"The real cycle you're working on is a cycle called 'yourself.'"

One of the most important and influential books of the past half-century, Robert M. Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a powerful, moving, and penetrating examination of how we live and a meditation on how to live better. The narrative of a father on a summer motorcycle trip across America's Northwest with his young son, it becomes a profound personal and philosophical odyssey into life's fundamental questions. A true modern classic, it remains at once touching and transcendent, resonant with the myriad confusions of existence and the small, essential triumphs that propel us forward.

Today ZMM retains a sizeable following, although criticism of it is very polarised: Pirsig's fervent self-assurance when dealing with philosophical questions converts some readers into "followers" and tends to exasperate everyone else. Mostly structured as a "solution" rather than an "inquiry", as the title claims, ZMM's philosophy is too often accepted without question, and it is frequently and regrettably true that the more positive the review, the more philosophically naïve the reviewer. Nonetheless, this should not disallow ZMM from being considered on its own merits.

ZMM is not an introductory philosophy text, more a "once-in-a-lifetime" philosophical statement; the comparison has already been made with Hofstadter's "Gödel, Escher, Bach", and Hofstadter's description - "a statement of my religion" - could well describe ZMM, too. When one considers the motivation required to sustain Pirsig's long and solitary struggle in writing and publishing ZMM, the rhetorical fervour of his arguments becomes more understandable. Those who attack Pirsig as pompous or narcissistic fail to appreciate the degree of self-belief needed to complete such a highly individualistic work. So, we can certainly admire him for trying - but is ZMM any good?

Some of Pirsig's arguments rest uneasily, such as his blithe acceptance of scientific relativism; and in rejecting subject-object dualism, he paints himself into some peculiar corners, such as his disquiet at the lack of beer cans littering Crater Lake National Park. But there is much in ZMM that is good and thought-provoking, too, especially where education is concerned: all teachers should read this book. And even during his tougher metaphysical monologues, only the driest, most rigid mindset could fail to find Pirsig's rhetoric engaging. Here, his wild claims about the importance of his philosophical arguments are gently counterbalanced by his acknowledged previous insanity: Pirsig takes care to label them the "ramblings of a madman", though not without a certain knowing irony.

ZMM is not just philosophy: it is also a fine piece of travel writing, and a history of Pirsig's teaching career. It remains a novel, however, and not an autobiography: whilst the events described did occur, subtle details have been changed. Most importantly, Robert Pirsig "the author" differs from the narrator, who in turn differs from his former personality ("Phaedrus"). The subtle conflict between the narrator's unifying philosophy, and the barely resolved tensions between narrator/Phaedrus and narrator/son, produces a fully intended irony. Criticism of the narrator is unfair and misguided when it is directed at the author.

Pirsig writes with great clarity. Well-structured sentences and careful use of italics give his writing great explanatory power, reminiscent, for this reviewer, of the biologist Richard Dawkins. We may not agree with Pirsig, but we are rarely in any doubt about what he means to say. Nonetheless, there are inevitable uncertainties at the core of ZMM, concerning reason and its limits. The antipsychiatric "insanity as enlightenment" nettle is never fully grasped, though one senses that this is Pirsig's belief; moreover, the analytic intractability of the Eastern philosophy that he embraces means that ultimately, the "inquiry" never reasons its way to an answer. Those seeking an absolutist metaphysical system will not find it here, and one can imagine Pirsig's sense of unease at becoming a latter-day religious guru.

ZMM is very much unique: four and a half years in the writing, but decades, one senses, in the germination. Fans will enjoy the 25 or so extra pages, cut from the original manuscript, available in DiSanto's "Guidebook to ZMM" - but skip the dreadful philosophy chapters. Pirsig wrote a sequel of sorts, "Lila", in 1991, but its sour atmosphere and slack reasoning make it strictly for the converted. Evidently Pirsig coped badly with his post-ZMM fame: one can imagine the sackloads of witless fan-mail. Unquestionably, for this reviewer, ZMM can stand alone: a model of clarity in written argument, a fine American road novel, and an inspiring demonstration of one man's ability to think for himself.

64 of 75 found the following review helpful:


The Joy of Engagement!  Oct 24, 2001 By Donald Mitchell "Jesus Loves You!"
Before reviewing Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, let me mention that most people will either love or hate the book. Few will be indifferent.

Those who will love the book will include those who enjoy philosophy, especially those who are well read in that subject; people who ride and maintain their own motorcycles; readers who are interested in psychology, particularly in terms of the mass hypnosis of social concepts; individuals who are curious about the line we draw between sanity and insanity; and people who want to think about how to deal with troubling personal situations, especially as a parent. As someone who has all of these interests and perspectives, the book fit my needs very well.

