Customer Reviews

Zen and Now: On the Trail of Robert Pirsig and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (Vintage Departures)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Unlike several of the other Amazon reviewers, when I read "Zen and Now" I found that Richardson understands that "Zen and the Art" was about much more than a motorcycle trip. However, he felt that it would be pointless for a third party to recreate Robert Pirsig's bestseller. What Richardson does do is to fill in many gaps in our understanding of Pirsig himself. In other words, this is literary biography. And, as literary biography, I give this book high marks.

What's new about "Zen and Now"? Until now, how many readers knew that Pirsig had two sons? In Richardson's text we learn about Ted Pirsig, the son (close to Chris Pirsig's age)whom Robert Pirsig never mentions in his writings or interviews. Why is that? And why does his son, Ted, refer to him as his "ex-father"? We also learn about the mother of Ted and Chris, Nancy James, a gracious hostess and creator of a wonderful restaurant in Minneapolis, an active member of the Zen Center on Lake Calhoun. She was the woman in the shadows who looked after Robert when his mental breakdown pushed him close to edge. "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" would never have been written if she had not cared for him and held the family together during his breakdown.

In an interview with Richardson, Nancy James presents a legitimate counterpoint to Robert Pirsig's assertion that she and Pirsig's father, Maynard, were cruel to force him into mental health care that destroyed "the genius with the 170 I. Q." If they thought that the author was a danger to himself and others how could they not intervene?

We Westerners, myself included, tend to put Zen Buddhism on a pedestal where it is safe from rational criticism. However, Nancy James shows us what it is like to be told that her thoughts and instincts lack "value" because she has not achieved enlightenment like her esteemed partner.

Furthermore, I've never understood how readers can brush off the fact that Chris Pirsig was in tears for most of trip. His vantage point was blocked by his father's back. (I would have like Richardson to tell us more about Chris's long struggle with mental illness after the trip as he does with Ted.) As a parent,I see Pirsig's treatment of his son as callous. In other words, as Robert Pirsig himself might concede, "the great man has feet of clay." Like many of the great men we idolize, Pirsig is imperfect. He searches for "quality" and the "good" because he sees that it is lacking in parts of his own life.

In the "bad old days," readers were taught to ignore the context in which great works of art were created. Thank goodness those days are over. "Quality" and "Good" can be examined in a humanitarian context as well.

Like Mr. Richardson I'm a huge fan of Pirsig and motorcycling and bought this book when I saw a review of it in the WSJ. I was deeply disappointed. Zen and the Art ... works because of the explorations into various facets of philosophy and identity. It's not really about a motorcycle trip, it's about exploration. Richardson's book explores nothing. There are a few random stabs into his family relationships and past experiences but they are far from profound and seem tacked on. All you learn about the author from this book is that he's whiny and prone to making spurious correlations. He never comes across as understanding Zen and the Art ... You'd think from reading Richardson that having to camp was high on the list of human miseries. That, and having to drive with the sun in your eyes. Real hardships, those.

As a travel narrative writer he fails badly. I had to force myself not the skip the sections where he's describing which way the creek he was driving next to turned or how the water in this creek made a gurgling sound. In Pirsig's book such descriptions served as launching points for something else. Here there's no context for this, it's just bland, the-sky-was-deep-blue type, description. And there's a lot of it.

I did not know much about Pirsig's history or the story surrounding the writing and aftermath of Zen and the Art ... and those parts were interesting and seemingly well-researched. Those parts were less than half the book, unfortunately. I may have expected too much from Zen and Now as writing anything even close to Zen and the Art... is a high bar indeed.

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.

Mark Richardson warns you from the beginning, this is not a rehash of the seminal book by Robert Pirsig. In fact, it took me a long time to figure out what it is. I am still kind of puzzling over it. It is kind of a travelogue, of Richardson's trip re-tracing Pirsig's route through American west. But it is not a faithful re-tracing. It is a loose history of Pirsig, his family, whom we met before and it is a closer chronological history, but not too closely. It is a visit with the people from the book, but you don't really get to know them that much better, more than the Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance book but probably less than what people want.

It is also a personal journey for Richardson, a kind of middle aged reassessment of his life since he'd read ZMM, but not too close, because he kept the reader kind of at arms length and then kind of intimately.

On the one hand, it gives everyone a good followup of what had happened with Pirsig, his son Chris and Ted, his ex-wife Nancy. As well as what had happened to the Deweeses, the Sutherlands, and a few other characters.

It also goes much beyond the end of that book and it moves to Pirsig's life after unwanted fame. The breakup of his marriage, the evolution of his second marriage, the birth of his daughter Nell, and the writing of Lila: An Inquiry Into Morals. That part of the book was very interesting and it was the sort of gossipy and nostalgic story telling that the fans of ZMM want.

