It was nearly fifty years ago that Robert M Pirsig’s book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance appeared. I bought my copy a year later. Picking it up recently, I noticed that just after the title page, there is an ‘Author’s Note’. It reads “What follows is based on actual occurrences. Although much has been changed for rhetorical purposes, it must be regarded in its essence as fact. However, it should in no way be associated with the great body of factual information relating to orthodox Zen Buddhist practice. It’s not very factual on motorcycles, either”. Rereading Pirsig’s book, I wonder if I paid attention to that Note in 1975. I doubt it, yet those three sentences convey so much: they orient the reader, and at the same time they betray a slightly mischievous sense of humour. To reread the book is an opportunity to indulge in nostalgia. It is also an invitation to think, and to dwell on what was missed before.
Road travels provide a helpful framework for a story. Five years earlier the movie Easy Rider took us from hippie California to the racist South. This biker road trip, from east to west, is undertaken by Pirsig and his son. It takes them through a complex mosaic of experiences and reflections during the course of their seventeen day journey from Minnesota to California. John Sewell’s art on the front of the dust jacket illuminates the key themes: a person in black and white is sitting on a motorbike, feet on the ground. One hand wearing a glove, holding a spanner, while his head is resting on the other. He’s looking thoughtful: a classical figure, wearing a Roman toga, the head stylised like a Roman sculpture, but out of his head a tulip is growing, the green leaves the only bit of colour in his portrait. The rest of the cover is in black and yellow. Pirsig’s name is in green.
If Hopper’s movie, Easy Rider was about America and its character, that cover makes clear Pirsig’s progress across the States is only incidentally concerned with the geography or character of the country. It’s an intellectual journey, about philosophy, relationships, and the author’s past. It sold like hot cakes: 50,000 copies in three months, and more than 5m since.
Pirsig is with his older son, Chris. There is a third person on the journey, Phaedrus, who we realise is Pirsig’s alter ego, prior to his having a mental breakdown. Many aspects of Pirsig’s early life appear throughout the novel. In 1958, he had been appointed a professor in the Bozeman campus of Montana State University. He suffered from schizophrenia and spent time in and out of psychiatric hospitals between 1961 and 1963, his treatment including electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). Before 1961, he had taught creative writing, and became a technical writer, working on computer manuals. Technology is a key theme in the book.
We learn he is rather reclusive, happy to fix a minor problem with the engine of his motorbike, a Honda Superhawk CB77, and less willing to spend time in idle conversation. When he does speak, he often launches into a long, complex, and occasionally rather unclear expositions on the issues he has been considering as he travels along. When it comes to personal matters, he reverts to being spiky, unclear, and even rude at times.
Pirsig as narrator seems to live in three rather separate worlds. There is the practical world of mechanical engineering, often fixing his bike as the duo travel, skills derived from his first degree in science. Accompanying this is the world of philosophical explorations, a series of examinations which appear to take place almost entirely in his head: Pirsig had studied philosophy in India and the US. Finally, there is the world of people and relationships, one in which he appears to be something of a dab hand in saying the wrong thing, often ignoring or misunderstanding others!
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance appealed to the ex-hippie ex-student population of the 1970s. How could it not. It was about motorbikes, about travelling to California (still the home from home for many self-respecting radicals and free thinkers), and about the challenges of understanding life. Written in the midst of social change, many of the messages of the book struck home for its readers. . I suspect it was a man’s book, too, where bikes and the elusive meaning of ‘quality’ grabbed attention, and any stuff about women’s views was, as I saw it, pushed aside after a few sentences
One of my US students, studying for a degree in the UK, exemplified Pirsig’s world. He had a motorbike, talked wisely about how deal with such problems as excess carbon on sparkplug points! But he also loved the exploration of philosophical issues, debating the distinction between the romantic and the classical; between living in the moment, and trying sort out problems when they arose, as opposed to living life with an analytical fervour, checking, diagnosing and fixing every bit of equipment – and every person – around him.
