"Quality is the parent, the source of all subjects and objects." - Robert Pirsig
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Book Reviews and Critical Articles Testify To the Outstanding Nature of the Book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (ZMM).Here You Can Discover What ZMM Is "All About" and Why You Should Read This Book! Here are Internet Links to book reviews which show how the book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance has been received by literary reviewers, both professionals and ordinary readers. 1) For each link below, I briefly explain what you will find at this link, and why I think this author offers interesting (and valid) opinions concerning ZMM. 2) Also given below is my Google search to find more information concerning the eleven professional ZMM Reviews given in Guidebook to ZMM. Search conducted 24 May 2006. 3) Also given below are links to my analysis of the Amazon ZMM Book reviews available as of Feb 2006. The best collection of Literary Critics, (ie professional) ZMM Book Reviews of which I am aware, are given (complete) in The Guidebook to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. See Chapter Eight (p240 thru 357). This chapter has eleven literary reviews, which I list below. Also given is a Full Professional Publication Bibliography re academic works about ZMM from up thru ~1990. The Guidebook To ZMM is available in most libraries, many bookstores, or on interlibrary loan. Here is a good review of The Guidebook to ZMM:
Here Is the Internet Information I Could Find Concerning The Eleven Literary Reviews, By the Eleven Literary Critics In the Above Mentioned The Guidebook To ZMM. Of course you may find more information by using Google Books or Amazon.com "Search Inside". 1) ''Good Trip',' by Robert M Adams, New York Review of Books, 13 June 1974.
2) "A Fine Fiction", by W T Lhamon, New Republic, 29 June 1974.
3) "Uneasy Rider", by George Steiner, The New Yorker, 15 April 1974.
4) "Man and Machine", by George Basalla, Science Magazine, 24 January 1975.
5) "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance'', by Una Allis, Critical Quarterly Vol 20, Autumn 1978. Not many hits for the author of this, and no web info about this review, except following article quotes several passages from it. Both links have same ZMM Review, which is itself a very good ZMM Review.
6) "Ringer To Sheehy To Pirsig: The 'Greening' of American Ideals of Success", by John G Cawelti, Popular Culture Vol 2 1979. 7) "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: The Identity of the ErlKong", by Thomas J Steele, Ariel Vol 17, No 4, 1979. 8) "Irony and Earnestness In Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance'', by Richard H Rodino, Critique: Studies in Modern Fiction Vol 22, 1980. 9) "The Matrix of Journeys In Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance'', by Richard H Rodino, Journal of Narrative Technique, Vol 11, 1981. 10) "Creativity, Rationality, and Metaphor In Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance'', by Jerome Bump 11) "Visual Imagery and Internal Awareness In Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance'', by Forrest B Shearon. Excerpts from "UNEASY RIDER" BY GEORGE STEINER.New York Review of Books, 13 June 1974.
Zen and the Art {of Motorcycle Maintenance} is awkward both to live with and to write about. It lodges in the mind as few recent novels have, deepening its grip, compelling the landscape into unexpected planes of order and menace. The narrative thread is deceptively trite. Father and son are on a motorcycle holiday, traveling from Minneapolis toward the Dakotas, then across the mountains, turning south to Santa Rosa and the Bay. Asphalt, motels, hairpins in the knife-cold of the Rockies, fog and desert, the waters dividing, then the vineyards and the tawny flanks of the sea. Robert DeWeese, artist-in-residence {and Pirsig friend in Bozeman MT}, brings out instructions for the assembly of an outdoor barbecue rotisserie which have baffled him. The discussion flows deep. It touches on the limitations of language in regard to mechanical procedure, on machine assembly as a long-lost branch of sculpture whose organic finesse is betrayed by the inert facility of commercial blueprints, on the ghost (O shades of Descartes) that inhabits the machine. Pirsig's timing and crafting at this juncture are flawless. This is not always so. The westward journey is punctuated by lengthy meditations and lay sermons that Pirsig calls "Chautauquas." They are basic to his purpose. During these addresses to the reader, Phaedrus's insinuations are registered and diagnosed. The nature of quality, in conduct as in engineering, is debated and tested against the pragmatic shoddiness of a consumer society. Much of this discursive argument, the "inquiry into values," is finely shaped. But there are pedestrian stretches, potted summaries of Kant which betray the aggressive certitudes of the self-taught man, misattributions (it was not Coleridge but Goethe who divided rational humanity into Platonists and Aristotelians), tatters out of a Great Books seminar to which the narrator once took bitter exception. The cracker-barrel voice grinds on, sententious and flat. But the book is inspired, original enough to impel us across gray patches. And as the mountains gentle toward the sea with father and child locked in a ghostly grip-the narrative tact, the perfect economy of effect, defy criticism. A detailed technical treatise on the tools, on the routines, on the metaphysics of a specialized skill; the legend of a great hunt after identity, after the salvation of mind and soul out of obsession, the hunter being hunted; a fiction repeatedly interrupted by, en meshed with, a lengthy meditation on the ironic and tragic singularities of American man- the analogies with Moby Dick are patent. Robert Pirsig invites the prodigious comparison. It is at many points, including, even, the almost complete absence of women, suitable. What more can one say?
