WTG Devin

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert Pirsig, has really good intentions, but very little follow through, just like a twelve-year-old’s penis. Zen isn’t really a novel because its plot – a father taking his son on a cross-country motorcycle trip – is mostly just a metaphor for the narrator’s philosophical journey through his past and mind. This might not be so bad if it wasn’t so repetitive – but after the tenth time in as many pages Pirsig compares his philosophic progress with the weather him and his son are biking through I wanted to stab someone’s face with an ice pick. Oh, you’re having trouble thinking about philosophical question # 10? What a coincidence that it’s raining outside at the same time! And you mention that it’s slow going! Holy shit! You just made the physical world reflect the main character’s thoughts! Or is it the other way around? How thought provoking! Please stop.

But if there is one thing that Zen is, besides poorly-edited, arrogant, and plotless, it is thought-provoking. Zen ponders the question of how to reconcile the romantic approach to life with the classical (technological, Western) approach, and while it doesn’t come up with any quality answers (ha!), it does produce tons of good quotes and discussions on technology, college, education, classical philosophy, and makes the reader ask themselves the question, “What is best in life?” It unfortunately also makes the reader ask themselves how much better the book could have been with a plot, and how much of a douchebag Robert Pirsig is.Here’s a guy who was so concerned with philosophy that he goes insane and gets electro-shock therapy. Sucks. Maybe he should have been raising his two kids instead of thinking up airtight critiques of Aristotle. Then he takes his kid across country on a motorcycle, ignoring him for the better part of 4,000 miles, and then at the end of the book comes to the realization (also metaphorical) that all his son could see most of the time was his back. Way to go. Selfish, anyone? At one point his son asks him why they went on the trip, and he shoots back with this little philosophic gem: “Why does anybody do anything?” That’s the kind of answer you give to people you want to develop a severe case of shutting the hell up.

The special edition, with forward and afterward and book club questions and author-editor correspondence and naked pictures, makes it even more abundantly clear what a delta bravo Pirsig is. There’s a lot of talk about how hard it was to get published and how the book is a unique work of genius that defined a generation, which makes Pirsig’s disclaimer at the start of the book that he doesn’t know much about Zen or motorcycles look like a weak attempt at modesty. There’s also an interesting tidbit about how Pirsig persuades his girlfriend to get an abortion then changes his mind at the last second because he realizes the baby is carrying the life force of his murdered son. Well, when you say it like that it just sounds ridiculous!

I would read the first and last 100 pages, and then look up quotes online and call it a day.