Robert M. Pirsig, of ‘Zen&Art of Motorcycle Maint.' dies @88

[ChromaKey]

Robert M. Pirsig in 1975. Credit William Morrow, via Associated Press

Robert M. Pirsig, Author of ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,’ Dies at 88
NYTimes, By PAUL VITELLO, APRIL 24, 2017

Robert M. Pirsig, whose “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,” a dense and discursive novel of ideas, became an unlikely publishing phenomenon in the mid-1970s and a touchstone in the waning days of the counterculture, died on Monday at his home in South Berwick, Me. He was 88. His publisher, William Morrow, announced his death, saying his health had been failing. He had been living in Maine for the last 30 years.

Mr. Pirsig was a college writing instructor and freelance technical writer when the novel — its full title was “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values” — was published in 1974 to critical acclaim and explosive popularity, selling a million copies in its first year and several million more since.

One of Mr. Pirsig’s central ideas is that so-called ordinary experience and so-called transcendent experience are actually one and the same — and that Westerners only imagine them as separate realms because Plato, Aristotle and other early philosophers came to believe that they were.

But Plato and Aristotle were wrong, Mr. Pirsig said. Worse, the mind-body dualism, soldered into Western consciousness by the Greeks, fomented a kind of civil war of the mind — stripping rationality of its spiritual underpinnings and spirituality of its reason, and casting each into false conflict with the other.

(full article) https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/24/book ... nance.html



I read "Zen..." for the first time on Dec 29 2001 during a cross-continental flight. It was a period of transition in my life, and I was also nearly finished with my undergraduate career. The book found me at a receptive moment and, I think, changed the course of my life in seemingly small ways that have amortized to something far greater. But even then, it was impactful and something I thirsted for like the desert seeks the rain, but unwittingly- I was not cognizant of myself, the world, or my place in it, but I perceived well the hunger.

Thank you; rest in peace, Mr. Pirsig.

[cabinish]

That was a lovely remembrance CK, I missed it somehow on my own quest.

[Tarryall]

I got to read it as a textbook in an advanced philosophy class in my Jesuit university. Regis College also used it in a class. Very interesting ideas that still come back to me now and again. The author's life was incredibly sad, some of which was touched on in this semi-autobiographical work.

[ChromaKey]

Sad times produce sad lives in the intelligent and spiritually sensitive. Ask me how I know... And yet he had richness of spirit and a long life we all should be so lucky to know. Discuss.

[Tarryall]

Like you have to live the blues in order to sing the blues? Or the person with scars and wrinkles is probably much more interesting than the youngster who has never really lived.

[ChromaKey]

Yeah, I think so, or something in the genre. Wasn't the Beat Generation thinking and feeling all this sixty years ago? Ah well, it's all strangely comforting to me to know some of these feelings and perceptions aren't necessarily being unwell or a kind of sad solipsism, but rather, they're being real about the day and age and departing the paths laid out for all for something truer and perhaps more laborious, but worthy of the life and time we've been granted with which to live and feel as fully as possible while taking a stroll through this world.