# Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [May 8, 2008, 2:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/zen-and-the-art-of-motorcycle-maintenance/448568 "2008-05-08T14:59:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2017, 2:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/zen-and-the-art-of-motorcycle-maintenance/448568/41 "2017-04-25T02:56:56Z")
There was depressingly little about motorcycle maintenance, but it was a BMW and didn’t need much. It’s been awhile, so IIRC don’t get attached to any of his kids. ---
**Author:** ![Gatopescado](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gatopescado/32/5711_2.png) [@Gatopescado](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gatopescado)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2017, 3:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/zen-and-the-art-of-motorcycle-maintenance/448568/42 "2017-04-25T03:30:27Z")
My asshole stoner older brother always talked about this and preached how I should read it, like he was some kind of dope-addled Svengali. I knew even at 16, if he thought it was “something special, deep and philosophical”, I should avoid it like the clap. Fuck it. I rode a Yamaha. Only thing I ever had to do to it was keep gas in it. Never read it, never intend to. He’s dead. Ran into an Elk. And that’s not just my theory. ---
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2017, 10:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/zen-and-the-art-of-motorcycle-maintenance/448568/43 "2017-04-25T10:44:20Z")
> [@PastTense](#): > > Updating this thread Robert Pirsig is dead at age 88: > [Minnesota’s Robert Pirsig, author of ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,’ has died – Twin Cities](http://www.twincities.com/2017/04/24/robert-m-pirsig-million-selling-zen-author-dead-at-88/) “Safari cannot open the page because so many redirects occurred.” Seems fitting somehow. ---
**Author:** ![Pork\_Rind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pork_rind/32/111_2.png) [@Pork\_Rind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pork_Rind)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2017, 12:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/zen-and-the-art-of-motorcycle-maintenance/448568/44 "2017-04-25T12:58:27Z")
> [@dropzone](#): > > There was depressingly little about motorcycle maintenance, but it was a BMW and didn’t need much. > > It’s been awhile, so IIRC don’t get attached to any of his kids. Nah, it was a '64 Honda Super Hawk, 305CCs. It was his friends riding along that had the BMW. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2017, 2:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/zen-and-the-art-of-motorcycle-maintenance/448568/45 "2017-04-25T14:59:31Z")
> [@Gatopescado](#): > > Fuck it. I rode a Yamaha. Only thing I ever had to do to it was keep gas in it. > > Never read it, never intend to. I’ve ridden Yamahas since I was ten. I’ve read the book twice (but not in this century.) ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2017, 3:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/zen-and-the-art-of-motorcycle-maintenance/448568/46 "2017-04-25T15:27:45Z")
I often find it jaw-droppingly bewildering to discuss this book with people who don’t like it. (And even with some of those who do). It’s not a fiction book. OK, yes it is too a fiction book, technically speaking. But it is far less of a fiction book than C. S. Lewis’s _The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe_ which is so often discussed as a theological treatise. Pirsig had his reasons for writing it the way that he did, but if you’re not the kind of person who would have engaged in discussions about quality and meaning and whatnot if you’d been on a motorcycle journey with him, this probably isn’t a good book for you. It’s fundamentally a philosophy, specifically a metaphysics + epistemology. It’s done informally on purpose, in keeping with the very assertions he’s making in his philosophical viewpoint. > [@](#): > > The guy’s philosophical stuff keeps going off the rails At no point did I experience his philosophical stuff as going off the rails. Perhaps you disagree with it. Perhaps you found it difficult to understand in places. Anyway, the “philosophical stuff” is the book, it’s the reason for the existence of the book, there’s no other there there to speak of. It does technically function as a fiction book if you ignore that stuff, I suppose, but not a very good one. > [@](#): > > he will chuck a line of reasoning and start over somewhere else You sure you read the same book?? I found his musings to be contiguous and to build on each other. At very points did he appear to have chucked a line of reasoning. At most, he backtracked from a line of thought after seeing a problem with it, then branched off in a slightly different direction, but never “chucking it all”. > [@](#): > > I really don’t care about his mental masturbation I don’t think this book is for you. > [@](#): > > What is interesting is the back story interwoven into the philosophical rumination. > > What I want to know is, is it worth finishing the book to find out what is going on in his personal story? Well, the back story is interesting TO ME, but it is hard to see how it would be interesting to anyone who wasn’t also immersed in the ongoing development of his philosophy. For example, the interchange between him and the academics in charge at the Philosphy Department in Chicago where he obtains considerable amusement from how they react when confronted with a live Sophist when they had only had experience with dead ones. Trying to follow his personal story and obtain entertainment value in it without giving a shit about the “mental masturbation” is sort of like hoping to enjoy “the Natural” or “Field of Dreams” if you have no interest in or understanding of baseball and baseball culture. ---
**Author:** ![leftfield6](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leftfield6/32/18780_2.png) [@leftfield6](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/leftfield6)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2017, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/zen-and-the-art-of-motorcycle-maintenance/448568/47 "2017-04-25T15:52:05Z")
> [@dropzone](#): > > There was depressingly little about motorcycle maintenance, but it was a BMW and didn’t need much. > > It’s been awhile, so IIRC don’t get attached to any of his kids. As an owner of a BMW motorcycle, this made me do a double take. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![epbrown01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7ba0ec/32.png) [@epbrown01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/epbrown01)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2017, 1:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/zen-and-the-art-of-motorcycle-maintenance/448568/48 "2017-04-26T01:18:41Z")
> [@leftfield6](#): > > As an owner of a BMW motorcycle, this made me do a double take. 😃 For the time, remember. And BMW was more about long distance reliability back then, where now they seem to be about cramming in the latest tech and letting the customers trouble-shoot it for them. 😉 (Hoping to look at a '72 R60/5 tomorrow, btw). ---
**Author:** ![ThelmaLou](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thelmalou/32/390_2.png) [@ThelmaLou](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ThelmaLou)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2017, 12:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/zen-and-the-art-of-motorcycle-maintenance/448568/49 "2017-04-27T00:47:08Z")
> [@AHunter3](#): > > I often find it jaw-droppingly bewildering to discuss this book with people who don’t like it. (And even with some of those who do). > > \… Yup. I read this book in the summer of 1974 at the age of 25 while on a road trip from south Texas to St. Louis. In a Chevy Vega with no air conditioning. Elton John’s “Philadelphia Freedom” played on the radio a lot. Memorable breakfast with homemade biscuits in West Memphis Arkansas. The Mississippi. Perfect. I loved this book. I’ve often cited his discussion of Quality and how people can recognize it without knowing how they recognize it. I have a good friend (my age) who refused to read the book because he thought the title was both precious and pretentious. I tried to explain that it is neither; the title is perfectly descriptive. The book is absolutely about Zen AND motorcycle maintenance. RIP Robert Pirsig. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/zen-and-the-art-of-motorcycle-maintenance/448568.md?page=2)