It was a book for a troubled and confusing time. In the US, Richard Nixon was coming to the end of his presidency (it ended in 1974), with all the dramas of break-ins and taped conversations. The Cold War had taken a bad turn with the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, followed by Brezhnev’s subsequent claim Russia had the right to violate the sovereignty of any country, in order to ‘safeguard socialism’ in the face of expanding enthusiasm for capitalism. If all that wasn’t bad enough, the activities of OPEC (the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) began to take a more interventionist turn. In October 1973, the Arab majority of OPEC announced major production cuts and an oil embargo against the United States and other nations supporting Israel in their war with a coalition of Arab states, the Yom Kippur War. Oil prices quadrupled, rationing was put in place, all of which was compounded in the UK by a lengthy coalminers’ strike.
Both Nixon in the US and the hapless Heath in the UK were replaced in 1974, but observers sensed this was only one step in a process of change. They were right, as Harold Wilson was replaced by Jim Callaghan, and then, in 1979, ‘Iron Lady’ Margaret Thatcher was elected leader. In the US Nixon was replaced by Gerald Ford, then Jimmy Carter, and in 1981, Thatcher’s ally, Ronald Reagan was elected President. The slow decline of left-wing radicalism ended as the conservatives took over.
By the time the book appeared, it was clear Pirsig was a troubled man. He had recovered from his ECT treatment a decade earlier, but was still trying to come to terms with the person he had been. Back then, his interest in philosophy had been with the analysis of ‘quality’, which he saw as a concept that could neither be explained by Plato’s theory of ideal forms nor Aristotle’s empiricism. He had attempted to resolve this, and, as the journey described in the book progresses, he keeps returning to this issue in a series of reflections. He found riding his bike as a way to free his mind, both from the travel but also from interactions with people, especially his friends who are with him for the first part of the trip, and his son, who is with him throughout. He saw understanding quality as central to developing a new path in contemporary philosophy. Maintaining his bike was an important way for him to explore this, contrasting the mechanical tasks of maintenance and problem solving with viewing his bike as a realisation of ideas, a conceptual space as much as a physical one.
Like many critics, I find some parts of the discussion opaque and confusing, which may reflect my own limitations. The use of the word ‘Zen’ in the book’s title is a little hard to understand. Certainly, the narrator’s practice is built around reflection, but his examination of the nature of mind and substance do not rely on any traditional meditative practice. It contrasts with Eugene Herrigel’s book, Zen and the Art of Archery, which had been published in 1953, and from which Pirsig had surely taken his title. Under the guidance of a Zen master, Herrigel accepts and develops skills through what he calls an unconscious control of outer activity, rather than the western belief that mastery can only be obtained through conscious control and direction. A central theme in Herrigel’s book is that through years of practice, a physical activity becomes effortless both mentally and physically, as if our physical memory (what today we might call our ‘muscle memory’) executes complex and difficult movements without conscious control from our mind. This seems to mirror Mihalyi Cziksentmihalyi’s concept of flow, the zone in which physical activity becomes unthinkingly effortless (I’ll return to Cziksentmihalyi in a moment).
Rereading the book now, it is clear maintaining his bike offered one way for Pirsig to to step away from day-to-day interactions. However, even if this was a kind of Zen practice, it is reflection rather than meditation that is at the core of the trip, as he attempts to link back to the person he was before his illness and the discussions he had with colleagues and teachers, while also trying to reframe his connection to his son. In retrospect, it is not easy to grasp why the book was so popular when it was published. Was it the attraction of the physical journey across the US, or the complexity and often unresolved interactions with his son and others, or the sometimes extensive and often rather unclear ramblings through various philosophical issues? In uncertain times, his self-absorbed, jumbled journey might have helped – or encouraged – other muddled people.
Going back to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is an odd experience. Even more obvious than was the case when I first read it, it is a curious assemblage of parts, some of which are deeply personal reflections on relationships, while others are often incomplete examinations of key issues. When he was an academic at Montana State University, he witnessed various attempts by the state legislature to control the institution, or even close it down. Involved in protests, and speaking with students, Pirsig (as Phaedrus) observes “The real university is not a material object”. He went on to add:
“The real university … has no specific location. It owns no property, pays no salaries and receives no material dues. The real university is a state of mind. It is that great heritage of rational thought that has been brought down to us through the centuries by a body of people who traditionally carry the title of professor, but even that title is not part of the real University. The real University is nothing less than the continuing body of reason itself.”
