Book review - "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" (Robert M. Pirsig)

[cybermule]

I'd never really thought of reading this before, as I wasn't sure what it was about, and I'd only really heard about it in the pisstake context of HitchHikers. But then inulro reviewed it and made it sound very appealing, so I got it out of the library for a read.

I can't say I really liked the overtly philosophical thread of it (it sort of works in several layers). This book just confirmed that I hate classical philosophy, but then it did make me have a long think about this and thereby made me feel less stupid about not having the slightest interest in philosophy - I think a lot, but talking about thinking about thinking just doesn't work for me. Like calculus doesn't work for some people, philosophy doesn't work for me.

I did enjoy the roadtrip aspect of it. I always like a good American road trip story :) And surprisingly, I did enjoy the motorcycle maintenance too. It made me feel a lot better about being a careful and thoughtful practical worker - that's often made out to be a bit uncool, but it's not a bad thing. I also liked the exploration of the intersection of the classical bipolar "arts" and "science" sets.

So although I spent about half of the book being unsure whether I could handle any more of its slightly didactic tone, I did in the end get an awful lot out of it, and could probably recommend it to most of my friends list.

Comments

[lectrix-lecti.livejournal.com]

Heh, I disliked the (quasi-)philosophical bits too, but enjoyed the roadtrip and motorcycle fixing. It's easily the best of the ~*philosophical*~ books I've read, actual philosophy not included.

[aras-55555.livejournal.com]

I've had a used copy of this laying around for a while, but never got around to it yet...