Those who will dislike the book are people who like lots of action in their novels, dislike the subjects described above, and who want easy reading. This book is very thick with concepts, ideas, metaphors, and layering which reward careful reading and thought. Most text books are considerably easier to read and understand. Few modern novels are any more difficult to read from an intellectual and emotional perspective.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance has several story lines that intertwine to create a synthesis of thought and experience:

- a father and young son take a motorcycle trip from the Midwest to California
- the father has an internal dialogue with himself about what he observes about the people around him and their engagement with life and technology
- the father attempts to reconstruct the ideas and perspective he had before being treated as a mental patient (which treatment destroyed and distorted his memory and personality)
- the father looks at the great philosophers of western and eastern civilization and attempts to integrate their thoughts into an aesthetic built around our ability to know quality when we see and experience it
- the father deals with the incipient signs of mental instability in his son and himself.

The book is almost impossible to characterize, but let me try anyway. Perhaps the closest book to this one is Hermann Hesse's Siddharta. At the same time, there is also a strong flavor of Zen and the Art of Archery. On the Road by Jack Kerouac covers some of the same intellectual and emotional territory. John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men considers some of the same questions of personal perspective. In terms of challenging the constrictions of society, there is also an element of The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit here.

What is most remarkable about the book is the way that it pinpoints the spiritual vacuum in the pursuit of more and shinier personal items. Unlike many books from this time, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance upholds a concept of nobility and worth connected to pursuing material progress in ways that reflect eliminating low quality and replacing it with high quality. Think of this as being like the joy of craftsmanship, compared to the dullness of the assembly line. By setting high standards, expanding those standards, sharing those standards with others, and inspiring people to experience life more fully, we can move forward spiritually as well as intellectually. The motorcycle maintenance details connect these abstractions back to the practical issues of every day, as we roll along across country with the author and his son dealing with the realities of keeping our bike running where the repair and parts options are very limited.

The book's afterward is particularly interesting, in which Mr. Pirsig opines about why this book has had such great and lasting appeal and tells you what happened after the book ends.

Ultimately, I felt uplifted by the high respect that Mr. Pirsig has for his readers. He takes us very seriously, thinks we are intelligent, and pays us the compliment of believing that we can learn to fundamentally change all of our perspectives and experiences.

After you finish this book (if you decide to read it), I suggest that you think about where you disengaged from the challenges, tasks, and people around you. Then, pick out one area and get deeply involved. As you master that one, take on another. And so on. Soon, you will have new and greater respect for yourself . . . and more rewarding relationships.

Get your hands dirty!

28 of 31 found the following review helpful:


The Philosophical Intracacies of Pirsig's Cleverly Written Zen  Oct 30, 2007 By J. Finzel
In Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig apparently achieved what many philosophers desire, but simply do not have the skill or perseverance to do. That is, he wrote a work of philosophy that received immense attention and success from the popular culture and audience.

An immense part of this success probably lies in his blending of narrative with philosophical inquiry. He also has clear prose that allows everything to flow together quite nicely. Once you are sufficiently involved in the narrative and developing line of thought, you are allowed to move on naturally into more involved lines of philosophical thought that you might never have sought to understand otherwise. Pirsig also brings up a number of troubling issues about the way that we think and the way that we live: something seems wrong with our lives. He has a lucid manner of illustrating these dissatisfactions and confusions, which pull us in even deeper in anticipation of where he will end up.

This is all very good, but after all, this book is supposed to be an inquiry into values, a philosophically moving work. So what we really want to know is: should we take seriously the conclusions that Pirsig reaches in this book? Does he present a serious challenge to the more commonly held theories of reality and `Quality', and provide a robust new vision for living? I think here Pirsig misses the mark on several counts. First off, when all is said and done it's not clear at all that he has provided a rich new vision for living. From the standpoint of philosophy, Pirsig often makes intractable jumps in his reasoning as well as unqualified assumptions that severely weaken his case. The most fatal instance of this is in his attempt to show that the "dualistic" understanding of reality cannot make room for Quality.

Here I will only attempt to give a few concise examples of the problems that plague Pirsig's reasoning in Zen. Unfortunately as a short review I must be quite brief and a bit shallow in analysis. But my only intention here is to give readers incentive to be cautious about thinking seriously about some of Pirsig's claims by showing some serious flaws in his thinking.

In one instance, on 40-44 we enter a discussion about whether the law of gravity exists objectively or only in our minds. There are extensive problems with the argument, but only a few need mention here. Pirsig asks if the law of gravity existed before the earth, sun, moon, or anything material existed, and having no mass, no energy, not in anyone's mind, and not in space (41). Now Pirsig seems to think that the law of gravity did not exist at this point. But then Pirsig makes an absurd jump in his reasoning. He concludes that the only rational conclusion is that the law of gravity did not exist before Isaac Newton. But he clearly has given no support for this claim. Why not think the law of gravity existed after the beginning of the universe, but before Isaac Newton?