This was a manifesto of the free university movement. That alternative to traditional higher education began in 1964, with the University of California Berkely’s Free Speech Movement. Students and staff set up a variety of organisations offering unaccredited public classes without imposing restrictions on who could teach or learn. Through the 1960s, hundreds of ‘free universities’ appeared within formal universities and outside them, in the USA to begin with, but eventually in the UK and Europe, too. Some were also sources of support for underground activism and political education. Variously labelled experimental colleges, open education exchanges, and communiversities, they proliferated into a wild variety of structures (wild not just wide!). However, as student activism started declining towards the end of the 1960s, so free universities moved away from the grounds of bricks-and-mortar university campuses and developed into various kinds of forums for lifelong learning. In many ways they encouraged and sustained current lifelong adult education endeavours.
Another part of the book addresses what Pirsig calls ‘inner peace of mind’, achieving unselfconsciousness and a “complete identification with one’s circumstances”. He explores it best when he is talking about working on his motorbike, “just fixing” as he describes it, where a duality between self and environment disappears, and everything ‘follows naturally’. It is an example of what made Pirsig’s book so engaging, and yet frustrating. You could see what he meant by inner peace of mind, you might even have experienced moments like that, but just as he grabs your focus, Pirsig changes topic and returns to the task he was engaged in in fixing his bike engine. What are you supposed to do? Buy yourself a motorbike, and travel across America. Wasn’t that what Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper did in Easy Rider, and didn’t that come to an unfortunate end? For many, that film was a commentary on the doomed end to the counterculture of the 1960s, not a path to enlightenment.
That topic of inner peace of mind was to come to the fore several years later, in 1997, when Mihaly Csikszentmihaly published Finding Flow, a book concerned with what he described as “ that state of effortless concentration and enjoyment called ‘flow’.” As Csikszentmihaly book explained:
“Imagine you are skiing down a slope and your full attention is focused on the movements of your body and your full attention is focused on the movements of your body, the position of the skis, the air whistling past your face, and the snow-shrouded trees running by. There is no room in your awareness for conflicts or contradictions; you know that a distracting thought or emotion might get you buried face down in the snow. The run is so perfect that you want it to last forever. If skiing does not mean much to you, this complete immersion in an experience could occur while you are singing in a choir, dancing, playing bridge, or reading a good book. If you love your job, it could happen during a complicated surgical operation or a close business deal. It may occur in a social interaction, when talking with a good friend, or while playing with a baby. Moments such as these provide flashes of intense living against the dull background of everyday life.”
Does Csikszentmihaly do a better job of explaining inner sense of peace? I’m not sure, but it is clear that in some ways Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance reads more like a biography-cum-novel than as an enquiry into epistemology. The book is mainly very readable, yet immensely frustrating at times. What was that phrase again: ‘like a curate’s egg, good in parts’!! It was a book of the time, loved by students, hippie revolutionaries, and vaguely frustrated older adults. It spoke to something more than it actually achieved, always teasing its readers with the promise of insights about themselves and the world around them, but never quite getting past the limits of its autobiographical core.
Pirsig’s book is one in a series of significant books built around a journey. In recent times (as opposed to all those wonderful classical tales), there is Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha, Jostein Gardner’s Sophie’s World, and Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. Some have found Paulo Coelho’s fable The Alchemist very satisfying (but not me). I will add Benjamin Hoff’s The Tao of Pooh (OK – too light-hearted for you?). Journeys of discovery are important for us: they allow us to follow a path of increasing understanding, even if there are times when we get so swept up by the events we miss points, or swallow silly stuff without noticing. They work because the metaphor of the journey is also a framework for our personal development: it is both reassuring to think we have been finding out more as we grow older, even if it is slightly disquieting to think that we might never get to the end and find those elusive ultimate answers. The response to that is easy, of course. Buy a motorbike! Keep reading!
