Click & select among 11 Photo Albums: Scroll to 8th for Flowers+Redwing Blackbirds, along highways of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

Welcome to ZMM Quality!

Teaching, Learning, and Exploring the book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

Here you will find photos, travel information, essays, and links a great many resources concerning the book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (ZMM) by Robert Pirsig. This information has been collected through the collaborative efforts of many people. If you are one of those persons, Pirsig enthusiasts around the world thank you!

Explore this site and see what the efforts of so many Quality-minded people have accomplished!

If you are a beginner, one of your first visits should be the pages opened by the links directly below:

1) For a brief introduction to the contents of the ZMM Quality Website see ZMMQ Site For Beginners.
2) To view actual photos taken by Robert Pirsig on his epic trip across the American West—by far the most popular of the pages on the site—see Pirsig's 1968 Photos.

Below you will find a series of announcements regarding projects that focus on Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and/or relate to topics covered in Pirsig’s book, which has come to be recognized as a classic philosophical novel in the same vein as Siddhartha, Slaughterhouse-Five, The Plague, and Moby-Dick. Many of the projects featured below, and others equally worthy of attention, are also covered on the ZMMQ News & News Archive page.

"Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" Video Documentary Marking Forty Years Since Author Robert Pirsig's Original ZMM Trip.

Mr. Lee Glover, an independent documentary filmmaker from Boise Idaho, traveled the entire ZMM route during July and early August 2008. Mr. Glover compiled a high-definition video film record of the trip, along with interviews of many people connected with Pirsig’s classic book and others who—like Mr. Glover—were making the “Pirsig pilgrimage”.

This effort is culminating in a documentary film entitled Zen, Art, and Motorcycles 1968-2008: A Forty-Year Search for Quality which celebrates the forty-year anniversary of Robert Pirsig’s original trip from Minneapolis to San Francisco with his son Chris. A trailer for the film, including a short interview with ZMMQ Site Master Henry Gurr, is now available on the Internet. This page contains a “Contact Me” link for getting in touch with Mr. Glover via e-mail.

More information on the making of Mr. Glover’s documentary is available on the ZMMQ News & News Archive page.

[SITEMASTER'S NOTE: The “Contact Me” link on Mr. Glover’s webpage requires Microsoft Outlook e-mail. If you do not have Microsoft Outlook installed on your computer and would like to contact Mr. Glover, do not hesitate to e-mail me at: HenryG*usca.edu (replace the asterisk with the appropriate character).]

John Sutherland Interview DVD.

In the Summer of 2003, I completed a video interview with Mr. John Sutherland, the person who was the archetype for one of the four main characters in the ZMM book. An eighty-minute DVD-movie of this interview has been made. This DVD also has thirty-five of my photos of Mr. Sutherland, his home and his drums, and photos of Robert Pirsig's old Minneapolis home and neighborhood. Contact me, Site Master Henry Gurr, for more information.

Now Available: Full-Text Correction to Web Versions of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

On my ZMM Links page (see links menu at left), I provide a link to the Full-Text version of the entire book "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" at Cal Tech. However the Cal Tech version contains a number of "scanner errors" and other deviations from the Bantam Paperback version of ZMM. I have now completed a corrected version of the Cal Tech ZMM book (using the Bantam Paperback printed versions as a master), done in Microsoft Word. Serious researchers may contact me for more information.

A Website Entitled Making Sense of Knowledge and Learning Will Help You Better Understand the ZMM Book. The Site Also Contains Many Good Quotes from Pirsig's Book.

"The importance of the learning capacity within a human organization” is stressed by Peters and Waterman in In Search of Excellence (1982) their best-selling recipe book for managerial success. They say:

The excellent companies are learning organizations!! Intriguingly, the top companies have developed a whole host of devices and management routines to stave off calcification…" (See pp 110, 111, 118 in the Peters and Waterman book.)

What do Peters and Waterman mean when they say that "the excellent companies" are "learning organizations" and that "their practices set conventional management wisdom on its ear?”

The answer they give on their excellent website is:

that, traditionally, management theory has concentrated upon formally rational methods and techniques of organization: the design of rational structures, the specification of rules, the standardization of procedures. In short, it [this theory] has prescribed rational methods of organization to the relative neglect of fostering dynamic processes of learning. In Pirsig's terms, Quantity is displaced by Quantity [This is, of course, the "Quality" fully described and worked out in Robert Pirsig's "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance".]

Updates To Photo Albums Compiled by Site Master Henry Gurr Showing the Sights and Scenes of the ZMM Book Have Been Completed.

For instructions on how to find my newest photos and updated captions, scroll down to the November 2006 entry on the ZMMQ News & News Archive page, OR click on the News & News Archive link in the links menu at left.

