Robert Pirsig dies at 88; wrote counterculture classic 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance'

[KG]

Source: latimes

Sept. 27, 1991 photo of Robert Pirsig at the Charles Hotel in Cambridge Mass. In the nearly five yea
Robert Pirsig in 1991 at the Charles Hotel in Cambridge, Mass. (Gary Guisinger / For The Times)
Steve Chawkins
In the nearly five years it took Robert Pirsig to sell “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,” 121 publishers rejected the rambling novel.

The 122nd gently warned Pirsig, a former rhetoric professor who had a job writing technical manuals, not to expect more than his $3,000 advance.



“The book is not, as I think you now realize from your correspondence with other publishers, a marketing man’s dream,” the editor at William Morrow wrote in a congratulatory note before its 1974 publication.

He was wrong. “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values” sold 50,000 copies in three months and more than 5 million in the decades since. The dense tome has been translated into at least 27 languages. A reviewer for the New Yorker likened its author to Herman Melville. Its popularity made Pirsig “probably the most widely read philosopher alive,” a British journalist wrote in 2006.





Pirsig, a perfectionist who published only one major work after “Zen” but inspired college classes, academic conferences and a legion of “Pirsig pilgrims” who retrace the anguished, cross-country motorcycle trip at the heart of his novel, died Monday at his home in South Benwick, Maine, the Associated Press confirmed. He was 88 and had been in failing health.

“Zen” and Pirsig’s less successful 1991 novel, “Lila,” are not easy reads. In both, he develops what he calls the “Metaphysics of Quality,” a philosophy that attempts to unite and transcend the mysticism of the East and the reason of the West.



Read more: http://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-robert-pirsig-obituary-20170424-story.html

[notdarkyet]

1. One of my husbands favorite books. He's gone too. A cult classic.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

4. Your husband was a classic? Lucky you!

[tparrett62]

2. So sorry to hear

That book made a huge impact on me. Bon voyage.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

3. I'm glad I read it about 40 years ago. It's helped me apply zen to everyday life, though

... I remember little of it. Time to reread it.

One of those things that just seem to make so much sense that it was easy to integrate. Like learning something that becomes so innate that you forget how how you learned it.

[LuvLoogie]

5. Living deliberately is difficult. To find freedom in the efficient processing

Of each task before you is boredom's bane. Doing things well can be joyful, if we allow it.

[redstatebluegirl]

6. I loved that book!!!! I still have my original copy!

Rest in Peace.....

[DorothyG]

7. I have no idea where mine is

but it was probably one of the first philosophy books I read along with Johathan Livingston Seagull.

[redstatebluegirl]

8. Mine is on my bookcase, it has been there through 4 moves to 3 states.

[Binkie The Clown]

9. One of the most memorable books I've ever read. n/t

[dgauss]

10. Read "Zen and the The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" many years ago when I was young and loved it.

It was one of those strange books that I understood when reading it that I didn't really understand it. If asked after reading it to summarize what it was about I would have had a tough time. Still, it was one of those books I just became completely absorbed into. I thought there was something there, even if I couldn't articulate what that was, but thought at the time I was learning to look at things in a different way and that could have some positive, maybe subconscious, effect on me.

Maybe it did have an effect on me, I haven't thought about that book much in the last 30 years or so but it seems like exactly the type of book to read when young and then read again when older. Time to read this one again.

[deurbano]

11. When a friend and I were backpacking through Europe (1979), we met some boys from

the University of Leeds during a v-e-r-y long train from Thessaloniki, Greece to Istanbul. (We changed to a steam train at the Turkish border!) Two were very smart, very funny, very tall brothers from Manchester who kept us highly entertained on an otherwise kinda grueling train ride... and it was great fun to experience Istanbul with them, too. (I still mimic--affectionately--their Manchester accents.) The older brother, Dave, gave me his well-read copy of Zen when we parted, and it was the perfect companion for the rest of the trip. This reminds me I've been meaning to pass my copy on to my 18-year-old son. RIP, Mr. Pirsig, and thanks.

[Javaman]

12. Okay this is freaky...

I was just reading something where in the Main character mentions this book, it was not a moment later that I thought to check the headlines on DU, and low and behold I see that title in late braking news. WTF?

Maybe I need to read it, I never have.

Rest in peace to the author

[CanSocDem]

13. Should be 'required reading'.

The "metaphysics of quality" is lost on most Americans. Pirsig shows us "quality" has to be logical.

"So the thing to do when working on a motorcycle, as in any other task, is to cultivate the peace of mind which does not separate one's self from one's surroundings. When that is done successfully, then everything else follows naturally. Peace of mind produces right values, right values produce right thoughts. Right thoughts produce right actions and right actions produce work which will be a material reflection for others to see of the serenity at the center of it all."

.