Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (book review)

by Richard Subber | Jun 29, 2023 | Book reviews, Books, Joys of reading

provocative but obscure

Book review:

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance:

An Inquiry into Values

by Robert M. Pirsig

New York: William Morrow & Company, Ltd., 1974, 1999

418 pages

This is one of the books that I’ve thought about reading for most of my life.

I gave it my best shot.

It’s not so much that I don’t want to read Pirsig’s story—I think it’s more a case of this is one of his stories that I don’t need to dive into real deep.

I feel like a hungry guy who has just opened a lunchbox that was packed by three different moms, with three different ideas of what I might want to chow down on.

Obviously, Zen is about philosophy and meaning and reality and understanding and stuff.

Pirsig hasn’t written, exactly, a stream of consciousness kind of book, but its choppy organization leads me to lean in that direction, and I’m not up for it.

The non-motorcycle stuff is provocative, but it’s obscure.

The motorcycle stuff is overall a revelation, but I didn’t need to know it.

You read it and make your own decision.

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Book review: Mila 18

horrific truth by Leon Uris

click here

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In other words: Poems for your eyes and ears with 64 free verse and haiku poems,

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