Modern Vespa

OK, he's not writing about Vespas, per se, but what he has to say resonates with the MV vibe. I just discovered the whole book is on the web: http://virtualschool.edu/mon/Quality/PirsigZen/. Had to share.

"Each machine has its own, unique personality which probably could be defined as the intuitive sum total of everything you know and feel about it. This personality constantly changes, usually for the worse, but sometimes surprisingly for the better, and it is this personality that is the real object of motorcycle maintenance.

"The new ones start out as good-looking strangers and, depending on how they are treated, degenerate rapidly into bad-acting grouches or even cripples, or else turn into healthy, good-natured, long-lasting friends. This one, despite the murderous treatment it got at the hands of those alleged mechanics, seems to have recovered and has been requiring fewer and fewer repairs as time goes on." -- Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

Thank you so much for posting! Bookmarked.

I love this book and could not recommend it too highly.

This is the passage I highlighted in my copy (I never mark books normally!) and refer to a lot. It's an experience I have frequently, both when working on my scooter and in non-bike-related areas of my life, and Pirsig's words have helped me a lot: Read on to find out how to solve it. Search for 'stuckness' in Part III.

./--------------I like the quotation that's in my sig line
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.V

I have one word for persig.



Whineyassbitch

I don't see how a discussion about the nature of quality and stories about a motorcycle trip = whineyassbitch. The rest of it . . . well if you had your childhood memories erased by few hundred thousand volts shot through your head like Pirsig did you might complain a bit too.

I give Persig props for doing long distance trips riding 2-up on a 125cc Honda. Not quite StrikingViking awesome, but awesome nonetheless.

if he owned a BMW instead he never would have wrote the book

His riding buddy in the book had a BMW. It never seemed to work right. Or is that your point?

read it many years ago. Good read.

Thanks for the link.

I wholeheartedly disagree with this. Old(er) airheads (AKA R series BMW) require a lot of tinkering to keep them happy. Everything is easy to get to, which is good, because you need to get to everything fairly often. BTW my 84 R65LS is on the market.

I tried twice and couldn't get into it. I did like "I See By My Outfit" , where two guys ride across the US on Heinkels in the 1960's.

Hi flanman-hawaii, Good for you to bring attention of this book us all at MV. I've had this book for years, I never tire of it and and I've read it many times, not only a good story but Robert M.Pirsig takes you on a journey into the reasoning and values of every day life and thinking, everybody should read it, it'll surprise you with what you'll learn. Here's a link to the man himself on wikipedia...............Paul http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_M._Pirsig

are you suggesting R series BMWs are just as cranky as old triumphs? wrong.

I call striking viking a male whore. I think he'd think that to be a compliment. About Persig...hey...he has a great message. I just couldn't deal with Persig's melodramatic treatment of his personal journey. Every time he started in on his personal demons, I was like "omg...ok, skip the next few pages and get to the point." While Glen probably skips along the superficial side of things, Robert has sort of gone off the deep end.

The two types being compared were Honda and BMW. Bringing Triumph into the discussion would be your suggestion. Shall we spiral into more and more obscure bikes known to be maintenance nightmares? Might be a long list and BMW and Triumph surely won't rank high on that list for long. I have only had Guzzis and BMWs (oh yeah and a sweet little red vespa) and my airheads have ALWAYS required more attention than any others. That is just my experience. I'd trade my last BMW for an old Bonnie anyday of the week as long as it was red.

Well, I guess you told him, eh? Put a lot of thought into it, too.

Pirsig, developer of a practical approach to the definition of "quality" that turned the academic world on its ear, genuine thinker and genuine man-of-action, patient and loving father of a child who will ultimately be murdered on the street in San Francisco, a man with a first-class intellect and large heart, who strove and succeeded in growing beyond his personal limitations, is thus reduced to a ghetto phrase.

That his troubled son would be killed by a piece of infra-human scunge who doubtless saw his victim also as a whineyassbitch kinda highlights the illness rampant in our culture, where ghetto-speak and ghetto-attitude rule.

Male whore he may be but the trips he does are unreal. Other times I post about SV people mention Ewan Macgregor's TV show that was superficially simliar. The difference is that Ewan had a whole support convoy. Man, give me a support convoy and I'll ride anywhere too! SV has no convoy and he's also weighed down by his big cahones.

