In 1968, Robert Pirsig and his son, Chris, made the cross-country motorcycle trip that was the basis for Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, a book that has inspired generations with its searching personal and philosophical narrative.
After rereading the book at the onset of middle age, reporter Mark Richardson tuned up his old Suzuki dirt bike and became a Pirsig Pilgrim, one of the legions of fans who regularly retrace the author's route from Minneapolis to San Francisco.
Richardson, like Pirsig before him, traveled the lonely roads of the American West, where he encountered many of the same people and places that inspired Pirsig. Richardson also corresponded with the reclusive author and his legendary editor, James Landis, and uncovered new details about Pirsig's mental illness, his unhappy celebrity, and his struggle to put his life together after the brutal murder of his son in 1979.
Published to coincide with the 40th anniversary of Pirsig's trip, Zen and Now is an intellectual adventure, a meditation on the values of a classic book, and an inquiry into its relevance to the complex and bewildering world we inhabit today.
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"I'm an ex-biker, and read Pirsig years ago at a particularly turbulent emotional period. That aside, Richardson's account is a skillful and fetching interweaving of Pirsig then, Pirsig now, and Richardson's own recapitulation by motorcycle. So yes, I liked it."
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John (4 out of 5 stars)