Jon,
JON:
I'm curious: as one of the MOQ's more vocal critics, is there anything at all
that you admire about Pirsig, and his two books? Did you like ZMM or LILA
better?
GLENN:
There are probably two broad reasons why I like ZMM so much. Firstly,
the book has marvelous literary structure, and it is this structure that
makes the book work. I'm not sure any other structure would work as well.
Pirsig is very ambitious. He wants to tell you his life story, and he
wants to tell you his philosophy, and both are very complicated. He wants
to stress the importance of the journey in describing both, and he wants
it to be personal without being melodramatic. And he wants to pass on to
the reader life lessons which he has worked very hard to learn. The
structural elements that help him do this are:
- a very personal viewpoint, told from the first person narrative.
- a description of his philosophy and life lessons in a series of essays
(Chautauquas) which start out fairly easy and get more and more
challenging as the book progresses.
- a sense of here and now that is the motorcycle trip. This grounds the
reader in some kind of reality and is essential for giving the reader a
chance to breathe. But even the trip takes on a kind of drama, where he
develops an unresolved tension between himself and his son.
- he uses flashbacks as the ghost of Phaedrus returns to haunt his
consciousness.
But its how he uses these methods together that's so effective, trading
off among trip, essay, and flashback, going round and round just like his
philosophical musings go round and round. At first the essays are
triggered by events on the trip, but later they are triggered by the
events in the flashbacks. And as the book moves along, the passages about
the trip get shorter and shorter, the essays get more and more difficult,
and the flashbacks get longer and longer, coinciding with his slippage
out of reality back into Phaedrus at the story's culmination. All of this
is brilliantly conceived and executed. At the end there is a wonderful
crystallization, where he realizes what the blockage is between himself
and Chris, and he grabs hold of what is truly important in life, saving
himself from the abyss.
The second broad reason I liked ZMM is because of the subject matter.
While I'm not much of a philosopher I do enjoy philosophical musings and
of course I love science. I loved the whole Quality subject and all the
little tangential subjects and observations he discusses. I'm telling
you, this guy could be me! I don't think it's worth going insane over,
but this doesn't make the Phaedrus character any less fascinating. He
gives us a rare and revealing tour of the thought processes of not only a
philosopher but a recovering madman and a struggling father.
For all the intelligence and insightfulness of his
inner voice, for example, he is remote and wooden when he speaks to
Chris. I thought this was very realistic, a common problem in smart
people. Pirsig covers all kinds of ground, from the abstractions of
subject/object duality to the practical quandries of work being "stuck"
by the stripped grooves of a screw head. If anything you'll gain a new
appreciation for quality, that mysterious thing that creative people
strive for, that good thing that you can't quite describe but you'll
know when you see it. It's the thing that happens when a person starts
understanding how an object works, or when troubleshooting you start
selecting the helpful facts from the unhelpful ones, or when your mind
is free when doing a repetitive task, or when you decide you want peace
of mind, not just a fixed machine. Pirsig gives some fascinating
techniques for teaching students how to write, a wonderful character
description of a taciturn welder, a triumphant showdown with his
University of Chicago professor, and a painfully brief but striking
glimpse at a man at the height of his breakdown. And I loved the
Chautauqua about gumption traps! We all know what they are but have we
ever read about them before?! And Pirsig isn't perfect. He leaves a lot
left unanswered about Phaedrus ideas, for example, and his multi-themed
approach doesn't always tie together. But he even writes about that - the
messes people leave whereever they go. And he's to be forgiven for not
getting the theory across to us because he went through that shock
treatment. So even that works in the book. We're talking flawed
individual here. If you think ZMM is a textbook or treatise on the
Metaphysics of Quality, and that this should make or break the book,
you're missing the point. It's a brilliantly conceived and brilliantly
crafted auto-biography. It's like nothing I've ever read before or since.
I wrote this email in July 1999 to a friend who, at my urging, had just
finished ZMM. It was in response to a rather unflattering review of hers.
I was disappointed she didn't like it, and I wanted to tell her why I
thought it was good. But I realized I couldn't answer her questions about
his ideas about quality, because I didn't really understand them myself.
These questions led me to this website.
Certainly I like ZMM better than Lila. Lila has good parts, too. He makes
you think. He's a good read. I can't say how I'd feel about ZMM if I read
it straight through again, because I understand so much more now. This
website made me look at his ideas more critically, in a way I'd never done
when I read the books for my own enjoyment. I've learned a lot here.
Glenn
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