O.K. so you reckon, what the hell is this guy going on about. It was alright when he stuck to simple fiction, but now Zen. Geeze!! Throughout the years I’ve read a lot of books, and more or less forgotten most of them, but among them are a handful of great books that had a real influence on me and helped form my adult character. I don’t want to bother you with the obvious choices – the Bible, Hamlet, Lord of the Rings. You’ve all been there I’m sure.

   Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance ( from now on I’ll just call it Zen), subtitled An Inquiry intoValues, comes with a title you can’t ignore. If there is an award for the most unusual title for a novel this must be  a sure candidate. Published in 1974 at the height  of an era of self discovery,  Robert M. Pirsig redefined what modern literature was all about, introducing his Metaphysics of Quality. The book works on several levels, describing a seventeen day road trip across the U.S.A by the author and son Chris on a motorcycle. Pirsig is quick to point out that the book isn’t very accurate regarding the practice of Zen and neither is it very factual about motorcycles, but that is really kind of the point of the whole journey.
   Zen is probably the most popular philosophy book in history and became the bible of it’s times. The new generation of thinkers were basically divided between those who had read the book and those that said they intended to but were scared off at the concept.
   Much of the talk on motorcycle maintenance curtains the philosophical interpretation of our outlook on life. What we are all looking for is meaning. If the book doesn’t necessarily have all the answers, it does succeed in presenting you with the questions that you didn’t previously know to ask. In 1991,almost twenty years after publishing Zen, Pirsig finally got a chance to write a sequel Lila: an Inquiry into Morals.
 

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values (P.S.)

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