Disco Diaries is a free series of essays and vignettes. If you love it, consider sharing it with a friend, or supporting this project financially for $5 a month. In exchange I send you my sincerest gratitude plus a monthly personality quiz (see here and here for examples).
As a reader of varying materials, you must be familiar with the flailing that can occur between reads. A book ends and you’re put on the spot to decide what comes next. Now you’re pulling materials dusty shelves, looking for a sign. Looking for an opening sentence that you can settle down with.
It’s like dating on the rebound after an unexpected breakup. There’s no time to think about what you actually need. You’re just looking for something to sit across from you at dinner tonight.
That’s how I came to finally crack open Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig. I’ve had it in my possession since 2016, when a boyfriend bought me a copy at Half Price Books. He ended up being the one to read it. I found his bookmark — a faded ticket for a New Orleans steamboat ride — left somewhere around page 240.
I’d been intrigued by the title. Of course I wanted to be calm with my Zen and free with my motorcycles.
I have a naughty fantasy in which I run away from everyone and everything I know on the back of a motorcycle heading west. Just my favorite t-shirts, books, and journal packed away. Holden, my cat, in a side car. I never look back. I just arrive at some dusty bar on karaoke night and sing “If It Makes You Happy,” and the catharsis of that experience helps me work out what’s next.
The idea of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was more fun to me than the reality. It sounded like a book that would give me wisdom and perspective for my Western fantasy. And on page one I was immediately taken with the road trip narrative. But sooner than later I recognized that I would not be joining Robert on the rest of his journey.
Sorry, Robert, I know you poured four years of your life into this. And I won’t even ride with you until page 50.
But you remind me of all my exes. You sound like the guy most of the men from my 20s wanted to be: a dude who could fix his own bike, knew more than everyone, and had a lot to say about it.
In the first 35 pages of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance — and possibly beyond — Pirsig narrates with such unshakeable conviction. He preaches down to his friends John and Sylvia like he pities their ignorance. They’d rather take their bikes to a mechanic than learn to fix them. Robert Pirsig thinks that’s bullshit. His tone communicates that their lifestyle is foolish, that his is the superior way of the woke man.
Maybe your friends John and Sylvia just don’t have the type of brain that wants to know about spark plugs. I know I don’t. Not everybody gets off on engineering.
There’s a good chance that in this book, like many, the narrator evolves. Maybe Robert has a change of feelings later.
Ultimately it’s the tone that ended things for me. I’ve known more than one person who takes this stance on their own little opinions. No more, honey! Ta-ta, Robert!
I used to read books for answers, feeling as though I had none myself. I turned to books like this with religious devotion.
Now I know better than to trust something just because it’s been published.
Maybe beyond Pirsig’s tone there is, after all, some wisdom related to Zenning out mid-oil change. If anyone here has read beyond page 35 and got something from it, I’d like to hear about it. Tell me what Robert has to offer.