Take Your own trip | Zen and Now: On the Trail of Robert Pirsig and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance |...

Sweet, well-written. Insightful | Zen and Now: On the Trail of Robert Pirsig and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance | Mark Richardson

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	• Zen and Now: On the Trail of Robert Pirsig and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Mark Richardson Knopf, 2008 - 288 pages average customer review:based on 4 reviews view larger image
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Another 'quality' book...

I like the style very much, how it mirrors ZATAOMM. I found Richardson's journey and story to be equally compelling as Pirsigs. The author mixed these stories together in three threads: his journey across the country, Pirsig's original journey, and the biographical facts of Pirsig's life. I enjoyed all three.

This book does not dwell on the philoshical part of ZATAOMM. That is ok. Any attempt to re-create or deeply evaluate Pirsig's concepts would likely pale in comparison.

I still think that this book is excellent, and I recommend it.

Mike

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Take Your own trip

Hello,
I really enjoyed this book, in fact it exceeded my expectations. I had been looking for some back story to ZMM that would include more information about the original trip and characters. With this book I found all that I was looking for and it's own story. Which I feel does a good job of adding to the original work. (Not the philosophy portions so much but more the narrative story.)

I have been a fan of ZMM for 13 years and longed to take this trip myself. After reading this book much of the draw from the original has dissipated. It is not that I don't like ZMM anymore. But my view of the original ZMM is less romanticized in my mind. Furthermore the volume of research put into it's creation answers a lot of the questions that lingered in my mind.

The author is a skilled writer and the book flows along well.

If you enjoyed the original you will enjoy this too.

Thanks,

J

P.S. In the end I might not want to take the same trip as Mark but it makes me want to take my own trip again.

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Sweet, well-written. Insightful

Saw the author speak at his first book event last night, purchased the book there, and stayed up all night reading it. Like many, I know now, I couldn't get through Zen and the Art.. during my first read as a teenager. I also didn't know the author was from St. Paul (where I live). This book gives great insight into Pirsig, but also into Richardson.

It's so well written and, by it's very nature, compelling. I read to see what would happen next. Also very evocative of the landscape and people. And he has to be commended on his reporting skills, finding and interviewing all those people from Pirsig's past.

I just finished a new Harper Lee biography. So I guess this is a new genre: respectful, compelling books about the lives of recluse authors...without help or guidance from those authors!

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Zen and Now is a vivid chronicle of a journalist?s heartfelt and determined journey to reconnect with a beloved American classic.

In 1968, Robert Pirsig and his eleven-year-old son, Chris, made the cross-country motorcycle trip that would become the inspiration for Pirsig?s book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, a powerful blend of personal narrative and philosophical investigation that has inspired generations.

Among the millions of readers to fall under the book?s spell was Mark Richardson, who as a young man struggled to understand Pirsig?s provocative and elusive ideas. Rereading the book decades later, Richardson, now a journalist and a father of two, was moved by its portrayal of Pirsig?s complex relationship with Chris and struck by the timelessness of its lessons. So he tuned up his old Suzuki dirt bike and became a ?Pirsig pilgrim,? one of the legion of fans who retrace the Pirsigs? route from Minneapolis to San Francisco. In following this itinerary over the lonely byways of the American West, Richardson revisits the people and places from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, pondering the meaning of Pirsig?s philosophy and the answers it may offer to the questions in his own life. Richardson?s dogged reporting also gives new insight into the reclusive writer?s life, exploring Pirsig?s struggle with mental illness, his unwanted celebrity, and the tragic, brutal murder of Chris in 1979.

Published to coincide with the fortieth anniversary of Pirsig?s original trip, Zen and Now is a stirring meditation on a classic work and a passionate inquiry into the lessons it continues to teach us in the complex and bewildering world we inhabit today.