The question is in the title. Have at it.
I myself have no opinion, though I will say I read Zen and thought it was so-so. I’ve read Lila about 8 times and love it. I haven’t read Lila’s Child yet.
I managed to read Zen about 15 years ago. That was before I had kids - I definitely wouldn’t waste that much time now. I had heard of the book so much, that as I trudged through it, I kept expecting some great revelation at the end. I was really p*ssed that I had spent all that time on a boring task only to find nothing at the end. The only thing I can think of that people get out of it is some kind of “gain through suffering” thing. If it’s miserable, it must be good for you.
I found Zen tedious, but maybe because I read it only sporadically. But I think Lila is a delightful and fun read. I’m just not sure if the philosophy is sound.
Well, I really liked the sections of Zen where he talks about his experiences teaching freshman English, and in particular his experiment with withholding grades – I think he does have some fairly sharp (if depressing) insights about the educational system. The rest of the book, I have to admit, didn’t do all that much for me, but I like to assign that excerpt in my own freshman comp classes. (The students, I have to admit, are not usually as taken with his ideas as I am, but it leads to some interesting discussion :))
Too little Zen, too little motorcycle maintenence, too much pontificating. Later books, from my skimming, have no Zen or bikes so all you get is cutsie-pie pontificating.
The guy started out as a hack. I don’t know how tired he is but I find him absolutely insufferable.
That’s the thing about him, I find his little stories are entertaining and thought provoking. (Lila is much better at this than Zen.) It’s the overarching philosophy that I question. But the little stuff is great. The stuff I especially enjoyed from Lila is:
Why cruiseships suck
Why computers are great
The cultural immune system stuff
New York City as an organism
Celebrity in American culture
Why the 60s created a more violent America
The nature of insanity
How come?
And of course, you realize that the books were not supposed to be actual instruction manuals on motorcycles, right? Pontificating was the entire purpose.
I think that’s the point. An instruction manual on motorcycles would be a far better read.
I think we should take into account the time the book was written. I can’t really speak to the Zeitgeist since I was so young then, but here are some things that occur to me.
1974 was a very different time from today. My parents were young-ish in the 1950s, and my sister was born in the '50s. This was a prosperous time in America’s history. The post-war era suggested all sorts of modern advances, many of which actually came to be. While there were tensions with the Soviet Union and racism in the U.S., it seems to me that it was a fairly optimistic time. The early-1960s seemed to be a continuation of the '50s. With prosperity came consumerism. And there was the beginnings of the Drug Culture. The U.S. (and others) were involved in a war in Vietnam. As the '60s progressed, rock & roll-listening, drug-taking, peacenik hippies and many intellectuals began to question why we were in Vietnam. They began to question why we still had racial segregation. (Yes, I know that this began earlier, but you get my point.) People started questioning the American Value System. The Beatles were hanging out with gurus, and Eastern religions started to enlighten people the way that Judeo-Christianity didn’t.
I remember the early-1970s. Macrame and candle-making were big. People were turning from the modern furniture of the '50s and '60s to more rustic furnishings. There was Earth Day, and recycling began to take off. (I remember making money by collecting aluminum cans when I was a kid.) The Hobbit became popular, and people drew similarities between The Lord of the Rings and rampant industrialism. The war in Vietnam sowed seeds of doubt in people’s minds about whether the government was working in their best interest. (Indeed, the Watergate Scandal changed the course of politics in this country and more and more people started to distrust the government.)
In short, there were a lot of people who began questioning consumerism and turning to a ‘back to nature’ view.
I didn’t read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance until the late-1980s – well after its first publication in 1974. I’ve read it a couple more times since then; but I have to admit that there are so many other things in my mind, and that it’s been so long since the last time I read it, that I don’t remember a whole lot of it. So maybe I shouldn’t be posting about it. But anyway…
The first time I read it I was ‘young and idealistic’. I lived in the Mojave Desert, and summers would find me in rural Oregon. I appreciate The Outside. When I was a kid, visiting my grandparents’ place in Oregon, I loved the peace and quiet of the forest, which was so much different from San Diego where I lived until I was 15. I could fish, ride my Enduro, swim in the creek, or float in an inner tube on the Applegate River. I listened to John Denver singing about Nature.
So what I took from Prisig’s book was that there are more important things in life than making money. I still feel that there are more important things than making money – but I’m a bit of a realist, and enjoy the comforts that money can bring. And as an avid motorcyclist and pilot, I can really appreciate the way Pirsig described being in the picture instead of just looking at it from the outside. But my last reading of the book left me with a different feeling. I felt that it was a good philosophy for hippies and other ‘back to Nature’ people. I thought it was ‘sweet’ that people could have such fantasies of freedom.
