Summer Reading: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert M. Pirsig

Books I read this summer:

Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen

A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini

Cold Mountain, by Charles Frazier

The Trial, by Franz Kafka

The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

On The Road, by Jack Kerouac

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


To be perfectly honest, I did not really care too much for this book when I started reading. The seemingly esoteric lists filled with motorcycle equipment and camping gear almost made me drop this book. Furthermore, the numerous philosopical discourses just about put me to sleep...but that was only for the first 70 or so pages. Then, the "character" Phaedrus was introduced. I say "character" because he is actually an alter ego of the main character, an ego that was deemed insane and thus was replaced by a separate personality and identity through shock-treatment therapy on the brain. The importance of all this is that Pirsig finally introduces a villian, a character designed to directly oppose the narrator, and it was because of this conflict that I stayed with this novel, and I'm very glad I did.

In Zen, there are three different stories happening simultaneously, and they all relate back to our narrator (who is never identified as Pirsig, but since the story is told in a first-person narrative, I always assumed it was him). The first subplot occurs in the present, where the narrator, his son, and two family friends ride across the northern United States on two motorcycles. During the course of this journey, it becomes more and more apparent that the relationship between father and son (11) is dysfunctional at best, as the narrator notes more and more the return of Phaedrus in his son and in himself.

The relation of the tale of Phaedrus is the second storyline. As the narrator and his son Chris journey from Minnesota to California, they encounter people and places that had existed in Phaedrus's world, people that he knew: places he had taught at, lived in. Gradually, more of Phaedrus's memories are uncovered by these encounters, and as the narrator learns more about Phaedrus and his struggle, so too do we learn that Phaedrus is not really such a villian, just a man with a passion for answers.

The final plot in this novel is a discussion of philosophy, most of which deals with the concept of Quality. Quality, Phaedrus argued, was a separate entity, which encompassed all aspects of rational and metaphysical thought, including "Classical" (analytical) thinking and "Romantic" thinking, which Pirsig quickly identifies as two distinct formulas to view the world in. In Phaedrus's quest to define Quality, he finds all that he had ever looked for in the world: a philosophical theory that makes sense to him, a theory for which he can find no fault and a theory in which everything can fit. Throughout this pursuit of knowledge, Phaedrus goes from a teacher to a student, from a caring husband to an insane intellectual, and from a man who thinks he knows it all to a man who no longer even exists, save for in the deep recesses of the narrator's mind. His struggle to define Quality, to define a term that everyone can recognize, but a term that no one can analytically prove, leads him to a climactic philosophical duel with an esteemed University of Chicago professor, who comes to realize that Phaedrus is the superior philosopher. However, as Phaedrus returns home, he understands that in his hunt to classify Quality, he has been getting farther and farther away from the true axiom of Quality: that it can never be truly defined. Defeated by this realization, he sits and stares at his home for three days before he is taken away to a mental hospital, and where is persona is destroyed.

The book itself draws all three of these separate plots together at the powerful conclusion. The philosophy, the Phaedrus emergence, and the decaying relationship between the narrator and his son - all are tied together when they reach the Pacific Ocean, for it is here, at the end of the journey, where Phaedrus makes his triumphant return. At first glance, the repossession of the narrator's mind seems to give a negative impression, almost as if the villian has triumphed in the end. However, it is the exact opposite. The man who sought answers in life, the one who was destroyed by the greatest question of all time, the individual who was prevented from even his own mind returned to the son that he loved, and the son who loved him, Phaedrus, not this new and so-called "improved" personality that had existed throughout the course of the novel. But in the end, Zen, the state in which the world should be, returns to Phaedrus and his son, and thus Robert M. Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance truly lives up to its name: a masterfully crafted saga that unites intellectual creativity with the powerful bond of humanity. (795)