Zen and the art of Motorcycle Maintenance : : an Inquiry Into Values

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Westgate Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Nonfiction / Philosophy / Pirsig, Robert M.	4-week checkout	Due 05-17-2024

Autobiographical.

COMMUNITY REVIEWS

Provocative submitted by Jan Wolter on August 4, 2013, 7:52pm This is simultaneously a novel, a philosophy book, and the autobiography of a troubled man, and it's rather brilliant on all those levels. There is only a little motorcycle maintenance, and even less Zen in it. A father takes a cross country motorcycle trip with his son and friends, while pondering various deep questions. He drifts more and more into reviewing the philosophical ideas developed by "Phaedrus", the man he used to be before he suffered a major psychological breakdown. I've read this about four or five times, and it's never quite managed to convince me that it's philosophical conclusions are entirely true or all that helpful, but there is hardly a more engaging and thought provoking book in the English language.

Not for everybody! submitted by EJZ on June 24, 2018, 9:42am Readers of Thoreau, Emerson, and Dillard will be entranced with this book. In the best traditions of transcendentalism, Zen is about the journey, and the answers that we find when asking the difficult questions, about fairness, and quality.

You, as the reader, are taken along on a journey. Pirsig writes with his hands and head, and analyzes a concept in much the same way he would diagnose a problem with his motorcycle. You begin with knowledge, and you form it into a tool with which to attack a problem. The chapters alternate between storyline and chautauqua, or philosophical probing. It strikes a good balance between plot and deep thought, and Pirsig is able to draw the two disparate halves together quite well.

Quality is a powerful word, and you will understand much more of it when you finish this book. It's not for everybody, but it's a fantastic read for some.

z submitted by kscapellie on July 13, 2020, 5:20pm journey and analyzing

Must Read submitted by sVfGI7Glt2pz7GZgVB90 on July 23, 2020, 8:43am
Pirsig's first and bestselling book is a narrative of a trip by motorcycle across the USA which explores the place of technology in the modern world and grapples with age-old philosophical conundrums.

Mixed with his philosophical musings on the tension between culture and counterculture, humans and machines, mind and body, and his own experience with schizophrenia.

I did like it submitted by lizgiessner on June 30, 2023, 8:23am It took me 4 weeks to get through this book - lots of hard-to-understand ideas on philosophy, "Quality", and classifications. The afterward, explaining the book's popularity and what happened to the family, was the most interesting part, but some good stuff (imo) throughout.