Today the world is smaller. When Thor Heyerdahl took the Kon-Tiki on its 101-day voyage, it was an incredible feat. (Notwithstanding that his theories were proved wrong.) Imagine being able to just float away to a South Seas island! Climbing Mt. Everest was a feat as well; though nowadays even unqualified amateurs attempt it, seemingly as an ego-trip for those who have a lot of money to spend. Jacques Cousteau opened up The Silent World to us, and now millions of people dive. Boat charters can take divers virtually anywhere in comfort.
I guess what I’m saying is that things have changed. We still go on adventures, but adventuring today is much easier than it used to be. And many of the adventures are no longer the realm of solitary people or small teams, but Big Business. It just seems more difficult to leave the world behind.
Having said all of that, I guess I’m saying that Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was a good idea at the time – possibly the last time in our history when such a philosophy may have been valid. Today it just seems to be irrelevant nostalgia.
But I still ride motorcycles. 
Yup. I’m exposed to enough pompous assholes when I’m alone. I don’t feel a need to hang out with somebody who embodies the worst qualities of every one of my professors.
Maybe that’s it–are you people who actually LIKE Pirsig current or recent college students?
Interesting that what you take away from it is all about being on the road and getting back to nature. My impression was that that was not what it was about at all. It was about quality (and gumption, and mental health). The motorcycle stuff was just superfluous junk. And I think Lila, while not strictly about sailing, was more relevant to to 90s. And it had an interesting take on what went wrong in the 60s.
Nope, although I have some latent hippie in my blood. And I’m certainly a leftist.
Heh. All that typing, and I didn’t fully address that. ‘Quality’ is indeed mentioned one or two times in the book. For me, ‘quality’ is wrapped up in several things. When I talk about taking adventures, that’s part of ‘quality’. Having the ‘gumption’ (as you put it) to undertake these adventures is also a part of it. As for mental health, one of my favourite sayings is ‘You never see a motorcycle parked outside of a psychiatrist’s office.’ Riding a motorcycle (or flying a plane or a motorcycle) is excellent mental floss. Some have other pursuits; those are mine. One of my favourite experiences is of taking a motorcycle ride one day, and ending up north of San Francisco. I figured the bike knew where to go. Others involve taking off in a Cessna on a see-forever day and enjoying the view of the desert, or of flying a helicopter low over the hills of Southern California.
So when I talk of adventures, the idea of ‘quality’ (as Persig spoke of it) is more-or-less wrapped up in the definition. But I could never live my life along Pirsig’s ideals. Like it or not, we have responsibilities. Besides, it could get pretty boring after a while.
Actually, it’s how Pirsig put it.
It’s a good saying, but untrue. Years ago I was part of a group, and one of my fellow patients was a big-time biker.
Where do you get that Pirsig’s ideals include having no responsibility? That was an impression I never got.
I took quite a lot away from Zen, although probably none of the “conventional” things that the author might have expected his readers to find. Generally it was small things that kind of resonated:
- When he’s out riding with his close friend (forget his name), his friend’s bike breaks down. Pirsig suggests a perfect solution for the problem, which involves cutting up a Coke can and inserting a square piece of metal into a particular place. His friend will not hear of this because he has a brand new BMW bike and he Will Not have his brand new BMW bike fixed by a bit of spare metal.
He doesn’t realise that the cut up bit of Coke can is actually the perfect size and strength to fix the problem. He just sees a Coke can and he sees his brand new BMW and he “knows” that the Coke can is not good enough. He needs to take his bike into a proper BMW dealership and fix his bike properly.
In short, he sees the form but misses the underlying system. Whenever you take your car to a mechanic, you will notice the mechanic may do nothing for a minute but listen to the car. He will turn his head to one side and think. This is because he is thinking in terms of systems, not form. He knows that a car engine is a chain with many links and so he’s thinking systematically, trying to imagine underlying systems not the immediate symptoms.
I’ve noticed this myself in real life whenever I’ve taken a vehicle to a mechanic. They think in terms of systems, not form. They are imagining blueprints of transmission systems or whatever.
The same close friend (of Pirsig’s) has a wife (can’t remember her name either). Pirsig often goes round to their house. He loves them but he notices that occasionally they flare up at each other for no real reason. Then he notices that the tap (faucet) in the kitchen is slowly dripping. He asks them about it but they tell him that it’s not enough of a problem to fix.
