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3.52 AVERAGE
3.52 AVERAGE
I’m sure this book would have deserved a four-star rating if I had read it fifteen years ago… But given the contact I’ve had with old Greece and Philosophy, Phaedrus’ quest seemed doomed from the start to me. [SPOILER] Thus I was not surprised with the end and its ego/personality dissolution. The book might be overrated because it is dense and hard to follow in a few parts, making it look more cerebral than it actually is.
Thankfully, first impressions do not always determine my overall reaction to something or I might have left this book on the shelf in the store whilst scratching my head wondering what the hell Zen and motorcycle maintenance have to do with each other. Pirsig, as both author and narrator, tells the story of a motorcycle trip he took with his son, Chris, and two friends from their homes in Minnesota out to San Francisco. The initial excuse for the trip is a chance to catch up with old friends and strengthen the relationship he has with his son. But we soon find out that the trip serves as a time for introspection for the narrator who has many personal demons he needs to face. He recalls his current life and the strains brought upon it by his past life and he treats both stages as though they are entirely different people, which, to some degree, is the truth. Not only has he aged in that time, but his outlook on life has dramatically altered as well. His self analysis revolves around an examination of past and current philosophical theory and the amazing thing is reading as he relates these theories to his life. But everything always comes back to the motorcycle trip and his constant attempts to fix and tinker with his beloved bike along the way. There are deeper interpretations of the subtext that can be made but I'd prefer you do it yourself so I can't be blamed for ruining the novel.
Good pre-owning-a-motorcycle book. Read in Portugal.
Second read: Read in Altadena and finished on the road home and at home in Chatham. What a banging afterword. God super sad. The few pages about gumption traps, etc. are so perfect.
Second read: Read in Altadena and finished on the road home and at home in Chatham. What a banging afterword. God super sad. The few pages about gumption traps, etc. are so perfect.
hopeful
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This was a tough read, mostly because it is heavily philosophy (not my fav) and also quite dated, being published in 1974. On the positive side is the epic cross country motorcycle drive of Dad and son. That part was cool, but also sad. The dated part meant that there were some strong sexist stereotypes that help explain why I was the sole woman among 30 men in my engineering classes in 1987. And I felt strongly for his son, who had his own struggles on this journey, and 70's parenting was part of it.
The journey involves the narrator struggling to understand and assess his own mental health in light of his previous mental breakdown which resulted in electroshock therapy and splintered his life and consciousness into "before" and "after".
The philosophy was a deep dive into rhetoric vs dialectic, Aristotle, Socrates and Plato. And I mean deep. I kept up with some of this, but own that I'd need to reread over and over again to get this. Instead, I may just go to the sources...eventually.
The cross country ride was set up initially as they main story, and then gradually took a back seat to the philosophy/mental health journey, which are intermingled. By midway through, each chapter contained an update of the journey, occasionally as short as one paragraph, sometimes a page or more. Motorcycle mechanics plays a part throughout the book, occasionally as an example of a philosophic approach, or sometimes as a practical episode. Those were usually interesting.
All in all, I'd probably give this 3 stars for the level of confusion, but since I plan on recommending and annotating copies for my kids, I think that indicates I think it's 4 stars.
The journey involves the narrator struggling to understand and assess his own mental health in light of his previous mental breakdown which resulted in electroshock therapy and splintered his life and consciousness into "before" and "after".
The philosophy was a deep dive into rhetoric vs dialectic, Aristotle, Socrates and Plato. And I mean deep. I kept up with some of this, but own that I'd need to reread over and over again to get this. Instead, I may just go to the sources...eventually.
The cross country ride was set up initially as they main story, and then gradually took a back seat to the philosophy/mental health journey, which are intermingled. By midway through, each chapter contained an update of the journey, occasionally as short as one paragraph, sometimes a page or more. Motorcycle mechanics plays a part throughout the book, occasionally as an example of a philosophic approach, or sometimes as a practical episode. Those were usually interesting.
All in all, I'd probably give this 3 stars for the level of confusion, but since I plan on recommending and annotating copies for my kids, I think that indicates I think it's 4 stars.
mysterious
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
informative
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I wanted to love this book, and I did for major portions of it. Like Phaedrus, though, I struggled with the classic side of things, and when Pirsig ventured into the intricacies of motorcycle repair he lost my attention. Finally finished it though, felt like a beast I had to slay. The last night I was reading it my wife was like, "Just finish the last 50 pages, that book has tortured you long enough."