And as far as Persig's melodrama, I'm not going to pretend there isn't some of that in there. On the other hand I've never had electro-shock therapy so I can't say what it is really like. Anyhoo, it is easy enough to skip over those parts if so inclined.

Well there is your problem right there. Everyone knows black or blue bikes require less maintenance then red ones.

But the red ones are FASTER!

Hey...when I have time to publish a thesis on it...I'll get back to ya.

Sorry - little inattentive here - got another screen open tryin' to order personalized plates for my GTS, but the DMV sez "whineyassbitch" won't fit...damn bureaucrats...

ZMM is great. I read it years ago and remains on my display bookshelf, along side many of Kerouac's books. Pirsig's philosophy is apparent and obvious from the title. With Kerouac you have to go on that journey with him through several books to find what he learned and discovered.

Pirsig's long awaited follow-up, Lila, in 1991 was disappointing to say the least. While good, it isn't great. And it made me very sad during the reading.

You know, it's probably about time I read ZMM again. The trouble with ZMM is I tend to read books like that with a highlighter, a pen and a pad of paper.

If anyone caught what I had written in the mentor thread, my father had been the Pirsig in my life...just with a lot less woe-is-me. Skipping the whiny sections would definitely be my recommendation. There're huge swaths of it that you can skip over, and just get the nuggets of wisdom that remain. I definitely connect with Robert's pursuit of quality much more than I connect with Glen's pursuit of fine ass. If there ever were a dichotomy of men, it'd be them.

If you ever want an inspirational motorcycling story, google up Sugino Makiko from japan. She had left on a trip some time around 2001, as a tribute to a friend of hers who passed away. Both had planned to take on a 'round-the-world trip together. As far as I know, Maki hasn't stopped yet. All of it was done on something like a 250cc yammie dirt bike.

I love Persig's book. It is living thing that has shed light on the condition of my life through it's various phases. It's meant very different things to me when I read it in High Scool, then as a young adult 20 something and now as a 40 somthing man. The whole boys will be boys thing with Striking Viking just doesn't resonate with me. I can see that in a brain dead main stream hollywood movie any day of the week. A book where a man is willing to discuss his fear and vulnerabilty is much more intersting to me.

Thanks for the memory-stoke. My hippie-artist dad had ZMM laying around and I read it when I was a kid...I'll bet he still has it somewhere...

Well, I think that, uh, whineyness was part of the point and theme of the book. His major point would be lost without it.

Pirsig did indeed whine a great deal about his life and hard times, and then went on to show how, in getting Zen, he got beyond whining, bitching, moaning, and general carrying-on. I think that was part of the point - drop the hyperemotionalism and you can get 'er done.

He demonstrated by his personal example - at great length - how whining and self-indulgence defeat us. I have busted many a knuckle, hurled many a tool across the yard, sang the "M-Fer" song at top volume in attempting to solve vexing mechanical problems before understanding that it got me nothing.

Nobody likes or respects a whiner, but most of us at one time or another do just that anyway. His title - Zen and the Art...sums it up: clear your head of all he freight and see what is before you. His experience in developing a new approach to 'quality' and the way that the entrenched academic community acted like it was a threat to the lives rather than a brilliant exegesis also shows it operating in them, for all their brains and postion, as well.

Please excuse me now - I gotta go get back on the horn with the sumbitc..., uh, customer service staff at the DMV...

Here's a book. Different form Zen but really worth a read. Came out in 1974:

"PIRSIG" fits.

It does fit, by Gawd; but I settled for "VESPZZ". Figure that tail-gaters can take that PZZ anyway they're inclined...

I thought ZMM to be a rather vague journal of navel gazing. I think most motorcyclists attempt it imagining it to be a travel log, which it is most certainly not. I do not mean to trivialize Mr. Pirsig's personal travails, I just think that as a book it has little to offer either as a motorcycle journal or a personal diary explaining from whence has the author derived any wisdom of human nature.

In fact I have yet to encounter any motorcycle journals that I can regard as really good travel logs.

For the best travel logs I have encountered, try: "Kabloona", "Hunted Through Central Asia", "Tent life in Siberia", and "Eastern Approaches".