Pirsig realises that the constant drip - drip of the tap is driving stress levels up and the couple don’t even realise that that is the cause. He realises that fixing the dripping faucet would be a simple matter - all it required was a new washer. But the couple are not thinking in terms of underlying systems and so they never home in on the dripping tap as the cause of their stress.
I really like Zen. I really like Lila. I didn’t know there was a third book – I’ll have to pick that up sometime soon.
At any rate, about Zen. Is it serious philosophy? I don’t think so, although it’s good for piquing interest in the ancient Greeks and introducing one take on a system of metaphysics (the notion of quality).
Here’s how I saw the book. The…what was it called?..chataugua, right?..on the motorcycle was just a metaphor that served two purposes. First, it gave a format/structure to the book. It was a spin on the travelouge format (akin to Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley). But, the important travelling was his mental journey, not the motorcycle trip. In one of my readings of it, I paid attention to the environment he was describing, which match the “idea terrain” he’s putting forward at the time.
One of the things (I think) he’s pointing out is that everyone operates with some system of metaphysics that underlies their lives. One example is his interactions with John and Sylvia (the couple he rides with at the beginning). They’re used to demonstrate the difference between science/art metaphysics, while rolling into social commentary. There’s plenty of that throughout the book. Somehow, he’s trying to establish common ground, with a consistent view, that meshes opposites. I thought he tied it all in together in a wonderfully layered, entertaining way.
But that’s just me. Obviously, it didn’t work for others.
I never said it was true. Nevertheless, riding a motorcycle (if that’s your bag) is good for clearing the mind. One might say the same thing about any pursuit in which one is interested.
Poor wording on my part. I tend to try to condense things when I type on a message board (not that you’d know it by my overly verbose posts), and I sometimes condense too much. And it’s been a while since I’ve read Zen. Suffice it to say that after my last reading, I didn’t find his ideas as relevant as when I first read the book.
I’ve read ‘Motorcyle’ twice that I remember. The first time I was a college kid (I think) and I got really into the philospohy parts. I skimmed throught the plot part to get to Phaedrus stuff. And I thought it was kind of deep at the time.
The next time I read it was at maybe 7-8 years later. What’s funny is that I picked it up to read all the Quality stuff again, but I really got wrapped up in the plot then - the character interaction between the father and son, and the quiet little bits of the book. I ended up skipping most of the philosophy.
So, I guess my take on it is, it’s probably not great philosophy, but it kept me interested through two readings for two different reasons.
Re: Jojo’s comments on underlying processes - I just finished an MBA course in Operations Management (manufacturing processes, queueing, etc), and the intro lecture included quotes on Quality from Pirsig. You never know when stuff is going to show up!
Popular philosophy seems to get a raw deal in general. People like Pirsig, Ayn Rand, Alain de Bouton (UK pop philosopher who is wildly ridiculed in the press) get charicatured as chin-stroking blowhards who have nothing useful to contribute.
Silly really, there has to be some middle ground between Hegel and Oprah Winfrey; those people who can interpret dense philosophical concepts for a general audience deserve praise and respect. Not sure if Pirsig is one of these, but I enjoyed ZAMM. I didn’t realise as a lad the analytical rigour that underlies philosophy, Pirsig does a good job of getting this across I think.
It’s my favorite epistemology. His manner of presenting it (as an unfolding narrative presented by a character rather than a formal essay on Meaning and Knowledge) is entirely in keeping with his own philosophy…
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In the Classical description, the motorcycle is all divided up into these named component pieces, and you get the idea that those divisions are all intrinsically there, but the mind does that, weilding the knife of distinction, dividing the sand of existence up into piles of this and that, etc. And there’s something else missing from this Classical description of the motorcycle: a person sitting in the middle of all that’s described, doing the cutting with the knife of distinction, sorting the sand.
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(That’s a semi-quote, drawn from memory, I don’t have the text with me here).
I think Pirsig is fundamentally accurate in his epistemology. He improves on hermeneutics and wipes phenomenology completely off the map, IMHO.
I’m always astonished at the number of people who read it as a fiction book with a plot etc. Not that it doesn’t have some of that, but as fiction it kind of sucks. I sure wouldn’t make a movie from it. But as an explication of a theory of thought, meaning, knowledge, perception, etc, it’s highly accessible, far more so than the typical treatise that assaults you with badly defined polysyllables and unsufficient discussion-level development.
As accessible as it is, though, I think you have to go at it knowing from the start that you’re holding an advanced epistemology and metaphysics textbook in your hands, and take notes and reread earlier sections after you see where he’s gone with it and so on.