This news is very shocking. ZAMM was one of those classic "must-reads" I had avoided for years...it just never appealed to me, though I knew nothing about it. A month ago, at a used book sale, I bought a pristine paperback copy for 50 cents. One week ago, I began reading it. And now I come to your site, where I often come to have my thoughts provoked, and see that the author has died. The feeling of synchronicity is strong.
@Kirk - It's pleasing to have it confirmed (again) that there is a 'plot' to life.
29 April 2017 at 18:11
Robert M Pirsig - author of one of my long-term favourite books Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, died a few days ago at the age of 88.
I first read ZAMM aged 17 - when I thought it probably contained The Answer to Life. It didn't - mostly because it rejected religion; and I was never able to use its ideas to achieve a viable set of assumptions. Nonetheless, it is a wise, powerful and beautiful book - certainly one of my 'best books of the twentieth century'.
Over the years, I published a couple of articles about ZAMM:
The audiobook version is excellent; and uses the same narrator - Michael Kramer - who reads Brandon Sanderson and Robert Jordan's epic fantasies... Here's a bit of it:
"Remembering Robert M Pirsig"
2 Comments -
This news is very shocking. ZAMM was one of those classic "must-reads" I had avoided for years...it just never appealed to me, though I knew nothing about it. A month ago, at a used book sale, I bought a pristine paperback copy for 50 cents. One week ago, I began reading it. And now I come to your site, where I often come to have my thoughts provoked, and see that the author has died. The feeling of synchronicity is strong.
29 April 2017 at 13:16
@Kirk - It's pleasing to have it confirmed (again) that there is a 'plot' to life.
29 April 2017 at 18:11