Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

A philosophy book told through first person is extremely interesting to me – especially a travel memoir. Many of the conversations hit on specific points that I was nodding in agreement at. Specifically many of the ones that included frustration when getting points across to others, or taking pride in upkeep and finding a way to enjoy it. The only reason I'd rate it lower was due to the long periods of time between enlightening moments.

I have finally decided I don't need to finish this one. It's intriguing, but when I read self-indulgent memoir ramblings I prefer to read them by women. It's so dated too. If it were a contemporary blog I would totally read it. Also after picking it up, I read somewhere that it had nothing to do with Zen Buddhism. And I don't care about motorcycles or mechanics. That would put me definitively into one of Pirsig's categories of people, I think. The problematic kind. So now I'm done.

A philosophy book told through first person is extremely interesting to me – especially a travel memoir. Many of the conversations hit on specific points that I was nodding in agreement at. Specifically many of the ones that included frustration when getting points across to others, or taking pride in upkeep and finding a way to enjoy it. The only reason I'd rate it lower was due to the long periods of time between enlightening moments.

Je dois encore processer le livre, mais je me retrouve assez mitigé. J'avoue que si la partie du voyage et la relation entre le père et son fils est extrêmement touchante et transmet cette envie des grands espaces, la partie philosophique m'a parue de plus en plus confuse au fur et à mesure de l'avancement du livre. Là où au tout début elle était pleine d'apprentissage, elle s'enfonce au long du livre dans une vision extrêmement théorique des choses (sans doute proche de la folie du narrateur mais dure à suivre). Donc mitigé mais un bon livre, cependant assez dur à lire j'avoue.

I don't know if I enjoyed this or not.


It was the favourite book of an old friend, who repeatedly inserted it in the bibliography of the engineering books he'd written. Though I always thought its inclusion was more showing off rather than providing genuine influence. It's been on my shelf for years, so I figured it was time to crack the spine.


Well, it was a dense old tome. Whilst it wasn't a true doorstop by any means, it certainly packed in the big Scrabble words and had an unconventional story that kept you on your toes. Gloss over a page or two and you could very easily become lost.


Half of it was well thought out philosophy that really made you think. Should I ever get invited to any parties, I could certainly bust out a few choice nuggets of wisdom to impress. The other chunk of it was vast walls of tedious, near impenetrable stoner ramblings that at said shindig, would quickly force you to make your excuses to avoid hearing any more.


Worth reading purely to say that you have done so. It might change your life, it might leave you feeling confused and tired. Or somewhere inbetween like me.

I had a love - hate relationship with this book. The cross country motorcycle trip kept me slogging through but I would often grow disinterested or downright annoyed when the author began to wax philosophical. The reason for my annoyance was just how pretentious the main character was, he was so analytical always dissecting his friend's flaws and shortcomings to the point where I really wondered how he had any friends at all. He frequently makes his son cry or lies awake at night listening to his son crying and does absolutely nothing. He comes off as a complete jerk.

Oddly enough by the end of the novel, I found that I was more engaged in the philosophical treatise and had gained some empathy for the narrator.

Minor spoilers
I think as much as this book is about philosophy and a man's quest to find himself it's also a book about mental illness. Our society has come a long way in the past 40 years on the subject of mental illness so I wonder what this book would be like if it were written today. Indeed the narrator causes a lot of his problems but most of his mental state and eventual breakdown is an result of some kind of mental illness. I think it'd be interesting to see that story told in light of today's culture.

When I'm asked what is my favorite book, I often pause for a moment and reply, “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.” My reply always gets a laugh. Some people have heard of the book, and some have even tried reading it, but no one I've mentioned it to has expressed a similar level of admiration for it, and no one I've recommended it to has ever read it through to completion.

It's obviously not a book for everyone.

Why do I love it so much? Pirsig was trying to teach writing on a college level, and he struggled with traditional ways of teaching. One day the casual remark of an associate at the college—“I hope you are teaching Quality to your students”—sets off a train of thought that leads Pirsig to try some innovative methods of teaching in his classroom and eventually helps Pirsig form some new connections between two old systems of thought.

Here are some of my favorite quotes from the book:

“And what is good, Phaedrus,
And what is not good—
Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?”

“Care and Quality are internal and external aspects of the same thing. A person who sees Quality and feels it as he works is a person who cares. A person who cares about what he sees and does is a person who's bound to have some characteristic of quality.”

“The place to improve the world is first in one's own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there.”

“When analytic thought, the knife, is applied to experience, something is always killed in the process.”

“We're in such a hurry most of the time we never get much chance to talk. The result is a kind of endless day-to-day shallowness, a monotony that leaves a person wondering years later where all the time went and sorry that it's all gone. ”

“Peace of mind produces right values, right values produce right thoughts. Right thoughts produce right actions and right actions produce work which will be a material reflection for others to see of the serenity at the center of it all.”

‘You've got to live right, too. It's the way you live that predisposes you to avoid the traps and see the right facts. You want to know how to paint a perfect painting? It's easy. Make yourself perfect and then just paint naturally. That's the way all the experts do it. The making of a painting or the fixing of a motorcycle isn't separate from the rest of your existence. If you're a sloppy thinker the six days of the week you aren't working on your machine, what trap avoidance, what gimmicks, can make you all of a sudden sharp on the seventh? It all goes together ... The real cycle you're working in is a cycle called yourself. The machine that appears to be “out there” and the person that appears to be “in here” are not two separate things. They grow toward Quality or fall away from Quality together.'

Believe me when I say: This book will change your life.

It can get challenging at times, but in the end, it's an amazing, amazing book. You will have at least questioned the basic and yet important tenets of intelligence, morality, and what it means to be good or bad and what it means to live, to really live, by the time you're done.

I first read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance when I was sixteen...it changed the way I thought about the world and about ideas. I don't think i've ever read anything quite like it.

There are some that argue that Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is ‘mental masturbation' of sorts; or a ‘pretentious philosophical work' whose ideas are just all over the place. The truth is, this book is probably one of those few who deserve the oft-thrown around appraisal, ‘this book will change your life' - because, at its heart, the book is about ideas and covers tremendous mental territory. It's a challenging read, but highly recommended.