I read this book a thousand years ago, or so, and thought it was IT with a capital T.

As I’m now the proud owner of a motorcycle, one that even runs, I thought to revisit this marvelous book and see what I can glean from it. Remarkably enough, it’s now available online!

So I read. And I discovered something important: The icons of youth quickly show their clay feet. What a piece of insufferable garbage this is!

Now, there are moments, I have to grant. When he’s talking about the physical reapirs, about the importance of tuning the bike properly, etc. you get a sense that he has some clue. When he talks about education, about philosophy, about most other things, it’s obvious he’s making it up as he goes, and that he’s using the moonbat’s cookbook as his guide. When he talks about the “abolition of the carrot and whip system of grading” it makes me want to puke.

What the useful message of the book is, seems to be to go and find the best fit for yourself. And he doesn’t send that message, you learn it yourself as you read.

Shamefully, his son (with whom he shares the journey in the book) is killed in a brutal and pointless mugging twelve years or so after the book is published. You have to feel for his loss. Pirsig writes a sequel that deals with this, which is less readable than the original book, though still enjoyable.

If he’d have stuck to the specifics of maintaining the bike, and given that allegory, and left it at that, he’d have done fine. Maybe only twelve people would have gotten it, but they’d have gotten it right.

Meanwhile,the book is enjoyable if you can ignore the seminal moonbattery. No help for a motorcyclist, I think.