about the system. And so little understanding
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