Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig, first published in 1974
Spoiler Alert: Plot Summary
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is about a mental and physical journey. It follows an unnamed father and his teenage son, Chris, on a cross-country motorcycle trip, in what is perhaps the late sixties, early seventies. The narrator has experienced a sort of break in personality/psychotic break, and refers to his previous self as 'Phaedrus'. The pair is joined initially by John and Sylvia Sutherland, friends of the narrator, but eventually they peel off and it's just Chris and his father.
As the pair journeys west, the narrator regales us with his 'Chautauqua', or his sort of treatise on values and such. We continue to dig deeper into his history and what happened before his break, and we learn that Chris, too, has been showing signs of mental health issues. Father and son make their way rather begrudgingly across the long expanses of the western United States, eventually landing on the Pacific Coast and making their way down to San Francisco. Things come to a head when it seems like perhaps the father is getting lost in a kind of depressive episode, but there's a moment of clarity and Phaedrus/the narrator seem to merge, and it looks like there might just be some happy trails ahead.
Spoiler Over: Continue Here
Well hello, dear blobbists!
This book was an interesting nut to crack. In some ways, I truly despised it. The middle Chautauqua section gets to a place that is, imo, somewhere between a fever dream and a collection of straight up nonsense. But the parts where we learn about Phaedrus and the discussion of lessons in how to embrace understanding machines and technology were interesting to me. On the whole, I would not classify it as a novel, though I do think it has earned a cult classic spot. I don't regret having read it, but if you're not a hard core philosophy nut/somewhat masochistic with a glutton for punishment, I'd probably skip this one.
The Cast of Characters, small though it be
NOT-Phaedrus
If you've followed my blob much, you'll know that I am NOT a fan of unnamed narrators. I suppose it was critical that the narrator not have a name because he was really more of a half entity than a whole new self, but I still find it confusing and annoying. I ended up calling the narrator NOT-Phaedrus. It reminded me of YBN in Proust. Here are some lines that I think capture NOT-Phaedrus well.
- On visiting where Phaedrus used to teach: In this place he is the reality and I am the ghost.
- If you'll excuse me I'll just talk Chautauqua now, until the loneliness goes away. No, no thank you. I'd rather not.
- He [Phaedrus] was true to what he believed right to the end. That's the difference between us, and Chris knows it. And that's the reason why sometimes I feel he's the reality and I'm the ghost.
Phaedrus
- The world now, according to Phaedrus, was composed of three things: mind, matter, and Quality. There's a lot of this philosophy jibberjabber.
- And so he just did not care how he sounded to others. It was a totally fanatic thing. He lived in a solitary universe of discourse in those days. No one understood him. And the more people showed how they failed to understand him and disliked what they did understand, the more fanatic and unlikable he became. Oh GoOOd. That sounds like a real recipe for success.
- He had no time for or interest in other people's Great Books. He was there solely to write a Great Book of his own. As someone who's been reading a lot of great books, and written one or two of her own, I think it's sort of critical that you are humble enough to experience the writing of others, not so that you can put it on a pedestal, but so you can enrich your lived experience.
Chris
I felt SO bad for Chris throughout this book. I mean, I think that we're supposed to understand that the narrator, who is a loosely autobiographical version of Pirsig himself, wanted to try to connect with Chris and help him understand what was happening as he started to experience mental illness. But mostly he is SO mean to him and doesn't let him be a kid much and then in the end they kind of agree that not-Phaedrus/Phaedrus never went insane in the first place, and then they're like, now things will be fine! And I was like, UM, why would we think that would be the case? I'm definitely anti-shock therapy as it was delivered then, but I feel like deciding that they're both just A-OK and rocking with it doesn't feel like a win to me.
- He's trying to relate to me and is afraid he never will.
- He can't seem to care whether he's popular with anyone else. He just wants to be popular with me. Not healthy at all, everything considered. At least NOT-Phaedrus seems to recognize that this is problematic. I also found it very strange that there are vague references to a wife and another child, but the narrator seems very detached from these.
My Thoughts, in No Special Order
On really seeing the world
I was on board with the beginning of the book, especially when the Sutherlands were around and there was much less 'Chautauqua'-ing.
- You see things vacationing on a motorcycle in a way that is completely different from any other.
- We want to make good time, but for us now this is measured with emphasis on 'good' rather than 'time' and when you make that shift in emphasis the whole approach changes. I like this line.
On Chautauquas
I always thought that a Chautauqua was a town with a thriving culture, but the internet seems to define it as follows:
Chautauqua - an adult education and social movement in the United States that peaked in popularity in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Chautauqua assemblies expanded and spread throughout rural America until the mid-1920s. Named after Chautauqua, a county in New York State, where such an institution was first set up.
NOT-Phaedrus seems to think of it more like an oration or a monograph.
- What is in mind is a sort of Chautauqua - that's the only name I can think of for it - like the traveling tent-show Chautauquas that used to move across America, this America, the one that we are now in, an old-time series of popular talks intended to edify and entertain, improve the mind and bring culture and enlightenment to the ears and thoughts of the hearer.
