Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Robert M. Pirsig. Bantam Books, 1974 - Ego (Psychology) - 406 pages. The novel, published in 1974, uses a long motorcycle trip to frame a prolonged exploration of the world of ideas, about life and how best to live it.
The better known, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, delves into Pirsig's exploration into the nature of quality. Ostensibly a first-person narrative based on a motorcycle trip he and his young son Chris had taken from Minneapolis to San Francisco, it is an exploration of the underlying metaphysics of Western culture. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance interweaves two parallel plots: the first is the chronicling of a transcontinental motorcycle journey taken by the narrator and his eleven-year-old son, Chris. The second plot details the life and thought of a man named Phaedrus, a solitary intellectual obsessed with a philosophical concept called Quality. . 178 370 612 444 211 360 596 735