danadalloway 's review for:

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values by Robert M. Pirsig

5.0

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I read this book when I was 18, starting it while I lived alone in my first apartment and finishing it after I'd given away everything I owned and wa staying in the Grand Canyon. It was that pivotal for me. As I've been rereading it, I remember exactly where I was when I read certain sentences, and some of them I quote to this day. Knowing what I already know about how it ends lends a certain piquancy missing when it was still mysterious who this Phaedrus fellow was. (I actually took a course in college to read the Phaedrus by Plato because of this book -- much like taking a Newberry course to study Herodotus after reading The English Patient.) I hope it's still as meaningul as it was when I first read it in the blush of my idealistic youth.