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A review by anniedrows
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig
4.0
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.