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Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Home pages: The Greatest Literature of All Time
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 Lila |
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He's written two novels. If you can call them novels. Maybe you'd prefer to call them works of philosophy, thinly—very thinly—disguised as fiction. Or perhaps you'd be more accurate to call them memoirs, heavy on recalling some rather abstruse philosophical discussions Robert Maynard Pirsig has had with himself. Or better yet, call the first of the two books, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values, a massive bestseller that struck the nascent New Age movement of the 1970s like the clap of a single hand and has infuriated professional writers and philosophers with its continued popularity ever since. Not that Pirsig hasn't also won some mainstream credibility over the years. Recently an international philosophical conference has been held to discuss his Metaphysics of Quality, the philosophical system he introduced in Zen and confusingly explicated in Lila: An Inquiry into Morals. That's about it in terms of major writing output for Pirsig. His own life is also somewhat of a novel though. Not necessarily in this order: Born in Minneapolis. Supposedly a very bright kid. Enters the University of Minnesota at age 15 to study biochemistry but flunks out (as a result of philosophical concerns about science that stymied him, he implies in Zen). Drifts around the Midwest. Joins the army, serves in Korea. Returns to complete his Bachelor's degree in philosophy. Studies Oriental philosophy in India. Enrolls as a journalism student and runs off with another student, a married woman, to Reno for a divorce. Works as a dealer in Nevada. Lives in Mexico for about a year. Marries. Returns to United States, completes a Masters degree in journalism. Has two sons. Freelances as a technical editor. Teaches English at Montana State College and the University of Illinois. Studies for a philosophy doctorate a the University of Chicago but has a mental breakdown (as a result of obsessing over his "Quality" project, if the Zen character Phaedrus faithfully represents him). Has more breakdowns in the early 1960s. Shock therapy. Recovers. Writes Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Published in 1974 to great acclaim. Plans to sail around the world with his wife. Ends up crossing to England with another woman. Divorces. Remarries. First-born son Chris, who was also a character in Zen, is stabbed to death during a mugging in 1979. With second wife in 1981, Pirsig has another child, Nell, who he says has Chris's spirit (though "spirit" is used in a broad sense). All three sail to Norway and Sweden where they live for a couple of years. In 1991 he publishes Lila, a more detailed examination of his philosophy, to somewhat less acclaim, although the book is studied by his admirers. Since then he's been said variously to have killed himself (not true), to be working on his intellectual projects out of the limelight (no doubt) and sailing around the Atlantic (true at least some of the time). — Eric |
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© Copyright 2006 Eric McMillan. All rights reserved.
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PIRSIG, Robert M. (b. 1928)