Robert Maynard Persig the writer born September 1968 dies at 88.
The philosophical novel Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is Persig's masterpiece. In a forward to the book, Persig told readers that despite it's title "Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance", the book does not associate with Zen Buddhist practice. He added that it is not factual on motorcycle either. In his own words the art of motorcycle maintenance is a miniature study of the art of rationality.
Ever since I read this book I wanted to write about it. I try to analyze and interpret the books I read. Some books remain in memory forever, like Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, J D Salinger’s 'Catcher in the Rye' and Jack Kerouac's 'On the Road'. But Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a book that changed my perception about life. It changed the way I think and see things.
I never had the courage to write about this book, though I wanted to. Every time I read the book, I gain new insights. Like an abstract painting, it unfolds the threshold of my very existence. I imagine myself getting stranded in an island wondering whether to start again or to give up. To my surprise I am born again each time.
"Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An enquiry in to "Values".
Introductions spoil the spirit and essence of the story, hence I skip introductions. My brother who left me few years back gifted this book on my 15th birthday. As a fifteen year old, the book, the title or the cover did not attract me at all. I wondered what I had to do with Zen or Motorcycle. I couldn't find any correlation between the two. I flipped through some pages and kept the book aside. After a few years, I decided to read the book. This time I decided to make an exception and read the introduction.
The subtitle of the novel is " An enquiry into Values". Persig offers the story as a road trip with his son and his two friends as a journey in to the enquiry of values. The story is in the form of a personal trip the author took from their home at Minnesota to California with his 12-year-old son and his two friends whom he calls the Sutherlands. The book is a conflict of the author’s personality and his philosophical quest in form of conversations with his son and his friends who joined the trip. The interior monologues and conversations are mentioned as Chautauquas. His friends the Sutherlands doesn't make attempt to understand the technology of their bike to which Persig argues and insists that " godheads resides comfortably in the gears of a cycle transmission as he does at the top of a mountain or in the petals of a flower.
The book upholds the idea that Quality cannot be defined. Once you try to define Quality it loses its meaning. While serving in the Army Persig visits Japan and gets interested in Zen Buddhism. Zen is what we call the ultimate realty or the absolute. It cannot be described. One can experience living life to the fullest, with out any transcendental meditation which is supposed to give psychic comfort. This book ranges from Eastern philosophy to empiricism, and rationalism to rhetoric.
In the book, Persig identifies himself as different personalities. He describes himself as a professor who makes his students go crazy over a definition of quality, a man who is sectioned to an electric shock treatment in order to remove his past from his memories, a father who tries to bond with his 12-year-old son and as a man whose unsettling experiences bring him to a mental break down and his intellectual journey through the two worlds he calls sane and insane.
I am curious about the sort of person Persig was, because most of his autobiographical musings remain unexplained. There was a time, where I considered writing a personal letter to the author. It is like a maze. You get petrified at times, trying desperately to escape, feeling all the while about the same as an entrance to a goal. The book is a desire to your existence. It tries to differentiates Quality and Reason. Quality as such is undefinable whereas reason is concerned with things that can be defined and explained in detail. Persig regards quality as the primal experience, the absolute bedrock from which all languages arise. There is a conflict when you try to define Quality using language. Quality, otherwise reality is undivided. Language splits things into parts while trying to define something. So the very attempt of trying to define Quality is absurd. It is an evolving process of experience.
The words we use to describe our experiences are never adequate to encapsulate the uniqueness and the zest of the actual experience we feel. Trying to explain it with a work of art, the artist creates his work and leaves it to the art enthusiasts who interpret the work according to their perception. Should art needs to be explained? If you ask me, my answer will be 'No'. Art goes beyond language. It unifies people and culture. It pricks you with positives and negatives. It irritates you, enlightens you. It reaches the depth of your rationale. Take for example an Impressionist painting. It has different dimensions. One person gets attracted by the use of colours while another by the representation of light. It depends on personal experiences and the ways through which ideas are conceived. No two persons can have the same feeling while looking at a work of art. But once you try to describe it the whole purpose of art fails. When an artist starts to twaddle about what you should think, feel and see, the very purpose of art fails. Persig explains Quality in a somewhat similar way.
The book also has an autobiographical touch in it. Persig describes himself in the book as a difficult professor. In his own words, by the end of the terms, his students were so exhilarated that, if he had asked them to jump out of the window they would. The name Phaedrus which he pronounce in many pages in the book remains a mystery which unfolds at the end of the story. Phaedrus refers to the consciousness he once had, in other words his alter identity. Phaedrus is an academic prodigy who gets discontented with the Western notion of reason. Phaedrus, is named after an Ancient Greek Sophist who appears in Plato's Socratic dialogue,
Among the many excerpts from the book which I like, this is my favorite.
“In our highly complex organic state, we advanced organisms respond to our environment with an invention of many marvelous analogues. We invent earth and heavens, trees, stones and oceans, gods, music, arts, language, philosophy, engineering, civilization and science. We call these analogues reality. And they are reality. We mesmerize our children in the name of truth into knowing that they are reality. We throw anyone who does not accept these analogues into an insane asylum. But that which causes us to invent the analogues is Quality. Quality is the continuing stimulus which our environment puts upon us to create the world in which we live. All of it. Every last bit of it”.
(Pirsig, 1974, p.317).
Persig's key message to us is his recitation of Socrates's message to Phaedrus: And what is good Phaedrus and what is not good/ Need we ask anyone these things?
The dichotomy between romanticism and empiricism, passion and logic, religion and science : the book is all about it. If the words 'Zen' and 'Motorcycle' are not approached literally, there is a lot to be gained. It is a philosophical odyssey in to the fundamentals of life.
Pirsig’s iconoclastic approach did confuse me. It still does. But from my personal experience, I suggest this book to all students who take philosophy as a serious subject- with a note of caution that it is not for light reading.
Reference:
Images are taken from Wikipedia under Creative Common License.
Written by Sreevidya Devanand.
Written by Sreevidya Devanand.
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