- I suppose if I were a novelist rather than a Chautauqua orator I'd try to 'develop the characters' of John and Sylvia and Chris with action-packed scenes that would also reveal 'inner meanings' of Zen and maybe Art and maybe even Motorcycle Maintenance. That would be quite a novel, but for some reason I don't feel quite up to it. They're friends, not characters, and as Sylvia herself once said, 'I don't like being an object!' So a lot of things we know about one another I'm simply not going into. Nothing bad, but not really relevant to the Chautauqua. That's the way it should be with friends. This seems like a good policy around friendship, but it's where he really started to lose me as a reader. Turns out I'm not that into Chautauquas.
- When you've got a Chautauqua in your head, it's extremely hard not to inflict it on innocent people. Oh, but maybe you should TRY!
- I want to talk now about trust traps and muscle traps and then stop this Chautauqua for today. (my margin note: OR MAYBE FOREVER?)
On being a rather s**tty parent
Excuse my French here, but there's really just no other word for it. Here are some of the times when I really started to hate the narrator:
Later on Chris shouts to hear his echo, and throws rocks down to see where they fall. He's starting to get almost cocky, so I step up the equilibrium to where I breathe at a good swift rate, about one-and-a-half times our former speed. This sobers him somewhat and we keep on climbing. What an asshole, I thought.
Chris: I just hate this.
Father: 'Well, what can we do, Chris?'...'We just have to keep going until we find out what's wrong or find out why we don't know what's wrong. Don't you see that?' HM...
- 'Don't cry, Chris. Crying is just for children.' NO IT'S NOT. THAT'S THE DUMBEST THING I'VE EVER HEARD.
- Using Nell as his Chris replacement/continuation - OK, so I'm blurring the lines a bit here, but if you give me a reader's guide to a pretty autobiographical novel, I'm going to draw some connections. Pirsig reveals in an epilogue/reader's guide that ten years have passed, and Chris has died. In fact, real life Chris was murdered. He was held up by some dudes and it got violent. So at first, I felt bad for Pirsig, because to lose a child seems like it would be unspeakably painful, and to lose one to violence is a whole other kind of pain. But then, just when I was starting to feel for the guy, he mentions that he remarried and he and his new lady got pregnant, and were planning to terminate the pregnancy, but then decided that this child was really a continuation of Chris's life pattern in the form of a girl named Nell. And I am a little woo woo meself, but I don't think anyone should be brought into the world to continue anyone else's life pattern. Let Nell be Nell! Period! End of sentence!
On not eating any fruits or vegetables for....?
Here is an incomplete list of the things they eat on the trip: hot cakes, sausages, steaks, beer, burgers, eggs, malted milks. Since they do essentially NO physical movement, I found myself wondering if either of them were having any kind of regular bowel movements, and also wondering how many days precisely had passed since they ate anything resembling a fruit or a vegetable.
On the foolishness of quick assumptions and a need for serenity
OK, so like I said, I DID like the bits about fixing things, and the way Pirsig described his self-acquired understanding of motorcycle maintenance. Here's a line I liked: If you don't have [serenity] when you start and maintain it while you're working you're likely to build your personal problems right into the machine itself.
On classic vs. romantic modes
We are not going to get all the way into Pirsig's coocoo cachoo (sp?) philosophy rant, but I'm sharing a section so I can also illustrate Pirsig's rampant sexism:
The romantic mode is primarily inspirational, imaginative, creative, intuitive. Feelings rather than facts predominate. 'Art' when it is opposed to 'Science' is often romantic. It does not proceed by reason or by laws. It proceeds by feeling, intuition and esthetic conscience. In the northern European cultures the romantic mode is usually associated with femininity, but this is certainly not a necessary association.
The classic mode, by contrast, proceeds by reason and by laws - which are themselves underlying forms of thought and behavior. In the European cultures it is primarily a masculine mode and the fields of science, law, and medicine are unattractive to women largely for this reason. Although motorcycle riding is romantic, motorcycle maintenance is purely classic. The dirt, the grease, the mastery of underlying form required all give it such a negative romantic appeal that women never go near it. OH REALLY? I imagine there are plenty of women who enjoy motorcycle maintenance, and I know several women personally as well as millions of women generally who would have something to say about their place in the science, law, and medical fields.
- Also this happened: Sylvia is with Chris at a Laundromat doing the laundry for all of us. And I thought, NO, SYLVIA. DON'T DO THESE DIRTY MEN'S LAUNDRY. I also kept wondering - is your wife taking care of your other child? Making money? Taking care of your home?
Out, out, damn typos
For a book that is basically a 400+ page ode to the importance of quality, I found it ironic that I found no fewer than NINE typos in my copy of the book. I understand Pirsig can't be held responsible for all elements of his book being published, especially in later editions, but I was still annoyed at the hypocrisy. I have listed them below as evidence.