From this intractable argument Pirsig proceeds to claim that the law of gravity exists nowhere except in people's heads (42). He characterizes Newton's discovery of gravity as Newton's having discovered disembodies words that had been floating around for billions of years. But why think anything like that? Is Pirsig now assuming some unfamiliar philosophy of language? Why not think that Newton simply discovered regularity in nature that can be articulated by human language? At any rate Pirsig has not given us nearly enough to take his claim seriously.

Of course the natural next step is that "the world has no existence whatsoever outside the human imagination" (43). But it's clear from above that no such thing has been demonstrated. Some at this point may feel that I am being unfair or mischaracterizing Pirsig's argument. But this is hardly so. Simply put, there is little substance to this argument (and many others in his book) examined carefully.

Another problem is that Pirsig is simply careless in some places in his assumptions or by not defending some assertions he makes. For instance, early on and at other random times in the book, Pirsig mentions the Buddha as an aspect of reality as if the reader would never dispute the truth of Buddhism (i.e. 21-22). On the other hand, his ridiculously brief consideration of Christianity, which has probably had the biggest effect on western culture than any other movement, amounts to his saying that ""Heaven above" fades from meaning when space-age consciousness asks, Where is "above"?" (237). Pirsig claims that Christianity has lost relevance and comprehensibility. But for whom? Not only does he not explain what he means, but he seems to ignore the fact that Christianity really is relevant and comprehensible for hundreds of millions of people today, even many living in the "space-age". On the other hand, it's fine to employ Buddhism at points as an unqualified assumption.

The biggest problem for Pirsig is that he does nothing to show that the "dualistic" conception of reality cannot allow for Quality. The dualistic conception is (to be overly simple) that we are subjects that are distinct from the objects in the world. Pirsig spends much of the latter part of his book explaining his conception of Quality, which involves Quality as the source of everything, in response to the failure of the dualistic conception to deal with Quality. Yet it's not clear from any point in Pirsig's analysis that the dualistic conception is inadequate to include Quality, or beauty, or spirituality, or anything aesthetic or emotional. How does the distinctness of subject and object prevent these things? Why cannot beauty be a quality of objects? It is interesting that Pirsig seems to ignore contemporary philosophy that studies aesthetics from a "dualistic" standpoint. Many have accepted this picture and found ample room for a richness of beauty and quality that is in no way hindered by the distinctness of subject and object.

In addition to this, Pirsig seems almost incoherent about his theory of Quality. He wants to say that it is indefinable. Yet he tries to explain his theory of Quality in detail. On some level he recognizes this dilemma. Nevertheless, despite his normally clear prose, his explanation of Quality is mostly unhelpful. I looked at many of these sections carefully without much progress. I take it that this is not because he has something deeply profound to say, but that he himself does not sufficiently understand what he means so that he can articulate it. If he understood it well enough, he ought to be able to articulate it as he does so well in the rest of his book.

Though I don't doubt some will disagree about this last point, the fact remains that there is no good reason for us to throw our common sense out the window and go with the evasive theory that Pirsig presents, a theory that by the way has received virtually no attention in professional philosophy. (And I'd add here that Pirsig's dismissal of "common sense" is also supported by weak reasoning) Pirsig in the end gives us no reason to move towards his solution.

Whether Pirsig intended it or not, he has not really provided us with anything approaching a robust and meaningful way of how to live our lives. In part, this is probably a result of the evasiveness of Quality itself. It's a bit baffling that so many find the philosophy deeply affecting and inspirational, whereas we are not truly given a rich sense of how to live our lives and how to treat others. We are given the picture that all is Quality. Yet we have been told Quality is indefinable, and in a sense beyond understanding. We fail even to find in his narrative something of a way we ought to live.

All that Pirsig discusses is not necessarily bad. I like that Pirsig points out some misunderstandings about the `scientific method', specifically that a big part of it is not methodical but sometimes simply the result of imagination or accident (though again I think he takes his conclusions a step too far here). Also, Pirsig does make some good distinctions and presents a number of problems with the way we live that certainly need attention. Our educational system is one of those issues.

Nevertheless, I cannot in good conscience recommend this book because it contains a wealth of misleading philosophy. I'm sure that many people when reading Zen have been taken in by the problems with our world and the intellectual puzzles that Pirsig discusses, thinking then that his solutions to these issues are the only salvation. But nothing could be further from the truth.

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