Does anyone else share this sentiment? Did you ever crack the reason why so many love it? Obviously taste is subjective and we are not all supposed to like everything but I’ve always felt like the odd man out with this specific text.
From Wikipedia [0]:
> The narrator examines the modern pursuit of "Pure Truths", claiming it derives from the work of early Greek philosophers who were establishing the concept of truth in opposition to the force of "The Good". He argues that although rational thought may find a truth (or The Truth) it may never be fully and universally applicable to every individual's experience. Therefore, what is needed is an approach to life that is more inclusive and has a wider range of application. He makes a case that originally the Greeks did not distinguish between "Quality" and "Truth"—they were one and the same, arete—and that the divorce was, in fact, artificial (though needed at the time) and is now a source of much frustration and unhappiness in the world, particularly overall dissatisfaction with modern life.
Socrates in Plato's writing focused acutely on finding these capital-T Truths that were universal. The book argues that focusing exclusively on this can't fully inform you on how to live a good life.
Note that arete means both quality and skill. To simplify a bit a person's character was believed to be built on virtue, and someone who was a "skillful" (arete) at being a person was a virtuous person.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen_and_the_Art_of_Motorcycle_...
Then again, I am super-detail-oriented, so that makes sense to me, because IMHO that’s the kind of audience for whom Pirsig wrote the book.
It _is_ a book about the nature of quality, after all, and Pirsig spent four years writing it, with the aid of PostIt notes all over the walls to organize it.
Not all people are detail-oriented enough to be capable of the laser-like focus needed to get all of the way through the book without losing interest. No offense intended, each to their own.
(If memory serves, Pirsig used note cards or slips of paper to assemble this ambitious work. Post-It’s were first sold in 1977; the book was published in 1974.)
Those who have an open mind and want to try the book should find the 10th anniversary edition; the author’s afterword explains some things that some readers found elusive.
Pirsig’s obituary in the N.Y. Times is excellent:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2017/04/24/book...
Ah, yes, my mistake. In my memory I confused index cards with PostIt notes.
> and not really about motorcycles at all
It's Zen, but it's not about Zen; it describes motorcycle maintenance, but it's not about motorcycle maintenance.
These are just a vehicle (no pun intended) for Pirsig to show us the inside of his post-apocalyptic mind, as far as he could remember once being who he called Phaedrus before they zapped him.
I found the book a multidimensional view of Pirsig's current and previous mental state and philosophy, just like the description of a computer software architecture is a multidimensional view of the architecture, neither and none of which can be described by a mere linear narrative.
It (ZATAOMM) is part philosophy, part memoir, part attack on what he calls the Church of Reason, part description of insanity, and more things I can't think of right now. No wonder it took him 4 years to pull together all those threads of consciousness, some of which were very damaged indeed.
Although, like another commenter noted, just spending 4 years on writing a book doesn't mean it automatically deserves accolades - and I agree with that observation - someone who reads it with even a fraction of the patience and insight with which it was written, might be tempted to award accolades after all.
No.
ZATAOMM is a book about the philosophical concept of "Quality". What is "Quality"? What do we mean when we say the word "quality"? How does that understanding, or lack thereof, impact our life, sciences, and society?
That is what defined meant. Read with that understanding, defined's statement reads:
I believe ZATAOMM is a work of genius, that was only possible due to the author's obsession with learning everything he could about the topic of the book before writing it.
I really should have spelled it Quality, to show that I meant the philosophy of Quality rather than its more mundane interpretation.
At the same time, in an interview with Pirsig that I read somewhere, IIRC he did rather archly claim something to the effect that the book had better be high quality, considering its subject matter.
I tried to find that interview, but could only come up with this piece [1].
No, it's not. That's just an American prejudice about it, because the individual there is always king, even if they are as crude as they go...
Pirsig did have at least some formal academic knowledge of philosophy though.
From Wikipedia [0]:
> Pirsig earned a bachelor's degree in 1950 from the University of Minnesota.[8] He then attended Banaras Hindu University in India, to study Eastern philosophy and culture. At the University of Chicago, he performed graduate-level work in philosophy in the Committee on the Analysis of Ideas and Study of Methods but he did not obtain a degree there. In 1958 he earned a master's degree in journalism from the University of Minnesota.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_M._Pirsig#Early_life
I'd accept that accusation from people who have read many philosophy books and delved much deeper, and regularly read heavy discourses into the subtleties of the topics examined in ZatAoMM.
Else, it sounds to me like "I'm a plain Joe, I work hard, watch TV, and drink Budweiser, who's this guy writing all fancy about philosophy, when they don't even have a philosophy degree? I don't read no philosophy, but if I ever did, I'd check a professional, not some writer guy. Just gimme a page turner airport-thriller writer-boy".
David Foster Wallace is a perfect example - I can see the "quality" of the style of his writing and I can intellectually appreciate it, but all of his writing is a slog and definitely needs a bit of editing. I grew up with Alan Dean Foster, so that general style I respond to very well. Lush prose like Borges goes down well, but it is like velvet red cheesecake. And Sally Rooney is absolutely wonderful, but her style is ... hell, I don't have the words. And do not get me started on Susanna Clarke! New book coming out!
Subjective as in it's up to the individual person whether it likes or doesn't like something.
But it can also be of objectively variable quality (eg. someone liking Vanilla Ice's work who can't stand Bach or Coltrane).
Taste is not something passive and "everything goes" just because it's subjective. It's also something that can be cultivated (even in food -- imaging someone crazy about Hot Pockets, McDonalds and Taco Bell, who doesn't like cooked food because it "tastes bad"). It's a little heresy to say that someone's individual taste is not sacrosanct but can be objectively crap in the US, but it's much more acceptable in good ole Europe.
I only really took away one thing from the book (some deeper level of understanding of what is meant by "quality", in the sense of craftsmanship). I value that understanding and am happy I read the book, but I don't use that wisdom very often in my life.
Maybe you're reading it in a way which expects it to have a plot? I don't know, I think book recs are generally hard and people should only trust book recommendations from people who like books for the same reasons.
As a kid, I didn't want to take things apart. It's breaking the rules, usually. But when something is already broken, then the rules change, and this book gave me language for that.