Philosophy underlies writing, as it does any thought-based activity. Last weekend, I secluded myself in a friend’s house and immersed myself in creative non-fiction and evocative writing, and delighted myself in a book that expanded my thinking: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
What starts off as a memoir of a trip through US backroads, changes tack and delivers a challenge to the basis of rationality. Along the way, it provides a framework, whether in a scientific or artistic endeavour, for creating quality. In another entry, I will go into other reasons this book had such an impact on me, but for now I want to focus on this framework.
Curled up in front of a fire on an autumn night, Zen lays out a way of viewing the underlying form of things. Given yesterday’s discourse on my procrastination on my memoir, Pirsig combined with Proust will help me succeed: Think like Proust while I write; think like Pirsig while I edit.
I see now that attempting to explain this in one blog entry, or even the several I intend won’t do Zen justice. If you’re like me, it may have been one of those books on your I-must-get-around-to-reading list. If this is the case, make it the next book you read.
And if you didn’t know of it before now, consider yourself fortunate to be aware of it.
[...] I read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values (discussed earlier here), I worried Pirsig lacked the skill to bring me back from the place he was taking me. I mean that I [...]
[...] Into Values where I discussed the application of Pirsig’s philosophy to the writing craft here, and supremacy of trust here, he tells us he’s chosen not to fully develop his characters. [...]
[...] of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values, which inspired a series of articles, starting here. Another book that people were thrilled to see I’d borrowed was Holy Cow: An Indian [...]