Zen and the Art of Robert M. Pirsig

“First you get the feeling, then you figure out why.”

— Robert M. Pirsig in ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance’

We’re coming up soon on the fourth anniversary of the death of Robert M. Pirsig.

Those of us who grew up in a certain time and place and were of a niche mindset are likely to remember, with extreme affection, the weathered paperbacks we tucked into our backpacks and hauled off to school.  Owning a copy and showing off its shopworn cover and tattered pages to those around us conferred a faddish literary diploma heralding a ritual of passage.

Virginity had nothing to do with sex.  You’d either read it and dug it, or you didn’t.  It was like your mind got laid.

“Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values” (ZAAM) exceeded the typical narrative of stretching far beyond most of our juvenile comprehensions.  It was an overhaul for the mind.  Transformative.

Indeed, for so very many, it was a literary coming of age and ultimately a grand philosophical awareness and spiritual awakening — a mesmerizing journey, destination, and arrival all bound into 418 pages of quixotic narrative that was equal parts confusing and brilliant.  How you interpreted ZAMM and what you took away during and after delving into the thoughts and experiences of the author writing this “fictionalized biography” depended entirely upon your own stage of life and mental state, and there are some who read it at 20 and others who read it at 60 and talking to them about it later you’d never know it was the same book.  For the reader, it could even be the same person interpreting different things at 20 and later at 60.  Channeling Sartre and alternative existential realities, everyone who read it drew something much deeper out of the book.  My reading and review is not your experience nor perception, and vice versa.

My memories of that first reading faded now.  I remember ZAMM only from the perspective of an impressionable teenager, because that was my prism upon the first reading, sometime during the late 1970s.  Moreover, I wasn’t motivated to ponder the philosophical questions posed by the author on their own merits.  All I knew — if you wanted to be one of the cool kids, you did two things — you bought every Led Zeppelin album and you paraded this book right next to Anna Karenina as if to parrot and brag, hey, look what I’m into and I’m in AP English and you’re not.  To pick up girls, this was the book to be reading while sitting in a quiet corner at the keg party, but the more likely turnout was some unwanted flower-shirted guy sitting down next to you who also read it, so it was a double-edged greasy chain.  In this way, ZAMM was the egalitarian passport obliterating all social and economic barriers.  Even the rich kids who I equally envied and despised couldn’t match the creative curiosity of what was written within the pages of a book with such an outrageous title as “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.”

First published in 1974, ZAMM was equal parts of Kerouac and Kant then rolled down a hill, a narrative journey and philosophical memoir that would ultimately sell six million copies and be widely praised as one of the most important books written of the last 50 years.

Pirsig, who took this journey and later embellishes it and thank goodness for that, wrestles both with the ghost of his past and with some of the most important philosophical questions of modern times — namely why has technology alienated us from our world and what are the limits of rational analysis?  If Pirsig were writing a sequel, what would he say today about social media?   Mark it down and trademark this title:  Zen and the Art of Software Design

Oh, shit, nevermind (Example 1) and, Oh shit, nevermind (Example 2).  Like For Dummies, it’s degraded into a vast cottage industry.

Like so many great things, this was “thought art” ahead of its time.  Translation:  It took time to grow a following. Pirsig later revealed that ZAMM had been rejected 121 times before finally being accepted for publication.

Yet what is most fascinating (now) is to observe the reactions to the book then and now, from reviewers.  Many hated it back when they first read it in the 70s and love it now — and vice versa. Admittedly, I have not re-read it in 40 years.  Perhaps I shall endeavor to do so at some point, I don’t know when.

In the meantime, I’m working on my new book, Zen and the Art of Procrastination.  

I’m almost done and will finish it later.  Eventually.  Next month.