By Far, the Largest Collection of Book Reviews Is At Amazon.Com. This is true for ZMM, as well as for most other books. As of Feb 2006 there were 557 ZMM reviews. By my count 70 % of these reviews are quite positive about ZMM. However, Amazon is also where you will find the largest collection of negative ZMM reviews!! You will see that the persons who have these negative opinions of ZMM (19 %), just "don't get it"!! They do not discover what ZMM is really about. As you may study for yourself, most of these Negative Amazon Reviewers will say they know ZMM comes with some pretty high ratings!! But despite this,--- some how --- the virtues ZMM escapes them! And, they seem genuinely puzzled by this, they nevertheless tell us in no uncertain terms how bad ZMM is! I have studied this closely, but I can't discern what specifically these persons fail to see or why they miss the constructive parts of ZMM. This is a great puzzle to me, since so many readers, including myself see ZMM as a most valuable book! Just the same, I am certain this puzzle deserves a deep and critical study. To enhance this study, I now have MS Word Collection of All 457 Reviews available as of Feb 2006. If you want to use this collection for your own study and analysis, you may ask me for this collection (~0.5 MB). For ease of analysis, this collection of reviews has been sorted, by the number of Stars, into five separate documents. My own analysis of these reviews may be found in the next two links. If you wish to receive these documents or have any insights or comments, please send email to me: HenryG__Aiken.SC.edu. Some of these 4 Star & 5 Star Amazon ZMM Reviewers offer their ideas about the causes of frustration in reading ZMM and they offer guidance for constructive reading of ZMM. Several of these reviews and my analysis is here.
The 1 Star & 2 Star Amazon ZMM Reviewers forcefully offer their negative ideas about reading ZMM. At link below, you will find my conclusions about what has caused so many readers extreme dislike of ZMM. I also offer my own suggestions as to how to read ZMM for the greatest understanding and insight.
Click here for first ten of all Amazon ZMM Reviews. On the Amazon page, click at lower left, to get the next ten reviews:
Web Sites That Have Good ZMM Reviews As Well AS Many Interesting ZMM & Robert Pirsig Resources.) Psybertron Web Site has many ZMM Reviews as well as Robert Pirsig Resources. These pages are well worth considerable time and attention.!!
) Robert Pirsig Web Site, by philosopher Anthony McWatt has many Philosophy Articles And Analysis concerning ZMM, as well as many other Robert Pirsig Resources and photos. These pages are well worth considerable time and attention!! ) Tripod Dot Com Offers Many Reviews and Related Resources On Their Page "Further Explorations of Robert M. Pirsig's Metaphysics of Quality".
) This Web Site has many ZMM and Robert Pirsig Resources and Forums and is worth your time and attention!
) Another Collection of ZMM info:
My Collection of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Book Reviews Found On the Internet As of Feb 2006.Most of the Web Pages listed below were found by a Google Search for target = ( "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" + Review ) I passed over Sites, where the ZMM review were short or superficial. Most reviews were positive as you will see below. Negative reviews are also included when ever they were found. Google found a total 183,000 hits for the above criterion. Time permitted examination of only about 200 of these. (My editing comments and editing additions are indicated by a {bracket}. Omitted text portions are indicated by --- dashes.). 1) A Recent Book Review For Club Members, by Robert Dreesen, Editor for The Readers Subscription Book Club.One of the more intelligent works of criticism on poetry, on literature, written in the last fifty years might be Colin Falck’s Myth, Truth & Literature, in which the superfluousness of literary theory is argued, convincingly. The last footnote, or final acknowledgment in that book, is to Robert M. Pirsig’s “once-acclaimed but now (it seems) almost forgotten fictional masterpiece” Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: “Much of what I have argued in {Myth, Truth & Literature} is only an intellectual elaboration of Pirsig’s fine insights,” wrote Falck.
