Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
Selected Book Details
- Audio Cassette
- Edition: Unabridged
- Author: Robert M. Pirsig
- Publisher: Macmillan Audio
- Release Date: June 1999
- ISBN-10: 1559275561
- ISBN-13: 9781559275569
- List Price: $49.95
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Summaries and Customer Reviews provided by Amazon
SummaryIn his now classic Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig brings us a literary chautauqua, a novel that is meant to both entertain and edify. It scores high on both counts. Phaedrus, our narrator, takes a present-tense cross-country motorcycle trip with his son during which the maintenance of the motorcycle becomes an illustration of how we can unify the cold, rational realm of technology with the warm, imaginative realm of artistry. As in Zen, the trick is to become one with the activity, to engage in it fully, to see and appreciate all details--be it hiking in the woods, penning an essay, or tightening the chain on a motorcycle. In his autobiographical first novel, Pirsig wrestles both with the ghost of his past and with the most important philosophical questions of the 20th century--why has technology alienated us from our world? what are the limits of rational analysis? if we can't define the good, how can we live it? Unfortunately, while exploring the defects of our philosophical heritage from Socrates and the Sophists to Hume and Kant, Pirsig inexplicably stops at the middle of the 19th century. With the exception of Poincaré, he ignores the more recent philosophers who have tackled his most urgent questions, thinkers such as Peirce, Nietzsche (to whom Phaedrus bears a passing resemblance), Heidegger, Whitehead, Dewey, Sartre, Wittgenstein, and Kuhn. In the end, the narrator's claims to originality turn out to be overstated, his reasoning questionable, and his understanding of the history of Western thought sketchy. His solution to a synthesis of the rational and creative by elevating Quality to a metaphysical level simply repeats the mistakes of the premodern philosophers. But in contrast to most other philosophers, Pirsig writes a compelling story. And he is a true innovator in his attempt to popularize a reconciliation of Eastern mindfulness and nonrationalism with Western subject/object dualism. The magic of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance turns out to lie not in the answers it gives, but in the questions it raises and the way it raises them. Like a cross between The Razor's Edge and Sophie's World, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance takes us into "the high country of the mind" and opens our eyes to vistas of possibility. --Brian Bruya |
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
A Journey Into Excellence
Rating:
I first read this masterpiece of fiction when I was fifteen, I remember clearly it was 1980 and I spent days in my room trying to understand the big words and attempting to figure out all the characters Pirsig would reference, Kant, Hume, Poincare, and the ancient Greeks. Since we were well before a simple Wikipedia search, it would be years before I would hear most of their names again. What I do remember very clearly is that when I emerged from my room I knew I was going to college to become a Mechanical Engineer. I had long since forgotten why I came to that conclusion until I relived my young experience on page 176 just a few days ago. It was my third reading of this great book.
My second reading came in 1992, I was 28. In those days I was brash, arrogant, and full of gumption, as Pirsig would call it. I knew a lot more about philosophy and theology and engineering then I did my first time through. I also owned a motorcycle and had completed an active duty tour in the military. I was working as a systems engineer for the DoD and was in school working on my second Master's degree. The book still made sense... a lot of sense. At that point I knew it had nothing to do with Zen and even less to do with motorcycle maintenance, but Pirsig has always told us that up front.
Fast forward sixteen years...a family, a company, a new career, a fresh read. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is still every bit the masterpiece it was back in 1974. But then what is it about - if it's not about Zen or art of motorcycle maintenance? Certainly much has been written over the past four decades attempting to define exactly what Pirsig was trying to tell us. No need for that. Read the book, Pirsig will tell you. No matter what you may hear, no matter what you may think, this book defines for us that which can never be expressed through words and rational thought alone. It must be experienced. Experience is the life changer, not thoughts or deeds. Experience this book and understand why.
Quality vs. Aesthetics
Rating:
I may not quite be well versed enough in classic Greek dialogs to fully "get" this, although it is considered a classic by millions of readers. I understand and appreciate that the author was trying to find a way to synthesize his own thoughts about Eastern philosophy with his classical Western training, but I found it sort of boring and confusing. I believe it was revolutionary at the time, but now if I wanted to find out more about Asian philosophy, I'd go right to the source (and have, see Masao Abe's Zen and Western Thought.)
What I did find interesting in the story was the narrator's portrayal of how he remembers what he was like before he had a nervous breakdown and received shock treatments, as opposed to how he is now. He attempts to reconcile his emerging original personality with his new one in a way that parallels his integration of Eastern and Western thought.
I wish there had been more focus on how the re-emergence of the original personality was going to affect his family relationships. Would he go back to his obsession with philosophical questions to the exclusion of his family, or would he now be able to find a better balance?
A final thought is a quote I heard recently to the effect that the more a man considers his work to be revolutionary and important to the world, the more likely he is to have a nervous breakdown, which seems to be what happened here.
I tried to shoulder on...
Rating:
I read three hundred pages of the four hundred and thirty or so between the front and back cover. There is only one other book I can recall so vehemently closing for good and that was Prozac Nation. There may not be a direct connection, but both narrators seem to whine a lot. At least in Prozac Nation we know the narrator is a self-indulgent nymphomaniac drug abuser.
I understand this book is philosophical in nature, and my review may come off as unlearned and ignorant. I am neither, as I have had academic exposure to the material before picking up Zen and the blah blah blah. This book is neither about zen nor philosophy. It's a whole bunch of whining about some prettied up existential crisis the narrator suffers. The author inflicts his issues upon the reader without a sense of reason, though he attempts to explain reason over and over and over. I thought for a second, around page one hundred-fifty or so, he might be on his way to eastern philosophy on the Gita and doing one's duty for its own sake but he lost me again with more whining. I put this book out in the trash. If I want someone's existential crisis foisted upon me, I'll settle for my own.
Tough to follow, but worth it.
Rating:
Starts out lighthearted, then develops into one of the toughest reads I have ever encountered without a grade hanging in the balance. Pirsig chronicles his self-evaluation and re-living of a descent into madness -- actual mental illness followed by his commitment and eventual state-forced electro-shock therapy. You have to wonder along the way whether he'll go "insane" again by this re-evaluation. You also have to wonder along the way "Who Cares?" as Pirsig analyzes deep philosophical conundrums that plague him. But he puts these deep philosophical analyses in everyday context, and convinces himself -- and hopefully the reader -- that these questions should be addressed by everyone. Worth the trip down the rabbit hole.
This is So Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Rating:
I love this book for two reasons. The content makes me go "aom - aom" and the condition of the book reminds me of my youth when I first read it.
I love this transaction for two reasons. The bookseller followed up with a note reminding me of what I had ordered and that this definitely was not a book in crispy, new condition AND it came earlier than estimated.
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