In the 5 years between his trip and writing ‘Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values’ in 1968 and its publication in 1974, 121 publishers rejected the book. In its unedited form it was 30% longer than Tolstoy’s ‘War And Peace’(!!). It sold more than 1 million copies in its first year...with over 5 million copies in 27 languages and inspired philosophy college classes and academic conferences, and also inspired generations of ‘Pirsig’s pilgrims’ to roadtrip across America and to retrace the cross-country, anguished motorcycle trip that inspired the novel.
‘Zen’ and his other major work and sequel, ‘Lila’, are not easy reads. In both, Pirsig developed what he called ‘Metaphysics of Quality’, a philosophy that attempts to unite and transcend the mysticism of the East and the reason of the West. To resolve the conflicts between ‘classic’ values that create machinery like the motorcycle, and ‘romantic’ values like the beauty of a country road. He discovered all values find their root in what he called ‘Quality’.
“Quality...you know what it is...yet you don’t know what it is. But that’s self-contradictory. But some things are better than others, that is, they have more quality. But when you try and say what that quality is, apart from the things that have it, it all goes poof! There’s nothing to talk about. But if you can’t say what quality is, how do you know what it is, or how do you know that it even exists? If no one knows what it is, then for all practical purposes it doesn’t exist at all. But for all practical purposes it really does exist.”
He served in Korea, and whilst on leave in Japan, he became interested in Zen Buddhism, and remained an adherent the rest of his life. Upon his return to the States, he honed an enigmatic teaching style whilst at Montana State College, refusing to grade papers, and once yelled out to the Dean, “This school has no quality!”
‘Zen’ is about that 1968 motorcycle trip he took with his 11-year-old son Chris and two friends, from Minneapolis through the West..with Pirsig’s alter ego, Phaedrus..brilliant, uncompromising and obsessed with the search for truth. Like his alter-ego, Pirsig had an I.Q. of 170, entered University at 15, and as a young man, was committed to mental hospitals where he underwent involuntary electroshock therapy. That was, for me, the core of the book. He was beyond brilliant, he was blazing. Coming up with thoughts and ideas that were revolutionary. But he was regarded by some, including the State, as a madman. So after he went through the electroshock, he still was intelligent,..but that spark was gone. Quenched like a fire that was doused with water. And he went to search for that mad, brilliant man and the ideas that came forth from him..but that he had little recollection. And meet-up with friends that he remembered little of now , but that knew him well before the therapy when he was brilliant and mad, so they could tell him of his thoughts and ideas before they were erased.
That brilliance, those ideas...As he wrote in ‘Zen’, ”He was dead. Destroyed by order of the court, enforced by the transmission of high-voltage alternating current through the lobes of his brain.” Anguishing stuff. He battled schizophrenia and was devastated by its treatment. And doubted everything..reality, sanity and himself.
As a reviewer from the New York Times said in ‘74, “However impressive are the seductive powers in which Mr. Pirsig engages us in his motorcycle trip, they are nothing compared to the skill in which he interests us in his philosophical trip.”
‘Zen’ became a cultural milestone which suited a generation’s yearning for the open road, quest for knowledge and skepticism of modern values, while telling a personal story about the author’s struggle with schizophrenia, and a father and son relationship...his emotionally troubled son, Chris.
Chris later was also institutionalized for a time. In 1979, Chris was attending San Francisco University...whilst waiting at the bus stop in front of the San Francisco Zen Center where he lived and practiced, Chris was stabbed to death in a mugging. His fellow Zen practitioners stayed with the body until his cremation. He was 22.
Robert founded the Minnesota Zen Center and lived reclusively, rarely giving interviews or making public appearances and was dubbed ‘New England’s second most reclusive author’, behind J.D. Salinger. Writes his publisher, “He taught himself navigation before GPS, and twice crossed the Atlantic in his little sailboat Arete.” He met his second wife in 1978 whilst off the Florida coast and they lived aboard their boat in Sweden, the Netherlands and England before returning to live in America in 1985.
Being in failing health as of late, he died of natural causes on Monday at his home in South Berwick, Maine. At his side was his wife, his surviving son, his daughter, and his grandchildren. Robert was 88.
Quality.