I’ve heard much praise for this book from people throughout college and after. I’ve even heard people describe the novel as one that had completely changed their lives and the way they view everything. With expectations fit to match the descriptions I’d received, I first started the book four years ago (2000). I made it (barely) through about 45 pages and had to stop. The first fault is that Robert Pirsig is not a writer. From the beginning, it is glaringly obvious that the man has no sense of storytelling or ability to keep the reader engaged with anything interesting. I lost interest and moved onto something else. That was the first attempt.
Recently, I picked it up again in an attempt to give it another chance, thinking that maybe I had been in a capricious mood the first time, now willing to give a potentially awe-inspiring work of literature one more try. I forced myself to finish the thing, thinking up until the very end that maybe on the next page or in the next chapter, I would come across what everyone had been speaking so highly of. Nope.
This book is the true story of a man (Pirsig) who got so lost in his thoughts and ideas about a type of metaphysics that he himself created, that he was declared clinically insane and underwent shock therapy treatments to annihilate the entire facet of his defective personality that allowed him to come up with these seemingly-brilliant ideas in the first place. Pirsig uses the book to try to justify how he went off the deep end and came back, but in my opinion, it just solidifies the fact that he’s still there.
His main premise involves his mental discovery of an entity that guides the overall psychological behavior/existence of man. He describes ’’Quality’’ as a third innate force, somehow overlooked by philsophers for thousands of years to the first two forces, mind and matter. Pirsig is never actually able to describe exactly what he’s talking about when he mentions this entity ’’Quality, ’’ and actually rather conveniently explains this with his belief that ’’Quality’’ can not be described, hence it loses the ability to be the entity ’’Quality.’’ Does this make a great inarguable stance or what? It’s really just a small example of the lengths that Pirsig goes to to try and defend his opinions on something that is not based whatsoever in anything resembling logic or reality.
I don’t know exactly how so many people have gotten onto the bandwagon about this book over the thirty years since it was first published. I will venture a guess though: It is very difficult to read because of both Pirsig’s incomprehensible rantings on a subject that any sane person cannot understand becasue they (the beliefs) don’t make sense, and becasue of the true, yet archaic argument forms that he uses to (unsuccessfully) back his philosophical positions. I have a feeling that people who are looking for something in their spiritual lives recognize that their is some deep thought going on here. After all, Robert Pirsig has tested to be (in some aspects) a very intelligent man. I think most people leave it at that, and while they don’t understand what is being said, resign themselves to the fact that they are being preached to by a thinker, thus the novel must be brilliant and life-changing. And the word ’’Zen’’ is in the title.
For those that can see beyond this sheep mentality, this book becomes something a little sad. A man who is hopelessly inable to function within the parameters of normal human thought, desperately trying to bond with his son on cross-country motorcycle tour, while justifying his lapses into insanity.
Overall it is very unreadable and not recommended.