Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig

'Praise the Father, praise the Son, praise the Spirit three in one'. (lines from an old hymn that floated into my head when I re-read the book.)

Zen and the Art is a book with a lot to it. It's a travellers' tale of a father and his young son motorbiking in the American wilds of I'm not sure where. Because long distance bikers need to fix their bikes there is also quite a bit of motorbike repair info which I would guess works Ok. Identifying the repair problem by a process of methodical elimination and remaining patient seem to be the key points. Commonsense but easier said than done and it is also the jumping off point for a philosphical discourse in installments about the nature of quality.

The person telling the story is also retracing the steps of Phaedrus who is pretty much his past self a few years back. Phaedrus (the name Robert tells us means 'wolf') is the lone wolf of the university philosophy department then he sort of gets fired and works somewhere else for a while and he falls out with everyone and ends up losing sight of his everyday actions and his philosophical theory which solves pretty much all the conundrums of the past and he lands up in the funny farm. He is scared it will happen again and his son senses his fear.

I read Zen and the Art about 40 years ago as it was recomended by a Philosophy lecturer at Stirling Uni as something off the syllabus to look at if we felt like it. It still has an off the syllabus feel. In the past I skipped a lot of it to get to the father and son travel plot.These days I can pay closer attention to the descriptions of Nature and I can follow most of the philosophy but I find it hard. 

Pirsig is a writer with a tale worth telling. A life of experience by ideas and the other way round too, no certainties beyond the next stretch ahead.