I tried reading Robert M. Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance when I was fifteen (three years after it was published), and again in my early 20s, but could never get into it. More recently, while assembling a bibliography of postwar "road" literature, I considered adding it, only to find a copy a week later at the YWCA Thrift Shop on Main Street.
Jinhan Koh was there and I asked him if he had read it.
"Oh yeah, when I was teenager. I tried reading it again, in my twenties, but -- you know."
Well, now that you mention it.
As of last night I am 76 pages into it and continue to cringe every time Pirsig lectures at the expense of his fellow travellers. Hopefully sooner than later I will learn something from this know-it-all biker -- not from what he tells us, but from how (if at all) he handles his humility.
"John nods affirmatively and I continue." (33)
"'And what that means,' I say before he can interrupt..." (35)
"John looks too much in thought to speak. But Sylvia is excited. 'Where do you get all these ideas?'" (36)
Another book at the YWCA Thrift Shop was Christopher Lasch's The Culture of Narcissism (1979), published five years later.
Time to read it, too, see if Pirsig makes an appearance.
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