- Page 139 - missing the letter "w" in "was"
- Page 293 - should be "knows" not "knews"
- Page 304 - should be "are" not "of"
- Page 306 - should be "soon" not "soo"
- Page 313 - should be "accidentally" not "accidently"
- Page 328 - should be "show", not "shown"
- Page 338 - should be "warn", not "warm"
- Page 394 - "in" and "it" order should be reversed
- Page 428 - "were" should be "where"
- I like the word 'gumption' because it's so homely and so forlorn and so out of style it looks as if it needs a friend and isn't likely to reject anyone who comes along. It's an old Scottish word, once used a lot by pioneers, but which, like 'kin', seems to have all but dropped out of use. I like it also because it describes exactly what happens to someone who connects with Quality. He gets filled with gumption.
- On tackling a repair yourself: You're at a disadvantage the first time around and it may cost you a little more because of parts you accidentally damage, and it will almost undoubtedly take a lot more time, but the next time around you're way ahead of the specialist. You, with gumption, have learned the assembly the hard way and you've a whole set of good feelings about it that he's unlikely to have.
- Watch out for gumption desperation, in which you hurry up wildly in an effort to restore gumption by making up for lost time. I definitely experienced some gumption desperation when I had taken the pipes off my garbage disposal and was covered in rotten broccoli and couldn't figure out how to get the pipes back together at 11 PM. Thankfully the passage of a day and a lot more gumption got me the rest of the way to a fixed disposal and drain. And I did have that whole set of good feelings :)
The trap consists of a hollowed-out coconut chained to a stake. The coconut has some rice inside which can be grabbed through a small hole. The hole is big enough so that the monkey's hand can go in, but too small for his fist with rice in it to come out. The monkey reaches in and is suddenly trapped - by nothing more than his own value rigidity. He can't revalue the rice. He cannot see that freedom without rice is more valuable than capture with it. Value rigidity is a fascinating concept.
- On any mechanical repair job ego comes in for rough treatment. You're always being fooled, you're always making mistakes, and a mechanic who has a big ego to defend is at a terrific disadvantage. If you know enough mechanics to think of them as a group, and your observations coincide with mine, I think you'll agree that mechanics tend to be rather modest and quiet. There are exceptions, but generally if they're not modest quiet and modest at first, the work seems to make them that way. And skeptical. Attentive, but skeptical. But not egoistic. I liked this line because it reminded me of the only excellent mechanics I know, my Uncle Dave and my neighbor Mr. Light, and this definitely describes both of them to a T.
Some of my favorite gobbledygook sentences
I found some of my favorite nonsensical sentences so I could share them with you. Aren't you glad? ;)
- And now to give a fuller description of what this is I want now to turn his analytic approach back upon itself - to analyze analysis itself. MMM, yes...
- We have in our minds an a priori motorcycle which has continuity in time and space and is capable of changing appearance as one moves one's head and is therefore not contradicted by the sense data one is receiving. Yes, of course, that a priori motorcycle...
- He had erected an imaginary entity, defined it as incapable of definition, told the students over their own protests that they knew what it was, and demonstrated this by a technique that was as confusing logically as the term itself.
- The very existence of subject and object themselves is deduced from the Quality event. of Course.
- The mystery of what is space and time may be made more understandable by this explanation, but now the burden of sustaining the order of the universe rests on 'facts.'
- Quality isn't just something you lay on top of subjects and objects like tinsel on a Christmas tree. Real Quality must be the source of the subjects and objects, the cone from which the tree must start. OBVIOUSLY!
- 'Substance' and 'substantive' really corresponded to 'object' and 'objectivity', which he'd rejected in order to arrive at a nondualistic concept of Quality. yes, good to reject that.
In the secondary America we've been through, of back roads, and Chinaman's ditches, and Appaloosa horses, and sweeping mountain ranges, and meditative thoughts, and kids with pinecones and bumblebees and open sky above us mile after mile after mile, all through that, what was real, what was around us dominated. And so there wasn't much feeling of loneliness. (my notes - NO, just depression and crippling ennui) That's the way it must have been a hundred or two hundred years ago. Well, maybe, or maybe there were enslaved people all over it, and Indigenous people who were living here before we swindled and mass murdered them. But sure, yes, there were some nice mountains then, too, I'm sure.
Referents and Reverberations
- 1984, George Orwell
This line: But no one was listening at that time and they only thought him eccentric at first, then undesirable, then slightly mad, and then genuinely insane.
And this line: When you live in the shadow of insanity, the appearance of another mind that thinks and talks as yours does is something close to a blessed event.
Reminded me of this line, from 1984: Perhaps a lunatic was simply a minority of one.
- The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath
Lines I Particularly Liked
- Steel can be any shape you want if you are skilled enough, and any shape but the one you want if you are not.
- An experiment is never a failure solely because it fails to achieve predicted results. This is a great line.
- To live only for some future goal is shallow. It's the sides of the mountain which sustain life, not the top. Here's where things grow.
- You can't live on just groovy emotions alone. OK? You might want to, but you can't!
- When you make the mistakes yourself, you at least get the benefit of some education.
We're nowhere that I'm familiar with, in country that I've never seen before, yet I don't feel a stranger in it.
I will say that I enjoyed learning that Pirsig had to face 121 rejections before his book was picked up and then become a national bestseller (why, I'm not TOTALLY sure, but still, good to persevere!). It made me feel like I can weather another hundred or so rejections when I ready to re-query my novels.
Keep safe! Stay cool! Good night :)
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