Need to try reading this again. I don't think it's a 2 star book, I just wasn't ready for it.
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
informative
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
N/A
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle maintenance is a very difficult book to review. It consists of so many different plots, themes, ideas and arguments that reviewing it as a whole would be impossible without separating it into its component parts. However, since doing so sort of undermines the entire philosophical core of the novel I'm not going to do that either. However I don't think I could live with myself if I didn't somehow put my thoughts onto paper, so rather than comprehensively reviewing each aspect of the book, I'm going to list in no particular order some of the main observations I came away with:
- while I don't agree with everything the author proposes about life, I really like the main idea of trying to connect with everything you do personally
- the section at the end about how Greek philosophy changed the idea of philosophy as a whole from being about how things are connected to how things are separated is really interesting, and explains a lot about how inhuman the modern world can feel.
- I loved how the author proves his earlier self wrong throughout the book, including the behavior of his character as the novel progresses
- I loved how the novel was structured, demonstrating the strengths and weaknesses of various ideas through the rather simplistic story, and how the fact that he sometimes strays too far away from the plot and into abstract philosophy, which ar first I felt was a fault of the novel, is later addressed as a fault of his character in the end of the book.
- I found the whole idea of phaedrus, his past personality who drove himself insane in the pursuit of enlightenment, and how he shut away that part of his personality out of fear fascinating. Especially since in the end he realizes that separating his personality from this family and the outside world is harmful and goes against what he preaches throughout the book, and allows himself to reconnect with his family once again, having learned from his mistakes.
- the afterword about how the author wrote the novel and what happened to him later in life adds a lot of context and I honestly feel the book is incomplete without it.
Overall very important read for anyone who likes thinking about things, will likely save you a lot of hassle. I'd like to end the review with two passages, which in no way summarizes the book but which I can't really get out of my head:
1. "Phaedrus remembered a line from Thoreau: 'You never gain something but that you lose something'. And now he began to see for the first time the unbelievable magnitude of what man, when he gained power to understand and rule the world in terms of dialectic truths, had lost. He had built empires of scientific capability to manipulate the phenomena of nature into enormous manifestations of his own dreams and power and wealth - but for this he had exchanged an empire of understanding of equal magnitude: an understanding of what it is to be part of the world, and not an enemy of it."
2. "It's the sides of the mountain which sustain life, not the top. Here's where things grow."
- while I don't agree with everything the author proposes about life, I really like the main idea of trying to connect with everything you do personally
- the section at the end about how Greek philosophy changed the idea of philosophy as a whole from being about how things are connected to how things are separated is really interesting, and explains a lot about how inhuman the modern world can feel.
- I loved how the author proves his earlier self wrong throughout the book, including the behavior of his character as the novel progresses
- I loved how the novel was structured, demonstrating the strengths and weaknesses of various ideas through the rather simplistic story, and how the fact that he sometimes strays too far away from the plot and into abstract philosophy, which ar first I felt was a fault of the novel, is later addressed as a fault of his character in the end of the book.
- I found the whole idea of phaedrus, his past personality who drove himself insane in the pursuit of enlightenment, and how he shut away that part of his personality out of fear fascinating. Especially since in the end he realizes that separating his personality from this family and the outside world is harmful and goes against what he preaches throughout the book, and allows himself to reconnect with his family once again, having learned from his mistakes.
- the afterword about how the author wrote the novel and what happened to him later in life adds a lot of context and I honestly feel the book is incomplete without it.
Overall very important read for anyone who likes thinking about things, will likely save you a lot of hassle. I'd like to end the review with two passages, which in no way summarizes the book but which I can't really get out of my head:
1. "Phaedrus remembered a line from Thoreau: 'You never gain something but that you lose something'. And now he began to see for the first time the unbelievable magnitude of what man, when he gained power to understand and rule the world in terms of dialectic truths, had lost. He had built empires of scientific capability to manipulate the phenomena of nature into enormous manifestations of his own dreams and power and wealth - but for this he had exchanged an empire of understanding of equal magnitude: an understanding of what it is to be part of the world, and not an enemy of it."
2. "It's the sides of the mountain which sustain life, not the top. Here's where things grow."