The Photos to be Accessed by Clicking on the Photos at Left Allow You to Select Among Numerous Photo Albums That Illustrate the Book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

This gallery of approximately 1266 photos is arranged in multiple albums. Hold your mouse over any of the small photos (located on the left) for a statement of the album’s contents and the number of photos in the album. You may then click on any photo to view a full introduction to the contents of each album. Next, click on the album title (or the album photo) to access a page of eighteen "thumbnails" featuring a description for each photo. You may click on any of these to see a larger photo. Clicking this larger photo will, in turn, yield an even larger photo (when available).

At the top (or bottom) of any photo or eighteen-thumbnail page, you will notice an Album Description in blue text. These are links for quick navigation among the nested albums. The link labeled "Gallery" in black will take you all the way back to the full Album Descriptions and allow you to select another album. Some of the Album Descriptions have links to information you may need such as:

1) The (highly recommended) How to use the "Gallery Slideshow" feature, and
2) Other additional information, such as the MOQ Conference and Detailed information concerning the layout of my ZMMQ Photo Gallery Captions.

These same links are to be found in the links menu at left on any of the pages on the ZMMQ Quality Website. Also be sure to note the four navigation links at bottom of every Gallery page.

A Very Good Interview With Robert Pirsig, Possibly His Last.

This new interview, by Tim Adams, contains information not previously seen.
This new interview was posted by The Manchester (England) Guardian Observer Newspaper, Sunday November 19, 2006.

This interview also contains Tim Adams’s own summary and observations regarding his conversation with Robert Pirsig. An interesting list of "ZMM Facts" comes at the end of the article.

The ZMM Quality Website Has Been Placed Onto a New Server, and Your Bookmarks/Favorites May Need to Be Updated.

Please check your Favorites and your Bookmarks to make sure that you have the following correct address for the ZMMQ Website: http://ww2.usca.edu/ResearchProjects/ProfessorGurr

I Want to Hear From You! Send Me an E-mail:

1) If you have some interesting new information or a story to tell. OR
2) If you have questions or need more information. OR
3) If you see anything on my website that could be improved. OR
4) If you find problems in these pages. OR
5) If you have clicked a link, but do not find what you were seeking.

Please Do Not Hesitate to Send an E-mail to HenryG*usca.edu (replace the asterisk with the appropriate character).

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed on the ZMM Quality Website and and/or in association with the Robert Pirsig Photographs are entirely those of the Site Master, Henry Gurr. The contents of the site have not been approved by the University of South Carolina Aiken.

For more information, click on Legal and Copyright in the links menu at upper left.

Click here to return to the top of this Home Page:
http://ww2.usca.edu/ResearchProjects/ProfessorGurr/Main/HomePage

Click here to go to the first albums of my Robert Pirsig and ZMM Photo Gallery: http://ww2.usca.edu/ResearchProjects/ProfessorGurr/gallery/

For additional information on the projects above, and for information on many other ZMM-related topics equally worthy of attention, click here to go to my ZMMQ News and News Archive Page:
http://ww2.usca.edu/ResearchProjects/ProfessorGurr/Documents/NewsArchive

Links to Additional Reading Related to the Above Material

ZMMQ Pages Containing Additional Historical Information:

1) Documents and Articles Concerning Sarah Vinke, Louis Vinke, and Robert Pirsig Found in the Archives at MSC/MSU and Tulane University

2) Photos of Faculty, Administrators, and Students at Montana State College: 1956-1960

3) “Books I’ve Enjoyed” by Sarah Jennings Vinke, with added commentary by Dennis Gary and Henry Gurr (Originally published, 1960, in the Montana Library Association Journal)

4) Commentary Regarding “Books I’ve Enjoyed” and Information About Viewing on the Internet
by Dennis Gary and Henry Gurr

5) Henry Gurr’s Montana State University Archives Page

6) Pirsig Memory “The Divine Sarah”

7) Vinke, Pirsig, and the Origins of “Quality” and MOQ

8) Shirley Luhrsen and Sarah Vinke: Letters to and from Bozeman

ZMMQ Pages by Dennis Gary, a Former Student of Dr. Sarah Vinke at MSC/MSU:

9) Archives Commentary and Connections to Memories of Sarah Vinke, Louis Vinke, Allan Kittell, and Robert Pirsig

10) The Sarah Vinke of My Student Days A Student’s Memories of “Mrs.” Professor Sarah Vinke

11) Following the Footsteps of My Mentor, Professor Sarah Vinke: My Life as an English Teacher, and Other Memories

12) Dennis Gary’s Values in Thought and Action: My Standards at School and in My Career

13) Memories of Deer Creek Mountain Ranch (an MSC Faculty Outing)

Pages on the Internet Devoted to Robert Pirsig:

14) Anthony McWatt's Robert Pirsig Site

15) Ian Glendenning’s Pirsig Pages on Psybertron

16) Gary Wegner’s Travelogue of Pirsig’s 1968 Motorcycle Trip

Edited by Andrew Geyer 11 Aug 2011
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