Customer Reviews
Number of Reviews: 8
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Good read
A reviewer, A reviewer, 07/25/2008
A book not only about 'hogs', but about a father and son and
life itself. A good read if you get a chance.
This is a book about Philosophy, not Eastern Studies
Tom MacKnight, an architect, 07/20/2008
I’ve read and re-read this work. I can understand how it might be a difficult read for some. After all, it is about Philosophy. A subject considered difficult and dry by many folks. However, it is one of the best modern works about Values. I highly recommend the book. It is a work of Philosophy, not Eastern Studies. In addition, it contains little instruction about motorcycle maintenance. It is a presentation of Quality, of the meaning of Quality and Value. In their bookstores, Barnes and Noble have incorrectly filed it alongside of books about Eastern Studies, other books with Zen in their title. Don't buy this book to help you meditate, or to help you fix your motorcycle, It a modern classic book on the subject of Philosophy which should be placed alongside the works of Plato on the bookshelves.
An extraordinary read
curt, oakland, ca, A reviewer, 02/20/2006
I just finished re-reading this gem of a book. When I first read it, some 22 years ago, it spoke to so much of what I was grappling with and had no words for as I came to grips with a culture and society that seemed at best disinterested, and at times, hostile to any notion of authentic self-expression and communication. In the intervening years, through the participation in a rigorous discipline, I have come to have a deep regard and appreciation for the language and distinctions he creates, which are as fresh and powerful now as they were then. What Pirsig shares with us, his readers, is an extraordinary journey to the heart of our humanity, played out in multiple layers. I cannot recommend this book too highly. For me, it is one for all ages.
Also recommended: Joseph Chilton Pierce - Crack in the Cosmic Egg, Magical Child
Jeff Hawkins - On Intelligence
Jean-Dominique Bauby - the Diving Bell and the Butterfly
There's Something In There
Steven Harvey, an Engineer, 01/14/2006
I'm reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance for the third time. Each time I read it I get a bit closer to understanding what Pirsig is after. It's not necessarily a page turner but following Pirsig's thought process as he lives his adventure and ponders his soul at the same time fits my perspective of life. It seems that if what you do (as in a job or a hobby or in relationships) is a function of who you are as a person and this 'what you do' evolves as you evolve in your life, then maybe you will get a glimpse of Pirsig's message. If you are a person that what you do dictates who you are, then maybe you can read this book with the slim chance of understanding the deeper meaning of life and the human experience and make some connection with spirituality and the whole of life. I am sure that I will read this book many more times before I move on. There is something in there and I would like to find it.
Time to grow
A reviewer, a father of wonderful children, 09/22/2005
I would recommend this book strongly, though I believe many people will not enjoy it.
The journey the author takes us on is fascinating and surprising with 3 different levels of story being told. On the surface the book is about a motorcycle trip a man takes with his son, (the next part sounds high-brow just be patient) used as a backdrop for an effort to integrate Eastern and Western philosophical thought at its roots… using motorcycle maintenance as an analogical tool for understanding. However, I think the most important story is his exploration of mental illness from the insider’s point of view.
The story of a man and son on a trip has a nice little short story feel that could be enjoyed in the pages of Readers digest in years gone by.
His explorations of philosophy, and critique of the dialectic patterns of thinking in our culture that overlays the trip story was for me a stunning revelation. I don’t know how original his thinking is as I have never been a philosophy student, so many of the ideas in the book were outside my education and were original to me.
When people talk about whether or not we are smarter than our 'ignorant peasant' ancestors (after all we’ve flown to the moon, have computers and stuff), the consensus among our educators seems to be that we are not any smarter. The big difference between ourselves and our ancestors is that we have words for things and concepts that they never did, invented by many very smart people over thousands of years. We get to read the “big book of words and concepts” (metaphorical book) our ancestors wrote, and writing a book is a heck of a lot harder than reading one. Pirsig gave me words in his book for concepts I'd been batting around in my head for years but didn't have the words to describe.
It is however his chautauqua through his own mental illness that I found to be his most subtle and yet poignant story. I suspect that there are many people in our society who are quite screwed up, and who hide themselves behind a veil of intellectualism. His first person narrative was always that of the sane person, and it wasn’t until the end that we see how disconnected he was with his emotions because of his earlier illness, a disconnect that created a wall between his son and himself that he thought was because of his son’s own dawning challenges with mental illness.
By the end of the book I came to suspect that what Pirsig was really doing was talking about his journey from “sanity” to emotional health, as an example of his path to enlightenment in the Eastern religious tradition.
I’ve read in a number of reviews that this book is hard to understand, and it might be although I found it to be a very easy read. The one recommendation I would make is take your time with it and don’t try to do it all at once. In today’s fast paced environment of instant messaging, a book that is the written equivalent of sitting on the porch in a rocking chair presents its own difficulties. Take your time and you might be surprised at what this Buddha has shown us.
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