The Readers Subscription Book Club Was Founded in 1981 by W. H. Auden, Jacques Barzun, and Lionel Trilling. Credit to Readers Subscription at:
Thanks to Professor Donald Blount for discovering the above review. Despite my interest in ZMM, Professor Blount tells me ZMM is destined to the dustbin of history. He believes there are only two authors, Shakespeare and Cervantes, who are worthy of designation "Classic". Since tells me that ZMM can hardly be worth any consideration, it is significant that he even paid attention to the above review!
) A Bio of Ambassador John B. Richardson, Head of the European Commission to the United Nations, Reports How ZMM Changed His Life.{Ambassador Richardson} has retained a keen interest in the evolution of scientific thought and claims to have been marked for life by reading, in the 60s, Robert Pirsig's "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance". Before taking up this post and presenting his credentials to Kofi Annan on 3 May 2001, Mr Richardson had previously been Minister and Deputy Head of the European Commission's Delegation in Washington since October 1996. He has devoted most of his professional career to the cause of European integration, spending 23 years at the EU headquarters in Brussels.
) {In ZMM}, Whilst Several Threads Do Get Resolved, With a Real-Life Mix of Surprise and Anti-Climax, Several Remain Wonderfully Open Ended - No-Doubt Succeeding In Provoking the Thoughts {Author} Pirsig Intended.For anyone with an interest in the big questions of life, this is a good read. For anyone concerned with making progress in the details of the underlying philosophical debate, it is a text worthy of serious research. Both will find that those threads with uncertain resolution, are rewarded by at least one re-read.
) The Dharma of Science: 25 Years After ZMM, Gangan Prathap Explains What the ZMM Book Means To Him.In many ways, ZMM significantly influenced the way I saw my own work (research in the area of computational structural mechanics) and my perceptions of the larger issues of science and technology and its dialectical tension within and their relationship to the values of society.
) Pirsig wants to dissolve the paradoxes of technological man, make us return to nature through a care for machine. The motorbike is an emblem and practical example.And the correspondence between the landscapes traveled and the subjects discussed -- high places for spiritual stuff and deserts for the ugliness of modern life -- is so elegant as to be entirely unbearable. The ending, where the narrator fights off a bout of returning insanity, finally communicates with his son and sets the boy off on the road to disentangled manhood, is worthy of Old Hollywood, and must have quite a bit to do with the book's success. To be able to pose problems intelligently, and to solve them with schmaltz, is really quite a recipe. My main objection to Pirsig's book, I think is that it is too blithe and sentimental in its evasion of the consequences of this argument. Not that the moralists shouldn't go on moralizing, or that teachers shouldn't go on teaching. There are all kinds of useful by-products of those activities. But they could do it, perhaps, with a stronger sense of the chief potential flaw in their enterprise, which is its distressing superfluity.
) "Yes, I've finally read the book with one of the best titles in philosophy, after several years of having it queued, and after introducing my parents to it some time before I managed to read it myself." Russ Allbery.This {ZMM} has the readability of popular psychology but not the shallowness, and if you've been putting it off because you were worried it was going to be too mystical, too difficult, or too proselytizing, worry no longer. Pirsig kept me interested, made me think, didn't talk down to me, and didn't annoy me, and higher praise for philosophy is rare.
) This Is a Sort Of Late Review of the Best Book I´ve Ever Read by Allen, a Social Educator, Photographer and Day-Trader.I first read it {ZMM} when I was about 20, and it made a huge impact on my life. I was at a very adaptive age - and searching for direction spiritually and otherwise. It was the first word in the title "Zen" that initially attracted me. Little did I know how this book would be an important companion for me throughout my life.
) This Is One of Those Books That Needs To Sink In Before One Can Really Think About It.It’s a blessing in the sense that when you finish it, you want to go back and read it all over again to really appreciate it for what it is. And it’s a curse because when you get bored before the good bits in the last few chapters, you’ll probably drop the book and declare it a waste of time. It made me feel that maybe the author really didn’t have much to say and so he saved the best bit for the last in the hopes of making the reader think he had more than he really did.
) English Teacher Reports How ZMM Saved Her From DestructionPirsig's book was a literary miracle at a time when I was the lowest point in my adult life. I've only read it once. And it changed my life. I lost my voice on the second day and lost 18 pounds in 14 days. God knows how far back my hairline receded in that time. I was on the verge of quitting every day. In November of 1996, my friend and brother, "lent" me Pirsig's tome. I read bits of this masterwork every day before I left my apartment for work. The concepts within it sustained me and gave me strength when I thought my tanks were dry.
