I think this has to be my take on him as well. He’ll never be taken very seriously in the philosophy and science communities, but as an armchair philosopher, he can be an entertaining author. Or not, depending on the reader.
But I find he has some interesting thoughts that fill my head with interesting thoughts.
I guess semi-quotes deserve to have their quote tags reversed like that…
Proving beyond a doubt that you, sir, are no Robert Redford. 
Whatever happened with that, anyway? Did Redford decide that it wouldn’t make such a good movie after all? Did Pirsig decide not to sell his soul to Hollywood? Or was the whole notion of a movie pure fiction to begin with?
Hello,
I am a boomer so as to set perspective on my age. In 1990, an MBA night course required reading list included a chapter from this book (“Art of Zen…”). It was the chapter about form and substance. I found it interesting. Now that I am doing a good deal more reading and I stumbled upon the book in a used book store, I am starting it.
I am only about 30 pages in and I am feeling as if I have to finish it no matter what. I love the logo with the flower and the wrench but I doubt if John and Sylvia are still speaking to him.
He makes some good points about the general superficiality of our culture but he sounds a bit like a intellectual snob. I’m embarrassed for him when he describes moments when he is letting John off the hook by dropping a conversation or pulling back. I’ve been uneasy at times around those condescending “engineering types” and maybe that’s a similar situation. I never felt a need to apologize for lack of comfort with differential equations although some them may have been expecting one.
I am determined to finish this. I may get it done in record time since it may feel so good when it’s over (borrowed from my X). I am hoping it gets better and I welcome comments.
There are favorable comments about another book that I shall investigate.
May your soul keep getting younger.
Gus
I hate it when I’m beaten to a good joke by 9 years. Feh, a pox on you, good sirrah!
“It’s only an analogy” was the point of ZATAOMM, and it took about 300 pages to get there. A correct philosophical point. That doesn’t make him a philosopher. It is a work of fiction, not philosophy. It was readable, but not great literature.
Most works of philosophy are things that are (at best) readable but not great literature.
And some great philosophy, like Critique of Pure Reason, and Whitehead and Russell are completely unreadable.
And nine years later, has my assessment changed? Nah!
It doesn’t, and if you’ve read 30 pages you’ve read it all. The boy do go on. And on. Like most self-help books it would make a nice essay, but there’s no money in essays so it gets padded.
Brilliant hack.
There is a middle ground. Just don’t expect it to be taken as seriously as that which meets more rigorous standards of cogency. You can buy it all day long at Borders.
I read ZAMM more than a decade ago. I liked it, but more as a study of someone suffering from deep damaging mental illness who was nonetheless able to write clearly (If sometimes maudlin, self-pitying, and incoherent.) As a work of Philosophy it was abysmal. As I recall, a lot of what he wrote about Aristotle was simply wrong. I doubt most of his impressions of his teachers had any grounding in reality, and were mostly distortions of his own unfortunately troubled brain.
As I said though, it was a long time ago.
I’ve read Zen a couple of times. Loses luster each time. Couldn’t get through 30 pages of Lila.
I don’t know how to do spoilers, but there is an afterwardabout his son chris from zen.
I was a voracious reader as a kid. I even loved all the assigned reading we had in school. Until one year when one of our summer reading assignments for a high school English class included Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Ugh. It was the first time I ever felt like reading was a chore–the first time I ever wanted to put a book down unfinished.
Well, I enjoyed Zen and the Art … a lot when I read it, years ago. “Brilliant philosopher or tired hack” seems about as false a dichotomy as anyone could possibly devise. How about “reasonably decent novelist”?