On Quality

January 15, 2022
The author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance returns with a hodgepodge collection on the slippery concept of quality. Assembled by Pirsig's wife, Wendy, after the author's death in 2017, the book distills the metaphysical essence of the generation-defining Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and its lesser-known sequel, Lila, into an accessible philosophical handbook. Excerpting from Pirsig's letters, interviews, presentations, and books, the text seeks to offer clarity on the concept of quality--even though it "cannot be defined." To philosophically inclined readers for whom this paradox is intriguing, this book will prove to be a handy reference. To readers for whom Zen is less a treatise in disguise than a story of a father-son road trip, this distillation may seem superfluous. Still, it's arguably the best chance for quality to receive the kind of philosophical scrutiny Pirsig thought it could withstand. In a letter from 1995, he wrote, "There are many other problems solved by the [Metaphysics of Quality] but any of the above seems to me to justify it as a major philosophic system. That it solves all of them simultaneously makes it of unequalled magnitude." It's interesting, historically, that this is where Pirsig's ideas should end up. As he describes in the talk that serves as the book's introduction, he wrote Zen as a novel precisely to avoid the impression of being "high and mighty and talking down" to readers. By making the narrator a man on a motorcycle trip, he notes, "we get another dimension to the entire story. Now we no longer have a person talking from a pulpit. We have a person out in front, out in the open, in real life." Either that concern was unfounded or Wendy's editorial efforts have obviated it. Though sometimes scattered, the book is impassioned and serious but never condescending--and always generous. We might call it a metaphysical primer that is, of all things, fun to read. Or we might just call it quality.

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February 28, 2022
The writings of Robert M. Pirsig, author of the cult classic Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, come together in this lighthearted collection. Pirsig’s wife introduces the pieces, which include Pirsig’s letters to his readers, interviews conducted during the 1990s, and his contributions to various anthologies. In “The Right Way,” a speech given at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design just after Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was published, he encourages writers that the creative process “takes a long frustration.” “Aphorisms” was written in 1962, when Pirsig was a psychiatric patient at Downey Veteran Administration Hospital, and includes quips and cultural musings. And in an excerpt from a 1974 interview with the Washington Post, he writes, “I’m trying to make the classic concepts more relevant today, helping people lead more imaginative, productive lives.” Many of the entries focus on his metaphysical conception of “quality” (a value at the “center of existence”) and can be hard to parse, and some selections are so short as to feel superficial. Still, his musings offer a pleasant detour into a curious mind at work. Pirsig’s fans will find much to consider.