Looking for a new read right now too, glad this came up - will try to pick up 'Zen and the Art' at the local library tomorrow.

I think Mr. Pirsig would agree with you. About his own book he said, ". . . it should in no way be associated with that great body of factual information relating to orthodox Zen Buddhist practice. It's not very factual on motorcycles, either."

And, yes, many people read it thinking it would be a Kerouac like travel story which it isn't - often because they omit the whole title which is "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values".

But I get where you are coming from. When I saw "Motorcycle Diaries" I was expecting a travel story. Instead I got an achingly slow movie about Che'. Also, when I saw "Wild Hogs" I thought that was a travel story. Instead it was a treatise on middle aged has-been comedians.

One of the best books ever.

I think the author's point was about the rider not the bike. The guy would not think outside the box when it needed repairs.

ok, you all have convinced me. I'll pick it back up. I'm finally at the mountains in the book and have found it whiney and dull...too much blah blah and not enuf moto talk...I'll give it another try. Must say tho, it'd be a super fun trip to take!

Yes, It's not the travel antics but the introspection. It is much more akin to Kerouac's Desolation Angels, Dharma Bums and especially, VisionsOfCody or VisionsOfGerard. Or somewhere between all of that. Or above it. Or below.
Where Jack rambles on in a six page paragraph about how lonely he has become and rises above emotional distress and meets the challenge of being in the here and now.

But comparisons are never really appropriate. I would never put ZMM on the same shelf as EverythingINeedToKnowILearnedInKindergarten, but that's me. Both are light hearted everyday joe approaches to philosophy, but different books entirely in my humble opinion. For me, I read Kindergarten in a single afternoon, and refer to it often, but I never needed to highlight it or take notes, because the form was not that of a novel.

I've recommended this book on this forum many times. Having worked in Manufacturing for years, trying to define quality, I've always had a special understanding for a man going crazy trying to understand what quality is.

I must read. Some professor had the wisdom to have us read it back in my undergraduate engineering studies.

Not a light read; the book is dense. It has the specific gravity of lead, and can be akin to chewing your way through a loaf of black bread.

He starts by talking about his companions John and Sylvia - intelligent people in a constant state of dread over the simple physical, mechanical world. John would rather pump away at the kick-starter endlessly than face unthreading the plug and letting it dry.

John knows that the engine is flooded; he can smell the gasoline. His fear of and alienation from the sheerly physical is so huge that he cannot confront and overcome it in its simplist forms. He and his wife spent their entire lives in a crippling blindness.

By the time the book was written, we had already become so accustomed to the 'plug-n-play' modus that any interruption to our expectations of ease of use and painless living immediately disabled us.

Thus the 'Zen' of the title: overcome your fear and see that which is there to be seen, understood, and made familiar. The same story plays out in his confrontation with the Dons of the University and the threat that his work in definition of the character of 'quality' poses. Instead of seeing-that-which-is-there-to-be-seen, they quake in fear and strike out in anger.

Other books of that time acknowledged this in passing, and became hugely successful by delivering non-threatening guidelines for achieving grace and losing fear in the face of a World where it is really best to learn to do things for oneself: How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive comes to mind.

Illustrated in cartoons and clear line drawings, it de-fanged mechanics, maintenance, and repair for a whole generation of people who otherwise only knew how to turn things on and off. It was spiral-bound and lie flat and accesible on the garage floor and driveway, rather than compound frustration by snapping itself closed; it's approach was was calm-down, see, now do, one-two-three.

Sp Pirsig shows John and Sylvia entirely missing the Red-Wing Blackbirds arising from the marsh because their awareness is blinded by the heavy freight of their dread.

ZMM is not a travelogue, not a spaced beatific paen, but philosophy in the original sense: how to live, what to do.

-so last night all buzzed up at a friend's house after a show somehow this book was brought up and the pals wife actually had a copy and she just dropped it off for me to read. Yay, looking forward to it and just in time for the weekend too! (plus the book has a Nirvana unripped concert ticket from 1991 (Seatle transplants) for my bookmark, gotta luv that)

Good book, but I had to abandon the thread at "he never would have wrote [sic]."
And one more "Persig" in this farkakte thread, and I was gonna "loose" it.

Welcome to the interwebs, the last (or newest?) bastion of bad spelling and grammer (sic).