) "Top Ten" Friends Journal.Well, this review started on a somewhat negative note, but I'll finish it on a positive one. ZMM is a good book. It's an unusual book, which is also important. It's probably not like anything I've read before, and I'm always happy about this, being exposed to vastly different ideas and styles. Some of it is too philosophic for me, so maybe I'll have to read it again some time.
) ZMM Has Many Weak Points, A Negative Review by Girish Venkataramani, Ph D. Candidate, Electrical & Computer Engineering Department, Carnegie Mellon University.In the end, the main weakness of this book is the method of analysis chosen by Pirsig. Ask any scientist and they'll tell you that the most beautiful theorems and laws are the simplest ones. In this regard, Phaedrus's convoluted, heavy analysis fails miserably. Nuances are lost in the process, and rhetoric takes the place of the very scientific truth pursued by the book.
) Forward Motion's Book Forum Has Interesting Blog Review.I wonder what some of you think of it. I just finished, I've been chewing through it my free evenings for a month or two now, and I can't get it out of my head. Like all good philosophy, I put it down and felt mentally exhausted, I had been thinking so hard. It is a stimulating and unique journey, akin to my experience of reading Descartes for the first time. That 'aha' factor, thinking about things in a different way. My whole mind tuned into the pace of his thoughts. Magical.
) A Work of Art: Solaris Recommends.The novel begins with the author and his son touring the countryside on their motorcycle with some friends . And slowly the author begins to talk about things - things which seem important to him. Why are we in such a desperate hurry all the time? Why are people running away from technology , feeling nostalgic about the good old days ? Most importantly , why have we stopped caring about our work , about what we do - like the way a careless mechanic manhandles a motorcycle? What is Quality, he wondered? These are the questions that bothered a man called Phaedrus who was a very intelligent person extremely well versed with reason and logic.
) My perspective of Robert M. Pirsig's Lila: Doug RenselleRobert M. Pirsig's "Lila" is one of the finest and most challenging books in print today. For those of you who have read his, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance," (ZMM) and enjoyed the philosophical and mystical challenges there, "Lila" offers even more.
)Motorcycle Online Has Many Interesting ZMM Reviews Mostly From The "Biker" Perspective.But is the time and effort {to read ZMM} well-spent? Absolutely. In a society which tricks a person into deriving self-worth from monetary income and material possessions, this book helps the reader rediscover what truly is important. In the process, the reader learns to take pride in the individual lives they live and the decisions they make.
) Publishers Page Has Reading Guide and Extensive "Topics for Discussion" Questions.http://www.harpercollins.com/global_scripts/product_catalog/book_xml.asp?isbn=0060839872&tc=rg
) Bookseller Has Worthy Collection of Reviews.) Book Crossing, A Global Community of Book Lovers Has Several Short Blogs.Book Crossings Dot Com Book Club Review ZMM ) Wayward Puppy Web Site Not So Thrilled By ZMM.While I did have to roll my eyes every few pages I am still glad I read this work because of its reputation – sometimes finding out a book isn’t that great is just as valuable as finding out that a book is good.
) Bookseller Has Worthy Summary.http://www.biblio.com/books/isbnnu/59533295.html ) The Ishmael Network Reading List Has Collection of Available Pirsig Books With Description of Each.http://www.ishmael.com/interaction/network/readings/index.cfm?initial=Z ) “This book will change the way you think and feel about your life”That’s what the back cover said. It’s pretty much right. Both times I read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance it had significant effects {on me}.
) Howard W. French's Glimpse of the World Web Site Has ZMM Review.This book is a delight, especially the quiet ways in which it explores relationships between family members and friends, and in the way Pirsig talks about our relationship with technology, as well. There’s not a whole lot of Zen, as the intervening years have taught me. Rather, you’ll find a fair amount of philosophical rumination, relieved by the author’s gift for landscape and other descriptive writing.
My Own Thoughts On "Why Read ZMM, Are Here:http://ww2.usca.edu/ResearchProjects/ProfessorGurr/Documents/WhyReadZMM As Mentioned Above, the Following TWO Links Is My Guidance On Reading ZMM With Enjoyment and Lack of Frustration.Some of the 4 Star & 5 Star Amazon ZMM Reviewers offer guidance for enjoyable reading of ZMM. And they also offer their ideas about the causes of frustration in reading ZMM. These are collected and collated to here.
My own suggestions as to the causes of reader extreme dislike of ZMM are here.
) My Modest Collection of "Best Books Lists".An Other Way To Learn How ZMM Is Received Is To Study Books People Have Found Valuable. At this link you will see Robert Pirsig is Listed right along with Other Classics Authors Such as: Tolstoy, Melville, and J.R.R. Tolkien. (
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