What it lacked was the scholarly, but for that you can get Guidebook to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. A very good and complete scholarly study of ZMM itself and it also have lots of great bibliographic information.

So what is this book about? I wasn't sure about it until I was half way through the book, that may have to do the weakness of the writer or the reader. I think it was a case of both. It seems nothing with ZMM could be had easily, it took my close to 100 pages to get into ZMM and it took me half the book to get into this book.

This is a very personal journey by one of us, just a regular guy who happens to write very well and his struggles with growing up, with dealing with his own mortality and his fascination with ZMM, Pirsig, the concept of quality, the magnetic attraction of the road, and doing it on a motorcycle. After all, the idea blended the most seductive elements of the 60's and 70's nostalgia: motorcycles and Zen, along with the timeless elements of the American rugged individualism: a story about the road and the taciturn strong silent type.

In many ways, Mark Richardson succeeded. I enjoyed his stories about Pirsig, his own visits with the people from the book and his own adventures on the trip. But in certain ways he failed because parts of the book failed to grab my interest because it was a slog at times to get through the book.

In the end, I got through it, and I enjoyed the journey.

In reading over the past few paragraphs, I realize that I had not performed my duties as a reviewer very well. I did not give concrete proof or significant arguments with regard to the book, but this is the kind of book it is. You need to read it and figure it out for yourself. Indeed, this was the way ZMM was for me initially. So, if you were fascinated by ZMM and wanted some more background on the people depicted, this is a great reference. If fascinated overstated your reaction to ZMM, then I would stay away from this book.

When I first read Robert Pirsig's "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance," I felt somewhat bewildered. I loved his passion, I loved the intensity of his relationships and his beliefs about life. And yet, I felt he was in over his head, trying to build sanity on shaky ground. He desperately tried to shore up that foundation with his ideas of quality, but if he succeeded in solidifying the foundation, I for one was never convinced. I was prepared to let "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" slide into my hazy past, when I recently came across a memoir, "Zen and Now" by Mark Richardson, which offered to give me a guided tour of the earlier book. I jumped at the chance. I'm glad I did. Now, after reading "Zen and Now," I feel vastly more understanding of Pirsig's book, and I had a lovely journey with Richardson at the same time.

"Zen and Now" is also a motorcycle ride, following as closely as possible Pirsig's original route, woven with a fun, intricate, and entertaining mix of Richardson's own observations about life, motorcycles, small town American life, and a few other things. This interwoven structure is one of my favorite things about the book. Oh, one more thing. It was a sort of recounting of Richardson's own mid-life crisis, and in a clever twist, his angst mirrored the soul searching pressure that drove Pirsig to hit the road. The book turned out to be a splendid meditation on creativity and problem-solving, sanity and insanity.

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

So I definitely enjoyed this book. Nothing profound but lots of small insights. I enjoyed the ride and thought the author did a great job of telling his own story while weaving in great references to the original Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

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!

I forced myself to slog through Mark Richardson's book before writing this review just in case there was some redeeming nugget hiding in there somewhere. But all I found were tired cliches and lots of pointless stories that went nowhere. At one point Richardson goes on for 7 pages about shaking Jimmy Carter's hand and the story had no point. Who cares? The whole books reads like it was written by a bad sports columnist.

In total there are maybe 20 pages of mildly interesting tidbits about Robert Pirsig - how he wrote the book, the process of getting it published and the sailboat voyage that became the basis of his next book, Lila. All of this information is easily found on the web and you don't have to suffer through the horrible travel narrative to get to it. Here's an example paragraph, retyped verbatim, of the type of drivel that William Zinsser warned us about:

"And the rain starts to let up as Anaconda rolls by, and I pull farther away from the comfy hotel and the welcoming pub. The one-way road becomes two-way, and just as it does, a touring motorcycle motors in from the west. The rider gives a cheery shirtsleeved wave from behind his windshield, and it's such a surprise there's no time to wave back. No rain gear!"

You may have a higher tolerance than I for motoring motorcycles, cheery shirtsleeved waves, or paragraphs that start with "and" and try too hard to end with profundity every time. But for me it's just not worth having to read through hundreds of pages of this kind of writing just to find out trivial tidbits about Pirsig.

This book is really about the author's own mid-life journey. It is also a pretty decent travelogue combined with lots of background information about Persig and ZATAOMM.

I can't recommend this book for readers with no interest in motorcycles, no interest in travel tales, and significant prior research into Persig and ZATAOMM.

Besides being a long time fan of ZATAOMM I've made a number of long journeys on a small motorcycle, a Ninja 250. The parts about chain maintenance, oil changes, worry about tires, and the panic of going on reserve out in the boonies really spoke to me. I knew EXACTLY how the author was feeling.

I never had a pretty twenty something girl pass out in my motel room, but I can dream, can't I?

PS: Mark, use your royalties to get a Yamaha FJR or BMW R1200RT!