The Art of Boredom Maintenance

[Thanin]

I was looking around the net for info on the book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance when I came across a review of it. I was wondering if anyone has read this book and what people thought of this review.




It is a brave reviewer who wades into the flood of praise that has been heaped upon this book over the years with a skeptical note to sound. (Sorry about mixing all those metaphors, but if you like this book you probably won't mind.) A friend of mine recommended this book to me some years ago, telling me that the book was, for him, genuinely inspirational, a feeling that many other reviewers here appear to share. I read it carefully precisely because I care for my friend and wanted to understand him better. But I have to say, in all honesty, that this is one of the worst books I have ever read.
It is not merely that it's pretentious and outlandish--plenty of "philosophical" books fall into those categories--but it is also monumentally boring. It achieves a degree of boringness that remains unmatched by any other book I have read, and I think that if I can honestly boast about anything, I can boast about the number and variety of books I have read. I've read long books, short books, scholarly books, schlocky books, comic books, cookbooks, mystery novels, fantasy novels--you name it, this beats them all in the boredom category. After reading page after interminable page about a meaningless motorcycle drive across Montana and God knows how many other interminable states, interspersed with prurient glimpses into a decaying psyche that winds up imploding in a most anti-climactic way, one begins to count the pages to the end with every page turn.

As a teacher of philosophy I was dismayed to find that many people who claim to be interested in philosophy found this book to be an effective introduction to the topic. It is perhaps no accident that the people who tell me that this was the first "philosophy" book they read, and that it was foundational for them, turn out to be among the least philosophical people I know. Indeed, many of them appear to be ineducable in the subject, a property that I ascribe to having used this book as their introduction to the subject.

I appear to be in the minority in this view, however. I suppose that I must be some sort of philistine or something, but I can find nothing of value here, either philosophically, spiritually, or psychologically. And I still know nothing about maintaining a motorcycle.

[rickus]

thanin said:

I was wondering if anyone has read this book...

I've thought of trying to tackle it several times but have always chickened out. Only to read much less intimidating works like Don Quixote, Crime and Punishment, and Homer's the Iliad, just to name a few. No, the only sole (I know of) brave enough to take on that challenge and walk away unscathed was our very on PHD candidate, Jeffrey T. McBride.

Obnoxiously yours,
rickus

[Tyler]

Let me start by saying, I often don't read books because they aren't action packed enough. That said, I've read this book twice. I don't know what the dude was talking about saying that the book is boring. It was fantastic.

[chris]

I read it way back when, at least 10 years ago... and it was so inspirational that I remember none of it. I remember being similarly, though not quite as fundamentally, bored; the reason I kept up reading it is, well, because of the aura of infallibility surrounding it.

[Jeff]

I've read the book twice, as well as its successor, Lila. I liked both novels, though I readily concede that they do little in the way of academic philosophy. (And thank God, because the discipline does bore most people.) The books almost never come up in high-powered philosophy conversations, and when they do they are often a set back. Pirsig's big idea in Zen is his notion of "Quality," which is suggestive but vague. He leaves it that way. Really, all the talk about Quality isn’t as important as his idea of the meaningfulness of ideas. Pirsig's a-ha moments are played as the essence of meaning in life. This notion did affect me profoundly, and to me it seems very old, Socratic even.

So, the books work well as motivational and inspirational works, if one needs such to maintain the quest for growth. They also tell us that growing the mind is the most important work we can do, if we need to be reminded. When I was a sophomore in college, these were nice things to hear.

About the Zen in the books: There isn’t much. Pirsig is more existentialist than Buddhist. But I dig the existentialists: They see that Truth, Beauty, and Goodness are not abstract when you do them right.

Jeff