Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
by Robert Pirsig.
There is a popular adage that a classic is something that nobody really likes to read but everybody loves to talk about. People sometimes go too far to praise something that they have little or no idea about. It is just the idea of being well read, well informed that sounds appealing, so there is no dearth of the followers of the Zen. This has been my favorite book for quite some time and every time someone mentions this book to me, I jump and start talking about it, only to sadly discover that the person that I am trying to talk to is yet another case that belongs to the category of people I just mentioned.
So coming back to the Zen, this is one review that is going to be the toughest one I have or would ever attempt to. If one were to extract the aboutness of the Zen in a few words and condense it into an abstract and still do full justice to the book, I would really venerate him or her for the rest of my life. So when confronted with the question to describe it, by someone who hasn’t had a tryst with the Zen, I simply get lost for words. This is a humble attempt but I firmly believe that it is beyond my scope to really describe what the Zen is all about.
Some people tell me that it has taught them many things about life, and has posed questions whose answers have been responsible in understanding the self better. I also know of people who could not complete the book, not because they were not well qualified but every page clodded up their thoughts that they firmly decided to put it away for good. I feel that the title is misleading and is a vast oversimplification of the symbolism presented within. Every object described by the author is a symbolic reference to something much deeper and each person can be expected to interpret it in his or her own way based on their past experiences. This is the beauty of the book and also its short coming. The lack of a central plot can be a big hinderance in sustaining the interest of the reader for long periods of time. And since most of the references to physical objects are known to be symbolic, you can be sure that it is really not what it appears to be and are free to frame your own interpretations.
I don’t think it is prudent to discuss the plot of the book at all or present my inferences based on reading and rereading the book. All I can say is that the book encourages you to think, to think about yourself among other things. There are some important questions presented that allude to the philosophies of life. It is not a book that you can finish in one sitting and expect to understand everything that the author had intended you to. You really need the time and the inclination to sit through all the 370 odd pages and try to figure out what it is all about. And it is quite possible to lose interest midway or get intimidated by the ideas presented. And trust me, you may need a lot of rereading to appreciate this great work of literature.
And if there are some people who claim to appreciate the Zen but haven’t really read any of it, then they should be the first to grab the book and read it. You just might realize how worthless pseudo intellectualism is.
--damo--