Yet Another Cycling Forum
Off Topic => The Pub => Arts and Entertainment => Topic started by: Aidan on 25 April, 2017, 08:25:15 am
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Zen is one of my favourite books, read it loads of times and always find something new in it. RIP
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That is a great book - for anyone who just wants to think a bit, but also for anyone working in management systems its an interesting perspective.
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Fascinating man, the book is great for an insight into mental illness, parenthood and how to approach many aspects of life.
It's also good for an insight into the tribulations of working as a technical author (well for one chapter).
I've owned copies (several, I think, seemed to lose then buy another of Zen) of both of his books.
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I'm enough of a ZMM fan to have retraced the route of the motorcycle trip back in 2009, at least as far as it was still possible forty years after the event. Sad now :'(
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:'(
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When I was about 20, someone (a motorcyclist) said what a great book ZMM was. I tried to read it but found it a bit incomprehensible or maybe just boring or odd. About 20 years later I read it all and it made sense, sort of at least.
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I enjoyed it from quite a young age, my brother bought a copy when he was about 18, so I guess I was 14. As someone who naturally looked at things and put them into categories, then mentally disassembled them, put them into different categories and wondered if that changed them, it made sense to me.
Don't grow up in a rural area and talk about things like that out loud. It gets you labelled as weird and usually punched.
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same thing happens if you "act a bit clever" i.e. think, amongst a bunch of RAF brats, or in Basingstoke
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RIP. I read Zen and the Art long ago. Very interesting book.
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Zen and the Art was a set book on a university course I did, called 'Social Cybernetics'. Another was 'The Dice Man', it was the 1970s though.
Some quite sensible advice on shimming out loose handlebars with bits of Coke can as I remember.
I was assembling a Norton Dominator 99 from parts at the time.
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The 1990 400 page "Guidebook to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" by DiSanto and Steele includes lots of fascinating background to the book: maps, chronology, western philosophy, eastern mysticism, critical reception, correspondence with Robert Redford on the film Redford intended to make of the book, works about ZMM, etc etc.. Worth a look if you find a cheap s/h copy on Amazon.
ZMM must have been reprinted within the last couple of years because I found a new copy in one of the few remaining real bookshops in the area.
Some of Pirsig's other novels are quite haunting too.
Bryn
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The 1990 400 page "Guidebook to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" by DiSanto and Steele includes lots of fascinating background to the book: maps, chronology, western philosophy, eastern mysticism, critical reception, correspondence with Robert Redford on the film Redford intended to make of the book, works about ZMM, etc etc.. Worth a look if you find a cheap s/h copy on Amazon.
This Unit also endorses "Now And Zen" by Mark Richardson, which is mostly an account of his retracing the journey but also has some interesting background Stuffs. I got a copy in San Francisco airport in 2008; no idea if it was ever published in BRITAIN.
ZMM must have been reprinted within the last couple of years because I found a new copy in one of the few remaining real bookshops in the area.
Some of Pirsig's other novels are quite haunting too.
I bought a "25th Anniversary Edition", published in 1999, in ~ 2008 on account of my 1979 edition falling to bits. iIRC it came from Waterstones. Pirsig only wrote one other book, viz. "Lila" (1991), which I couldn't get on with at all.