This month’s “genre” was nostalgia. The goal was to choose a book you feel nostalgic about – something you read long ago and that brought out a strong emotional reaction in you – and re-read it to compare your reaction.
I chose Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig. I was introduced to this title as a teen, perhaps 15, by my father. He came home with a stack library books for me and this was one of them.
On one level the book is a philosophical pursuit about values, in particular about Quality and the classical/romantic split of viewing the world (You kind of have to read the book to really “get” that sentence and there isn’t a much more accessible way of saying it). On another level it’s about the narrator’s cross-country motorcycle trip with his 11-year-old son and his own history with mental illness.
The first time I read it, that summer I’d just turned 15, there were large chunks of the book that I simply didn’t understand, and that I skimmed (or skipped). But there were other sections of the book, of simple passages even, that forever seared themselves onto my view of the world and the Best way to live. They became ideas that I consciously and subconsciously adopted and chose to live by.
I re-read this title in college and, having forgotten so much of ZMM, was pleasantly surprised to be re-introduced to these adopted ideas. “Oh! That’s where I get that from!” I realized several times over.
Reading it now, in my early 40’s, I realize how much of this book mimics my relationship with my father, both what it was and what I wish it was.
My father is a lot like Pirsig. Brilliant, well-educated, steeped in academia and intellectualism, and emotionally distant from those around him all the while feeling things very intensely.
Pirsig’s ability to spend considerable time with his son while at the same time being emotionally at arm’s length – better at reading Walden for hours on end with a pre-teen or climbing a mountain and evaluating and re-evaluating his son’s attitudes toward the climb than engaging on an emotional level with his son’s emotional pain – reminds me so much of me and my father. Physically present, mentally engaged on one level, emotionally nebulous. I even found myself resenting Pirsig’s chataquas nearer the end of the book when his son Chris so clearly needed him and was asking him repeatedly: What are you thinking about all the time? I want to shake Pirsig by the shoulders and say: It’s not too late to engage with your son. He’s RIGHT THERE BEHIND YOU ON THE BIKE.
I was very, very happy when he got around to engaging the “duality” of him and his son. When he finally faced his son and their relationship and how it had been overpowered by events beyond their control. And I was deeply moved by his obvious love and caring for this child who could best described as “difficult” during a long and often physically arduous motorcycle ride.
The first time I read this book I read “the original” – the version that was published before its tenth anniversary. When I went back to read it in college I was thunderstruck by the tenth anniversary Afterwords, and you will be too, should you choose to voyage into ZMM. Don’t read the Afterwords first. Let it shock you.
This is a book I highly recommend. Even if you end up skipping some of the passages, the book is a true culture bearing book, as Pirsig states himself, and an outstanding snapshot of American life in the 1950s and 60s.
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