Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

An Inquiry into Values

"The real cycle you're working on is a cycle called 'yourself.'"One of the most important and influential books of the past half-century, Robert M. Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a powerful, moving, and penetrating examination of how we live and a meditation on how to live better. The narrative of a father on a summer motorcycle trip across America's Northwest with his young son, it becomes a profound personal and philosophical odyssey into life's fundamental questions. A true modern classic, it remains at once touching and …

Paperback, 464 pages

English language

Published Oct. 1, 2000 by Harper Perennial.

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ISBN:
978-0-06-095832-9
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Subjects
  • Travel - General
  • Essays & Travelogues
  • Psychology
  • Eastern - Zen
  • General
  • Zen
  • Psychology & Psychiatry / Emotions
  • Emotions
  • Eastern
  • Eastern - General

Reviews

Review of 'Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance' on 'Storygraph'

This book started slow and frustrating but redeemed itself by the end. I’m not a philosophy expert by any stretch of the imagination but I found Part 3 engaging and thought provoking.

Part 1 felt, to me, marred by a sort of narcissism that was grating. Both the narrator and the author felt a bit like a “well actually” reply guy except instead of one exhausting tweet, he wrote a whole book. 

At one point the narrator describes a time when he felt seen and accepted as his true self, and it was when he stood at the head of a classroom and everyone hung on his every word. This is revealing.

But like I said, although this narcissism never went away, and the narrator remains, to me, deeply unlikable, the philosophy of the later parts drowns it out and it becomes worth reading.